Roland white at camp bluegrass

[GRW3]

I just got back from Camp Bluegrass in Levelland. I had signed up for intermediate mandolin with Roland. Due to unfortunate circumstances there were only two instructors. Steve Smith took the 'Intermediate-Advanced' class and Roland took the 'Beginner-Intermediate' class. They let us decide on which class to attend. Since I came to mandolin from guitar with no formal mandolin instruction I decided to go with Roland's class. I am glad I did.

There is just no substitute for fundamentals and he stressed them, starting with how we hold our mandolins, how we set our left hand, how we use the pick and how we warm up. In addition he talked to us about caring for our hands and advising us to stop if it starts to hurt.

If I would summarize the highlights of four days of class it would be:

- Know more chord forms so you don't need to whip up and down the neck and you don't strain your hand by continuous use of the standard closed chop chord, or as he calls it "the Bluegrass Grip".
- Use of double (and triple) stops to richen the sound and vary the tone between strains (ex: without for the first pass of A with for the second).
- Use of, what I call, mandolin rolls
- Use of tremolo

I had looked at his book before but maybe looking at it with 'guitar' eyes it was hard to fathom, though I suppose it made sense to natural mandolin players. After this class I understood it pretty well so I picked up a copy.

Roland also was a wealth of Bluegrass history and philosophy. In the emphasized two things:
- Don't play too fast. it' annoying.
- Know the melody don't just play hot licks over the chord change, it's boring

Roland worked with a lot of historic Bluegrass greats but he seems to favor Bill Monroe as a reference source. He also has an eerily precise imitation of Bill.

Did I get my moneys worth? You bet. It was surprisingly hard to do these tunes right - double stop here, roll here, tremolo here, etc., etc. By the last class day I had reached my adsorption limit.

[GRW3]

Since I went "No Media" all week I forgot about the Lubbock newspaper doing a piece on the camp using Roland's class as a backdrop.

Lubbock Avalance Article on Camp Bluegrass (http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/072208/loc_307491324.shtml)


My mandolin is in the middle picture, along with enough of my red shirt for a tasteful background.

[Chiledog]

Very cool George, is this an annual event? What was the cost for 6 days? I really enjoyed the piece from the Lubbock paper as well. Thanks for sharin'

Todd

[GRW3]

It was $600 for the week. I goes from Sunday afternoon to Friday afternoon. Room and Board (college food, college dorm, though girls dorms) included.

Here's another neat thing: Mon-Thurs nite there is a instructors concert every night. The sound is so good it will spoil you. Camp Bluegrass is at South Plains College and is conducted in their professional music school. One of their study areas is professional sound and they have all the good stuff. On Friday there is a student concert and that's pretty good too. It's conducted in Tom T. Hall. Really.

[mando.player]

Roland was one of my favorites at Kamp last year. When he talked about learning more grips as to reduce the amount of back and forth he referred to it as "Keeping your pups in the yard". I love it. He's a kind soul and great story teller.

[Chiledog]

Thanks for the info George...$600 ain't bad at all, I was expecting closer to $1K!

Todd

[GRW3]

Because I was learning "new to me" fundamentals I hung out some with the official Slow Jam to practice. I got recruited to the Slow Jam performance group for the Friday Student Concert. I was very cool getting up in front of the large audience up on the performance stage. I was singing tenor and it was, I believe, only the second time I have used a microphone. They had a short seminar on stage performance and mic use. I tried to remember what they said and it seemed to work out. Kindly, several people sought me ought to say they enjoyed my singing.