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Thread: Finding the groove

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    Default Finding the groove

    I’m having trouble getting into a good groove when I play. Not a problem with fingerpicking guitar (which I’ve played for longer than I have mandolin) or clawhammer banjo (which I’ve played less than mandolin). Maybe it’s something having to do with fitting into a group or playing along with a track as opposed to just setting the groove by myself. Or maybe it’s having to do with picking out melodies with a pick rather than with fingers. I’m not sure. I know I tend to rush. I also just feel awkward and not in synch with the music or the instrument. It’s getting very frustrating. I’d appreciate any and all advice. Btw I’m talking about bluegrass, old time, a little blues and jug band music. Thanks!

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    Registered User Michael Neverisky's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    I understand where you are coming from. 30+ years as a guitarist (and clawhammer banjo player) , I never played an instrument using a flatpicking until I started with the mandolin and it was a big adjustment! The left hand was also an adjustment from chord shapes and polyphony to long, one note at a time phrases. And then there was coordinating the two.

    My advice would be to practice slowly with a metronome and focus on clean execution and good tone. This helps build new muscle memories which will eventually allow your brain to focus on other aspects of your playing.

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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Timing, like all good technique is easier to correct when slowed down. Use a metronome or track to check your timing.
    There is software available to slow down tracks. I prefer metronone for problem solving and backing tracks for maintaining

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    Registered User mandolin breeze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    I'm not a teacher, know next to nothing of theory, but from my own personal journey and maturity, I believe that the answer is much more in the right hand / wrist / arm, i.e. right side. For me, esp. watching the Dawg play, I see that so clearly. Just learning the notes, chords and neck forces so much attention on the left hand, but so much of the magic is in the right I think.

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    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    I see timing and groove as two different, but related, things.

    Metronome - For me, metronome was used for learning new things, especially new instruments like mandolin ... and what surprised me was when I started playing well-worn things against a metronome. Stuff I'd been playing and performing for years solo on guitar and never played against a metronome ... shocking how my timing varied, even though the feeling seemed right, so now I go back and play everything with metronome to get a better timing sense for solo pieces. It can be an eye-opener, and it can make you better, I think.

    Groove - From what y'all describe, I think the cause might be because there is a shift of where your groove is located. Fingerpicking guitar, your groove is located more in the thumb and its interaction with the finger(s). When playing with plectrum, your groove is located more in the wrist and forearm. Maybe that's the difference? You could try exaggerating the groove in wrist and forearm as a practice method, until the feel becomes second nature.
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    I always thought groove was located between your ears

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    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove



    I think it involves more of the body - but the ears and the gray matter between them are important. The way I wrote that does sound a bit off, Mark. A good teacher can explain what I mean to say and believe better than I can. I found a teacher a while back who does a good job of explaining and teaching what I believe, James Nash. I know some may disagree, but I agree with his teaching method fully. Here are samples:





    Anyone who finds this teacher interesting can purchase his video lessons at Homespun here: https://www.homespun.com/shop/produc...c-guitar-rock/
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Mark, the OP, wrote "I know I tend to rush. I also just feel awkward and not in synch with the music or the instrument".

    Metronome and focused practice is the answer. Playing "in the pocket" with others and "in the groove" is all about good time. It's not simple and it doesn't come to us (most of us, anyway) naturally.

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    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Neverisky View Post
    Metronome and focused practice is the answer. Playing "in the pocket" with others and "in the groove" is all about good time.
    +1

    I see timing and groove as tightly interwoven. For anyone who is accomplished at more of a fingerstyle, solo playing style, if they are not accustomed to playing their pieces against a metronome already, start doing it. Really, my point was that switching from fingers to plectrum on a stringed instrument means moving the "time keeper" from the thumb more to the wrist and forearm. That may or may not be helpful to Mark Miller.
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Here might be a fun experiment for the OP (or anyone). Record yourself fingerpicking a tune. Then pick up the mandolin and play along with yourself. Then you could play along with your own groove.

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    String-Bending Heretic mandocrucian's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Mark.... You do realize that you can use your RH middle and ring fingers in addition to the plectrum? Plenty of electric guitarists (Richard Thompson, Jerry Donahue, Albert Lee, James Burton, Vince Gill etc. etc.) use pick+fingers all the time. I regularly use it on mandolins (acoustic and electric) for numerous reasons which I won't go into here.

    Maybe you aren't feeling the groove on mando because of the type of music you are playing on it? Tempos too fast for your "rhythmic fingerprint" (the way an individual feels/hears the timing)? Or is the context you are playing mando in too crowded to allow you to play with nuance and actually hear it? Maybe you should start phrasing stuff they way you do on clawhammer banjo with lots of hammer-ons and pull-offs?

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  22. #12

    Default Re: Finding the groove

    The different instruments - in this case guitar, banjo, mandolin - perform different functions in the music, and understanding their rhythmic functions could be key. Finger-picked guitar and banjo are similar, especially in that their deployment in this music typically involve rhythmic devices and techniques (boom-chuck, bum-ditty, etc) that are well-assimilated and perhaps dominate in one's playing. Mandolin naturally involvesa different concept and feel : without the conspicuous rhythmic foundation afforded by the 5- and 6-stringed conventions, in a sense playing thg he mandolin is more "on top," around, or articulating the groove you may be accustomed to playing (on gtr/bnj). Your body too is trained to execute rhythm in the familiar manner.

    Here is value in experience with significantly different instruments. From a drummer's POV - in a sense you're going from congas to bongos: same music, but totally different feel.

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  24. #13

    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Ah, I re-read your OP and see you've analyzed and reached these conclusions already. Well it's not uncommon - middle-school kids moving to a different instrument face the same task of playing a different role in the music. You'll only become a better overall musician as you work it through. Enjoy!

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  26. #14
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Thanks to everyone for your very helpful thoughts. I play a lot with the metronome as part of my daily practice routine. Like everyone else, I imagine, I've been doing two things there -- finding those little temporal irregularities where a passage speeds up or slows down, and trying to tick up the tempo a little bit at a time to increase speed. I think that's part of the problem--I mean, I need to drop the speeding up and just play slow until I solve the groove issue. Like Mark G said, timing and groove are related but different. I can hit the 1 right on top of the beat and still sound and feel stiff and awkward. I like the idea of working on where the groove is located. And for sure, the combo of playing with a pick and having all that wrist (and sometime forearm) movement in the right hand, and shifting the left hand from building around chords to playing linear passages, is way different from fingerpicking. 110 bpm just feels way faster to me when it's a matter of playing 8th notes on the mandolin than boom-chicking along while adding in melody notes.

    That goes to the point about the rhythmic place of the instrument in the music too, moving around and on top of the rhythm rather than holding up that two-beat feel. I think that's a lot of it. I get tripped up by the way some passages shift from emphasizing the 2 to emphasizing the 1 (I'm thinking of this lead for Way Downtown I've been working on, that starts
    1-*2*-1-and-*2*-and
    *1*-and-2-and-1-and-2-and
    *1*-and-2-and-*3*-and-4-and
    I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm just trying to capture where the strong beats are, and how that shifts all over the place in that little bit of lead mandolin playing, compared to the thumb just going 1-*2*-1-*2*, which lays down the groove so even when the fingers are syncopating or shifting which beats are stressed, the groove is there.

    One other thing: the swing in the music for most of my fingerpicking isn't technically swung 8th notes, but comes from that 1-*2* in the thumb, combined with syncopated and variously stressed 8th notes all played in straight time. So along with the variation in stress, I'm having trouble landing in that zone of bluegrass mandolin playing that either is or isn't dotted 8th note swing. (I've heard it referred to as *almost* an underlying triplet feel. Not sure how to capture that, but I've been trying to swing the 8th notes more, and haven't been sure whether or not that's the right thing to do.)

    Sorry, kind of thinking out loud there, but your posts are really helping me diagnose the issue.

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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Although some music is more square and some more swing in terms of timing, what you are talking about is the weight on the main beats. In terms of psychoacoustics a quieter note will sound late, so some apparent swing is more about the weight, i.e. loudness and/or duration of the strong vs weak notes.

    I get tangled up in the in between notes like anyone, but the fix is to play with less emphasis on all the notes and more attention to the important ones--which might at some point be an in-between note, that is, a syncopation. But usually the goal is to show the main beats. Those are the first one, of course, and the large beats like 4 in a reel or maybe 2 beats in a rag. And the faster notes are paired, with the usual downstroke heavier than the upstroke.

    Fingerpicking tends to do this naturally, as you point out. It's more the voicing than the weight, with the fatter bass notes dominating the thinner high notes. You have to go out of your way to even them up, like Leo Kottke can do. But getting a smooth and dancing pulse in one's picking is harder for some than others. It took me a long time.

    While I don't always use it, the stroke that feels more like pushing into the string ("rest-stroke") helps me get the feel. Looser grip also helps. Dance, don't dig.
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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    I think with listening, practice and experience you'll gain greater wherewithal with a "melody" instrument, or a more melodic role in the music. It's definitely a shift from the more "rhythm" styles of playing (ie, gtr, bnj). If you don't intuit, I imagine it's quite a challenge. I'm beginning to teach my daughter (3rd year sax) about phrasing - syncopation, dynamics, embellishment, ornamentation. I use all resources at hand to try to convey to her the (jazz) melodic line - clapping, singing, gesturing, dancing - to animate all the subtleties occurring, as she is focused on the "notes"; singing the line and jabbing this way and that to accentuate elements that she is missing. Or I'll play it in this manner. This helps her hear and eventually assimilate ("feel") it. Then she can try to express it on the instrument.

    It's all in the head, time. What the body does - picking the instrument, tapping the foot, dancing - is express (positively or overtly as it's called in psychological terms) what is "felt," imagined, experienced. Body movements can help you keep time, and I guess some conceive of this as "groove," but it's all just function of time (timing). What's important is, contrasting with boom-chuck and bum-ditty, playing melody is really much more complex, rhythmically - like singing, talking, etc - there's much more subtlety and nuance involved.

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  31. #17

    Default Re: Finding the groove

    When you practice a song try to get a good grove by emphasizing the first and third beat. I've been working on this lately and I feel it is improving the grove/sound/etc.

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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Don't forget that whichever instrument you play you must begin moving to a note or chord before you need it to sound and at differing tempos that advance movement will be at a similar speed. Like when part of the quoted braking distance of a car is both the speed and the time it takes your foot to move from gas to brake pedals. You might not think of it but you can't remove it from reality.

    It's a common sense concept that I do not see explained often for any instrument and I have found it really helps when you start factoring it in to your playing.

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    Default Re: Finding the groove

    Quote Originally Posted by ukenukem View Post
    Don't forget that whichever instrument you play you must begin moving to a note or chord before you need it to sound and at differing tempos that advance movement will be at a similar speed. Like when part of the quoted braking distance of a car is both the speed and the time it takes your foot to move from gas to brake pedals. You might not think of it but you can't remove it from reality. It's a common sense concept that I do not see explained often for any instrument and I have found it really helps when you start factoring it in to your playing.
    This is very true and as stated rarely mentioned. This problem really showes up on up rite bass. So many that don't play bass regularly, and even some that do, pull the string right on the beat but by the time it sounds it is dragging.

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    Default Re: Finding the groove


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