Tim
May-04-2005, 8:30am
Urban Legends Guitar story (http://www.snopes.com/music/media/guitar.asp)
The link is to a story about a musician who learned to play a song from a recording and later learned it was two or more guitars.
They present this variation involving Duffey you can get the full context at the link:
[Duffey,] known for his work with the Country Gentlemen and the Seldom Scene, was one of many players under the spell of Bill Monroe's music as a teenager in the 1940s-50s. And, like so many of his contemporaries, he learned a lot about how to play the mandolin from Monroe's classic 1940s recordings. The thing he found most challenging was how Monroe managed to sing lead and play very elaborate, syncopated, counter-melodies as backup simultaneously, as he'd heard on records like "Sweetheart You've Done Me Wrong" and "When You Are Lonely."
As he told a interviewer Dix Bruce: "We only had 78's, and they were kind of hard to slow down. I learned a trick off of him that he wasn't really doing. I didn't know it was Lester Flatt singing the lead, and I would hear this mandolin playing going on while this guy was singing. I guessed you had to be able to do that. I used to stand in front of a mirror, and look, and sing a song, and make my hands independent of what I was singing. Every once in a while I still do it just for amusement. Bill and I did a workshop together up in Carlisle, Ontario, five or six years ago I guess, and I told him, 'You know I learned something off of you, and I bet you can't do it.' I told him the story of not knowing it was Lester singing. I sang a song and picked along behind, and he just grinned."
The link is to a story about a musician who learned to play a song from a recording and later learned it was two or more guitars.
They present this variation involving Duffey you can get the full context at the link:
[Duffey,] known for his work with the Country Gentlemen and the Seldom Scene, was one of many players under the spell of Bill Monroe's music as a teenager in the 1940s-50s. And, like so many of his contemporaries, he learned a lot about how to play the mandolin from Monroe's classic 1940s recordings. The thing he found most challenging was how Monroe managed to sing lead and play very elaborate, syncopated, counter-melodies as backup simultaneously, as he'd heard on records like "Sweetheart You've Done Me Wrong" and "When You Are Lonely."
As he told a interviewer Dix Bruce: "We only had 78's, and they were kind of hard to slow down. I learned a trick off of him that he wasn't really doing. I didn't know it was Lester Flatt singing the lead, and I would hear this mandolin playing going on while this guy was singing. I guessed you had to be able to do that. I used to stand in front of a mirror, and look, and sing a song, and make my hands independent of what I was singing. Every once in a while I still do it just for amusement. Bill and I did a workshop together up in Carlisle, Ontario, five or six years ago I guess, and I told him, 'You know I learned something off of you, and I bet you can't do it.' I told him the story of not knowing it was Lester singing. I sang a song and picked along behind, and he just grinned."