Backup at a Bluegrass Jam

[Willie Poole]

I have read through these advice posts and find that a lot of you refer to what you hear when a formed band is playing and the OP wants to know what would be best at a jam....I say you can`t go wrong by just chopping and watch and listen to see if other instruments are adding a tag line at the ends of each line when there is singing....I don`t do many jams anymore but when I did I just mostly chopped because in most jams I wasn`t familiar just how the singer was going to pause at the end of his lines and who was going to apply a tag line so the chop just seemed to be the way to go, now if you are an egotist and want to shine you just might step on other instruments when you rear back and add in a fill line ...

As far as taking your break, learn the melody and that will always fit, throwing in some fancy minor chords in a jam session is the best way I know to ruin a jam.....Another problem is that we all learn a certain song from different artist and some change some things so if a song is announced ask whos version they want to play, I have taken breaks on songs and had someone say "They don`t do it that way" I ask, "Who is 'they'" someone might have learned the song from Monroe and some others may have learned it from Skaggs or whoever and they will be a little different, that drives me up a wall, if I am doing the singing I sometimes say "This is Monroes version", he don`t use the E minor chord....

I hope I have used the correct spacing and quotation marks when typing this, some times commas and semicolons get used all wrong....

And Mike B, that is meant to be sarcastic but all in fun...Willie

[AlanN]

The "They don`t do it that way" thing can be a problem, for sure. Like on Redwood Hill by the Gents, that seems to be the definitive grass version that folks quote. If you don't do the Doyle on the (And How The Rain Did Fall) part, well, that ain't right...

And to this day, Dwight plays Skaggs' Rou 0044 break note-for-note on Old Home Place. I would imagine if he threw something else in there, he'd get the JD glare.

[greg_tsam]

I'm sure that each and everyone one of us, bar none, has done something to irritate someone else in a jam.

Yea, I brought a bowlback to a bluegrass jam.

EVIL!!!

[Mike Bunting]

I have read through these advice posts and find that a lot of you refer to what you hear when a formed band is playing and the OP wants to know what would be best at a jam....I say you can`t go wrong by just chopping and watch and listen to see if other instruments are adding a tag line at the ends of each line when there is singing....I don`t do many jams anymore but when I did I just mostly chopped because in most jams I wasn`t familiar just how the singer was going to pause at the end of his lines and who was going to apply a tag line so the chop just seemed to be the way to go, now if you are an egotist and want to shine you just might step on other instruments when you rear back and add in a fill line ...

As far as taking your break, learn the melody and that will always fit, throwing in some fancy minor chords in a jam session is the best way I know to ruin a jam.....Another problem is that we all learn a certain song from different artist and some change some things so if a song is announced ask whos version they want to play, I have taken breaks on songs and had someone say "They don`t do it that way" I ask, "Who is 'they'" someone might have learned the song from Monroe and some others may have learned it from Skaggs or whoever and they will be a little different, that drives me up a wall, if I am doing the singing I sometimes say "This is Monroes version", he don`t use the E minor chord....

I hope I have used the correct spacing and quotation marks when typing this, some times commas and semicolons get used all wrong....

And Mike B, that is meant to be sarcastic but all in fun...Willie

Your messages are always clear and to the point. And I pretty much agree with your whole post especially regarding unnecessary minors that can mess up the sound and make the song sound like Tin Pan Alley or something. Up here, there's a habit to use a minor in Sittin' O Top of the World at ".....I don't worry..." and I've never heard that any where else. To me it's just overly dramatic and it sounds fake.
And you are right regarding the melody, a friend who used to tour with some Nashville bands told me that you can't go wrong with just playing the straight melody. Nevertheless, it is a jam which should be where you try out new ideas, some or most of which won't be worth a damn (in my case!) but you have to figure that out somewhere. Maybe it was at a jam that so and so (pick your favourite artist) came up with their version of a tune that you like so well and want to emulate.
As for playing chop chords, I never worry about it since there are about six other mandolins taking care of that department, I usually try to figure out harmony lines, tremoloed behind the vocals.

[AlanN]

Ah yes, that 6 minor in SOTOTW. Trouble is, the pickers that do it 'don't NOT do it', ever. At least around here. I find it annoying.

[JeffD]

I don't know where to go as a next step on mandolin. I seem to be able to play breaks to the radio but a spontaneous mandolin break at a jam.makes me more than a bit nervous.

Jamming and playing can be different in this way. At a jam you have everyone else to lean on. If you are not confident as to where the chord changes are you can hear them in the playing. If its melodic, you can hear the melody and if its someone's break you can back it up.

Taking a break though is your show. Its playing not jamming at those moments.

Learn a bunch of bluegrass tunes so that you can play melody and know all the chord changes, without listening to others. So that you know the tunes and others can lean on you. You may already have that down, I am not sure from your posts.

If you have that down, then you can start your own jam or jam circle. All it takes is a friendly guitar, banjo, and fiddle, etc. But now its your circle, your jam, and you get to pick tunes when you want, pick who takes a break if you want, whatever. When you take a break, just play the melody. I would think your rock guitar background will make you antsy just playing melody, so you can do some gentle departures from melody. Soon enough you will be doing breaks your way.

The best way to get this going is to identify some others who you are close enough to, and ask if you could "go through" this or that tune with you, to work some things out. Soon enough these hand picked individuals will seek you out at jams form your own little jam circle core, that others swarm to.

Obvious stuff, I know, but its all part if it.

Nervous - well that never goes away. Hopefully it never goes away. I look at nervous energy as fuel. It means you care enough to want to get it right. I never never want to get complacent about taking a break. I want the hyper awareness and excitement that comes with nervous energy, I want the high that comes when I do get it right, and I want the glow afterwards as my body recovers from the flight or fight syndrome and its attendant thoracic breathing.

Among the things that make a break lame are 1) a canned break that has obviously been memorized and has no spontenaity, 2) a generic break that works with the chord changes but has nothing to do with the melody, and 3) a player so confident that there is no excitement, it sounds phoned in.

[JeffD]

EVIL!!!

Well lets just say it was a teachable moment. And I was taught.

[SincereCorgi]

And I pretty much agree with your whole post especially regarding unnecessary minors that can mess up the sound and make the song sound like Tin Pan Alley or something. Up here, there's a habit to use a minor in Sittin' O Top of the World at ".....I don't worry..." and I've never heard that any where else. To me it's just overly dramatic and it sounds fake.

Man, that chord is a major pet peeve of mine. I occasionally do "Lonesome Old River", as done by Roy Acuff, with the instruction that it's basically the same tune and chords as "Sitting on Top of the World" but without any minors – 'resist the urge' I say – but people still throw it in anyway.

[Wolfboy]

The "They don`t do it that way" thing can be a problem, for sure. Like on Redwood Hill by the Gents, that seems to be the definitive grass version that folks quote. If you don't do the Doyle on the (And How The Rain Did Fall) part, well, that ain't right...

Funny you should mention that in connection with a Gordon Lightfoot song... One that's always bugged me is "Ten Degrees and Getting Colder." I love the song, and just once I'd like to hear played in a bluegrass jam the way Lightfoot actually wrote it. The only version I've ever heard in a bluegrass jam is the one by the Tony Rice-era lineup of J.D. Crowe and the New South, which is a great interpretation, but significantly different from the original. On the bridge, on "in the morning sun" and again on "I had a better friend", Crowe & co. add a couple of extra beats and a flat-VII chord while the Lightfoot original maintains a steady meter and never strays from I-IV-V at that point. (Hear for yourself here.) Personally I like it Gord's way a lot better. But bluegrass people never seem to play it that way, even though that is the way it was written and originally performed by its author.

Guess Bill Monroe's dictum of "Play it like it was wrote" doesn't apply if it was "wrote" by a Canadian folk-pop singer-songwriter...

(OK, digression over...back to the original subject of the thread...let's all just pretend nothing just happened...)

[greg_tsam]

Seems to be very common issues here that affects everyone. At last weeks jam we played Beaumont Rag two issues rose up. First, the banjo player only plays it in F and I learned it in D. So I tease him by offering a compromise of I'll play it in F if you play it in D next time. He balked at that one some I played it in F and put some closed position training to the test and transposed on the fly. It wasn't perfect but I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome and he even complimented me on my effort. Score!

The other issue was a rhythm guitar guy who couldn't seem to get that there is only one part of that song that has a stop and it's the 2nd part. He played the stop everytime. No big deal since the rest of us continued on but I wondered if he was listeneing and just thought everyone else was wrong.

[jmalmsteen]

At the jam, I am familiar with maybe 25% of the songs. Here is what I have been doing- watching the guitarist to see what we are doing since I don't know the songs and after a time through, chopping without watching the guitarist. I can figure out melodies pretty quickly it I hear a song, but it's a process, I can't instantly play a melody. Should I just write down the songs that they play and learn the melodies so I can improvise around the melodies? The people at the jam have been going for ages so maybe they just know the songs and know the melodies. Once again, I am new to this. It seems like the people playing filler all the time are almost working out their breaks. I can be wrong about this and can be hearing it wrong. It's nice to have a new challenge!

[Markus]

At the jam, I am familiar with maybe 25% of the songs. .... Should I just write down the songs that they play and learn the melodies so I can improvise around the melodies?

Yes. Most jams eventually become a songbook of what people bring there, with a fair amount of overlap between jams. As noted, people do some songs differently and that is worth noting. It takes time to learn a songbook, to know the large catalog of Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, nevermind the many others ... steep yourself in the originals, you'll get it just fine.

Now that I know most things, I will often text myself during the jam [song break] if someone brings something new that I don't know.

I found a transcriptions of solos helped me a lot. I'm not good at rote memorization like that, but playing through it a couple times every week I found informative - Monroe's take on solos or instrumentals is fascinating and going through those really opened my ears to what he was doing.

Similarly, TablEdit and such have breaks as well - once you get a list of common tunes that they play most jams, look them up. Next year, you'll be on the obscure ones. Learn the melody, see how people adorn and venture from it, keep it within the genre/idiom ... and let loose.

If you have that down, then you can start your own jam or jam circle. All it takes is a friendly guitar, banjo, and fiddle, etc. But now its your circle, your jam, and you get to pick tunes when you want, pick who takes a break if you want, whatever. When you take a break, just play the melody. I would think your rock guitar background will make you antsy just playing melody, so you can do some gentle departures from melody. Soon enough you will be doing breaks your way.

The single best thing I did as a bluegrass player was to start getting together some players regularly in homes. By far the best thing I did in my early days in such a group was to take a song and just pass solos around the circle ... for 10, 15 minutes a song. Maybe start and close it with a verse, but to focus on being great backup for other solos and developing your own soloing ideas. First get the melody down, then have a 10 different takes on it. In a few hours you might not do many songs, but you walk away with developed solos that are well ingrained.

Now that I have a looper, I do this with that - but in a group there's the direct feedback of others when this time you round you discover something awesome [or nail it perfect] that is useful information the looper can't provide. Thus I go to jams too ...

[Markus]

It seems like the people playing filler all the time are almost working out their breaks. I can be wrong about this and can be hearing it wrong.

I have no doubt you hear people do this, I hear people do this too.

This is my take on it, likely to be informed by the responses. I don't mean to offend, but if you're asking my opinion I'll give it. The three groups you hear doing that are as follows:

1. Advanced players do all sorts of wondrous things behind singers, harmony or counterpoint lines ... though often with delicacy, taste, and synched tightly with the song. They shouldn't take that much listening to pick out as their tone, projection, and ears should be obvious.

2. People working out breaks during songs. Hopefully completely inobtrusively for only short sections of the song. If I've never heard a song before, I may near-silently play along with the melody to find it on the fretboard on one verse in the middle of the tune. Probably not a good habit, but at a jam on a tune you've never heard before with the singer looking at you for the next solo ... well, sometimes you cheat and drop out of the mix to figure something out. If you distract someone, remove focus from the melody - you screwed up.

3. People who don't rate backing others up and synching with the overall sound as something they care about. They could be new, uninformed, full of themselves - a whole variety of people and reasons. Every bag of popcorn has some unpopped kernels, every jam seems to have some unsynched players doing their own thing.

I try to stand away from #3. The jams when I come home unsatisfied is when I'm surrounded by people noodling instead of backing up. I fail to understand why people come to jams if playing great backup for tunes you don't get to select isn't part of the equation. Unlike beginners and people new to jamming who bring excitement, the never-stop-noodling folks tend to drain my energy.

The few times really great pickers have come to my usual jam I've learned an enormous amount from them - hearing/seeing how they approach the song, backup, and solos. I assume this is what people get out of camps, where you can watch an expert instructor take a break on a tune you know - you can synch your backup with theirs, find their tweaks to the same-old-same-old.

There's folks here with way more experience than I, in other regions, who likely have corrections to make to the above. I blame sun, salmon, and beer.