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Thread: clinch mountain backstep

  1. #1
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    Default clinch mountain backstep

    Cool tune - been playing it a while
    found a backing track on fbbts.com under the bluegrass tab
    It seems slightly different on the A part than I learned it. measure 7
    Or am I just not used to hearing it

  2. #2
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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    It was written by Ralph Stanley and he turned it different at the end of A and B than you think it's going to do, also a little different on first part of B. I've heard it played different ways and I've seen a lot of pretty fair musician have trouble with it, it sounds simple but is kind ot tricky. Get a recording of Ralph doing it, that's the way it's supposed to be.

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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    I learned it by ear using a Bryan Sutton guitar rhythm backing track that I've outgrown speed wise.
    This fbbts track is different at the end of part A. The B part seems the same
    I'll check out the RS version - thx

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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    Be careful with fbbts.com. There are a bunch of tunes on there that are wrong. Wheel Hoss is one of them I know for sure and I have found others.

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  7. #5
    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    Here's Ralph himself playing it - i never knew there was ''any other way'',
    Ivan
    Weber F-5 'Fern'.
    Lebeda F-5 "Special".
    Stelling Bellflower BANJO
    Tokai - 'Tele-alike'.
    Ellis DeLuxe "A" style.

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    Registered User Timbofood's Avatar
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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    I agree Ivan, there is no "other way"
    And it is really easy to get it too fast too! Keeping the "bounce" factor is important in my opinion. Go too fast and you lose the "backstep", it just becomes a hiccup.
    Timothy F. Lewis
    "If brains was lard, that boy couldn't grease a very big skillet" J.D. Clampett

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  11. #7

    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    Quote Originally Posted by Stevo75 View Post
    Be careful with fbbts.com. There are a bunch of tunes on there that are wrong. ...
    I've never been able to get that site's Flash player to work, regardless of what I do with my browser settings (Chrome) as far as allowing exceptions etc.

    Guess I'm a little off-topic here now, but for practicing I find it much more satisfying to look up the chords somewhere and then plug those into a backing app to generate a canned backing track (of infinitely variable speed of course), or if I don't already know the chords it's easy to experiment to find chords that sound "ok to me" and I can always change them later if I find out I had the 'wrong' chords.

    That's part of the fun, being able to experiment with different chords to see what the different sounds are. Rather than being locked into someone else's preordained unchangeable chord progression.

    The other advantage to jerry-rigging one's own 'canned' backing tracks is that you can swap out an entire genre/sound just to keep from getting bored with the "same ol' same ol' ", for instance you can jam oldtime fiddle tunes to rock-n-roll backings (with drum tracks an' all). just for fun to mix things up a little and get new inspiration.

    And one can generate practice backing-tracks for less-common tunes that don't already have online backing tracks, like how I did with this old cowboy song. That was literally the first time I'd ever played with a jazzy swing backing of any sort, it helped me to loosen up and play more relaxed, made it easier to learn the tune.

    I guess there are bunches of different backing apps, Band-in-a-Box, GarageBand, ChordPulse, iRealPro, etc, I've only tried two and settled on one of 'em, for now anyway (although I suspect that more is always better when it comes to backing tracks! lol, Backing-Track-App Acquisition Syndrome). Would have liked to try Band-in-a-Box but they don't seem to offer demo/trial versions anymore and I didn't want to plunk down that much $ for something I wasn't sure would work on my computer (my computer is old & slow, same as me).

    Well I'm off-topic again, off to my corner again...

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  13. #8
    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    I agree Timothy. A lot of banjo players play it too fast. For me a nice ''backstep dance'' tempo seems right,after all,that's what it's supposed to be,not an except from River Dance !!.
    Ivan
    Weber F-5 'Fern'.
    Lebeda F-5 "Special".
    Stelling Bellflower BANJO
    Tokai - 'Tele-alike'.
    Ellis DeLuxe "A" style.

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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    I guess there are bunches of different backing apps, Band-in-a-Box, GarageBand, ChordPulse, iRealPro, etc, I've only tried two and settled on one of 'em, for now anyway (although I suspect that more is always better when it comes to backing tracks! lol, Backing-Track-App Acquisition Syndrome). Would have liked to try Band-in-a-Box but they don't seem to offer demo/trial versions anymore and I didn't want to plunk down that much $ for something I wasn't sure would work on my computer (my computer is old & slow, same as me).

    Well I'm off-topic again, off to my corner again...
    No - I appreciate your take. Do you mind telling which one you liked of the two you tried? I have put off trying to make my own long enough

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  17. #10

    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Wilson View Post
    No - I appreciate your take. Do you mind telling which one you liked of the two you tried? I have put off trying to make my own long enough
    I like ChordPulse.

    For the majority of the stuff I do, it's easy to use & has a variety of different sounds.

    It now also has fancy jazz chords if you happen to need those or want to experiment with them.

    And it lets you set "arrangement points" in as many measures as desired to temporarily turn off/on some 'instruments' or make the bass sustain etc.

    There's also a very useful Mixer option (unfortunately hidden in a menu, took me months to notice it there) which gives more control of the sounds, absolutely essential to turn down one of the drum kit sounds which is too loud otherwise, this control is separate from the main volume sliders.

    However, there are some things I'd like to see improved.

    For instance, it needs more 3/4 time options - there are some, enough to get me by, but percentage-wise not nearly as much variety in 3/4 compared to 4/4. The app seems to have plenty of 4/4 time options though.

    Also, jigs (6/8 time) require a silly workaround (last year I made a video about that) involving, among other things, setting the ChordPulse tempo to precisely two-thirds of the actual jig tempo & even then you can only use a small number of presets that happen to be in triplets or shuffle rhythm, so there's not much variety for jigs. I would prefer to have presets for jigs.

    If you're into Balkan music or something, you'll notice there's also no 7/8 time option. I did cobble together a rather convoluted & ultimately unacceptable method of getting 7 beats per measure but it's not really workable because I had to turn off part of the sounds to get the beats to come out right, also the workaround requires more tinkering with fractional tempo & won't go fast enough for dance tunes.

    And some of the sounds aren't very realistic, particularly piano chords. I tend to turn off the piano or turn it down so low it's not annoying. Not all the presets have piano, fortunately.

    But overall, it's infinitely better than a metronome, and it's fun to explore through the presets.

    You can also use it just as a drum track, or for bass & drums only. Or bass only. Or chords only. Various combinations.

    Oh, and you can change the presets on-the-fly, *while* the preset is playing, no need to stop & start. Although it loses a little time when you change presets while it's playing, that's only noticeable if you're running it simultaneously with another audio source, like when I have a melody playing in TablEdit while at the same time running ChordPulse to figure out which preset best suits the melody. Easy to get approximately back in time though, just click in a measure to start playing from that point (easier to do than to explain).

    Edited to add:
    One other cool thing about ChordPulse is that it gives you the option to export as midi and you can then drag-and-drop the whole midi file into something like MuseScore 2 (free open-source notation & tab app) where the midi file turns into standard notation & then you can alter/add/delete individual notes, change the instruments, copy/paste, add "swing" if not already present, all the usual score-writing stuff. I don't think there's a way to import that back into ChordPulse, but the MuseScore playback works ok although the MuseScore instruments don't sound as good as the ChordPulse instruments. (Now that I think about it, I bet I could adapt that technique to modify 4/4 to 7/8, I will have to experiment with that when I get time.)
    Last edited by Jess L.; Mar-23-2017 at 11:55am.

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  19. #11
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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    hey thx - I'll give the demo a try. The s/w price is easy if it works out for me

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  21. #12
    Registered User Mando-Mauler's Avatar
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    Default Re: clinch mountain backstep

    Back in the days (yawn) when we were bright eyed & bushy tailed, the bane of the band's life was half stewed audiences clapping along with the music... so - we would rip into Clinch Mountain Backstep. The extra half beat or dotted note or whatever that thing Dr. Ralph wrote tended to throw them off. If they persisted, we sometimes tossed in 5 beats of silence. That worked!

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