"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
Billy in the Lowground.
"Billy in the Lowground is in Cmaj. It just has a minor chord in it.
"Muddy Waters" as by the Seldom Scene; "Imitation of the Blues" by Larry Sparks.
Beware Folks, sometimes a minor chord is like a big hole where all the energy of a song disappears.
Lonesome moonlight waltz, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, Jerusalem ridge
I want to thank everyone for the turnout. Much bigger than we had at the jam. Thanks for all the suggestions.
I did try Pretty Polly in A Minor. Nobody seemed to know what I was getting at. Oh well.
"The paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations, and often lose themselves in error and darkness!"
--Leslie Daniel, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."
Some tunes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1...SV2qtug/videos
I think that many of the traditionals mentioned here are modal old time tunes that were not standard major or minor before they were incorporated in the bluegrass repertoire. Many or all of them have older interpretations where the thirds were ambivalent, disputable or absent.
In some of Monroe's minor tunes you can hear Monroe himself playing major thirds over the minor accompaniment. I always doubt if that is intentionally modern or wild, simple musical misunderstanding or a freedom that would have sounded nice over old timey thirdless accompaniment but does not work over chord triads. His B part in Crossing the Cumberlands sounds pretty NPON to me.
Monroe's major chorus in Wayfaring Stranger, his major/minor ambivalence in Southern Flavor and Flatt's E major in Foggy Mountain Breakdown also sound somewhat uncomfortable to me. It makes me wonder how exotic a fixed minor third in a chord or scale may have been to early Appalachian ears.
Well, I have only really ever heard one version - Monroe on a TV appearance with Marty Stuart on guitar - but it is plain to my ear.
"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
Originally Posted by Jim Broyles:
LongBlackVeil posted:The A part is minor, B part goes major then back to minor.
But you could accompany the a part with major chords if you wanted to couldn't you? Idk I've never done it myself but I believe you can
No, the G note kind of militates against playing E major. Major sounds totally wrong there, to me.
"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
But on another tune, Flatt played E-maj against Scruggs's G note in Foggy Mountain Breakdown on the initial Mercury recording. My old-time banjo picking friend Bob Schneider insists on having guitarists play the major chord when he picks the tune, 'cause that's what F & S did in 1949. It does add a bit of dissonant tension to the cliche´tune, IMHO.
Just because a major-key tune has a minor chord in it, doesn't make it "in a minor key." Every teenage love song written in the '50's (I exaggerate, but not by much) had the !-6m-4-5 progression. Didn't make 'em "minor."
Allen Hopkins
Gibsn: '54 F5 3pt F2 A-N Custm K1 m'cello
Natl Triolian Dobro mando
Victoria b-back Merrill alumnm b-back
H-O mandolinetto
Stradolin Vega banjolin
Sobell'dola Washburn b-back'dola
Eastmn: 615'dola 805 m'cello
Flatiron 3K OM
That's exactly what I said about Willow Garden backthread a ways.
"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
We can't ask the principals, but I'd bet a dollar Earl Scruggs intended the second chord in FMB to be E minor. The fact that Lester played E major there doesn't make it right. The fiddle's back up is Em and so is the banjo chord. Whoever insists on having the guitar play E major there is just being arbitrarily pedantic if you ask me. BTW, the dissonant tension sounds stupid, to me.
"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
You have a point; later versions of the song had Flatt playing Em, though as I look at videos that show his left hand, his index finger seems to be dancing on and off the 3rd string -- who knows.
My friend Bob's not being "arbitrarily pedantic," though; he just wants to recreate the sound of the 1949 Mercury recording, where Flatt played Emaj. It's not "right" or "wrong"; the band played what it played, and if the Emaj was a mistake, surely they could have re-done the take with the "right" chord. But they didn't, and the Em-against-Emaj dissonance is part of the classic first recording of Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Apparently they didn't think it sounded "stupid," and neither did Mercury Records -- nor Warren Beatty, who used the 1949 Mercury recording on the Bonnie & Clyde soundtrack, perpetuating the "error" forty years after it was made. Steve Sullivan's Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Records, V.2 footnotes Flatt's "mistake," saying it creates "a compelling sense of tension."
However, every guitarist (me included) that's played FMB in my presence, has played Em -- unless Bob Schneider was around to ask for the major chord. So I guess that's now the "right" way to play it -- but Flatt's Emaj chord still lingers 65 years later. Differences of opinion, they say, are what makes horse races, and interesting Cafe´threads.
Allen Hopkins
Gibsn: '54 F5 3pt F2 A-N Custm K1 m'cello
Natl Triolian Dobro mando
Victoria b-back Merrill alumnm b-back
H-O mandolinetto
Stradolin Vega banjolin
Sobell'dola Washburn b-back'dola
Eastmn: 615'dola 805 m'cello
Flatiron 3K OM
Record companies correcting mistakes! LOL!
" Only youuuuuuuu... can-da make..."
In Ernie K Doe's Mother in Law:
"She ax me what I made..."
Compelling tension - maybe to some, I don't like it at all.
"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
I'm with Jim, I don't like it. Those that insist on playing it (a very select few, in my world), do so to be 'authentic'. It's often a guitar man who does on it, therefore coloring the whole vibe. The bass? One-Five is E to B, doesn't much matter. On Tony Trischka's great LP Banjoland, they pick it. Tony gets out there, but sticks to the Em. And on that track, Buck White and Dawg do kind of a twin mandolin thing, just fantabulous.
Well, the two things I listed are a little different from colloquialism, or poetic license. If I had been at the Beatles' early sessions, I would have tried to correct Paul's "sawr them winging..."
"I thought I knew a lot about music. Then you start digging and the deeper you go, the more there is."~John Mellencamp
"Theory only seems like rocket science when you don't know it. Once you understand it, it's more like plumbing!"~John McGann
"IT'S T-R-E-M-O-L-O, dangit!!"~Me
I love playing the modal old-time tunes. I'd offer up a list, but it ain't quite bluegrass!
f-d
ˇpapá gordo ain’t no madre flaca!
'20 A3, '30 L-1, '97 914, 2012 Cohen A5, 2012 Muth A5, '14 OM28A
Yeah, but the lovely guitar solo makes up for it.
[QUOTE=allenhopkins; Differences of opinion, they say, are what makes horse races, and interesting Cafe´threads.[/QUOTE]
Right on!
"The paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations, and often lose themselves in error and darkness!"
--Leslie Daniel, "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."
Some tunes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1...SV2qtug/videos
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