oldtime mandolin workshop ideas?

[mandolirius]

I've been conscripted into giving an oldtime mandolin workshop. Fortunately, it's not until April 20 so I have lots of time to prepare.

What ideas do folks around here have for a two-hour presentation on oldtime mandolin? I'd like to teach at least a couple of tunes in the course of the workshop and am hoping to be able to incorporate some technique ideas as part of teaching the tunes.

[Mike Black]

It's always good to go over old-time rhythm playing compared to bluegrass chop chord rhythm playing. You can probably incorporate that in the tunes that you teach.

[Jon Hall]

I've taught a couple of workshops and found that the biggest challenge was that the attendees were playing at different skil levels. You have to play a song or progression with the group and determine what skil levels are present. You might have to teach at different levels during the two hour workshop. Beginners are more focused on their chording and noting but more advanced players often want help with their alternate picking, rhythm and tremolo.

Chord variations are very helpful to novices since they often play 2 finger chords on the first 3 frets.

[Jim Garber]

Cover the history of the mandolin in old time music. I would also include some mention of the prominent players and i would include early brother duets including the Monroes which many people consider to still be old time or at least pre-bluegrass.

Then I could also cover a good sampling of tunes including straight-ahead reels and breakdowns, rags, bluesy tunes from the black tradition and waltzes.

In addition to so,me of the techniques mentioned above, i would also include how the mandolin fits in to the standard old time string band, for instance, does it play pretty close to the fiddle line, play harmony at times or play some chordal backup and how it works if there are vocals in a tune.

You mentioned that his is a presentation so I am not sure how much one-on-one teaching you will need to do. In that case you may be over some players' heads and under others'. Sounds like it would be more of an overview in any case and you cannot really teach everyone equally in such a situation.

[Charlieshafer]

Do you know what skill level yet? That'll make a difference as to how I might structure it..

[mandolinlee]

mandolirius -
TWO hours? Wow that's a long time. You say it's a presentation, does that mean sort of a lecture/demonstration type of presentation or is it a "class" type workshop where you will be teaching tunes, chords etc? In either case, my suggestion would be to recruit a rhythm player; a guitar, banjo or even another mandolin player. This second player will help your playing sound its best, plus he/she can answer questions and help keep the peace.
Good luck and we'll be waiting for April 21 to hear how it went.
Enjoy.
Lee

[mandolirius]

Thanks for the responses. Some good thoughts so far.

Jim, do you have a good source for the history of mandolin in old time music?

Charlie, I don't know the skill level and might not until the workshop begins. As someone else said, the skill level will likely be all over the place. I don't expect there will be much, if any, one on one teaching. An overview is likely the way I'll go.

[Caleb]

I've been to a few workshops at festivals and every time the folks attending were at the beginner level (more advanced players are in the jam sessions). I'd keep it very basic: cover the parts of the mandolin, different pick/string combos/options, basic 2-finger chords, position to comfortably hold mandolin, etc. I'd also pick a simple tune, say, a waltz for everyone to play. Also, don't forget to print up some music for the folks to take home and practice, as well as links to Mando Cafe and other great sites. Mandolin Cafe stickers would be a cool memento too.

[Jim Garber]

Jim, do you have a good source for the history of mandolin in old time music?

No, but give me a few minutes and I will write one.

Seriously, let me think on that one. Maybe someone else has a clue.

[JeffD]

I would spend some time concentrating on how OT playing of a tune differs from BG, and what you would do, or not do, to get a more old timey sound. I am assuming, perhaps not correctly, that the audience is familiar with BG mandolin playing to some extent.

So for example, no chop.

Another would be a de-emphasis on the V7 chords and progressions. I-IV-V is fine, but the V7 really is a more bluegrass and blues thing.

One of the things I love about much of the OT music is that a lot of it predates or is less influenced by blues progressions. Our culture is saturated with the blues, so much so that we don't hear it any more. Blues is like garlic, its great, but its so strong it can over power the cilantro. A piece is often considered corny or lame by those saturated with modern music, because it lacks the blues influence. Thats the stuff I love.

Another is unison playing and avoiding the temptation to go off and improvise. Decorating and ornamenting a tune are great, but keep it subtle. Going off the reservation is playing an OT tune in a bluegrass way.

Other things you could think of that characterize OT playing differentiated from BG mandolin.

<Before the fire storm let me say that I am not saying its not good when you improvise, or when you blues it up or when you chop, it can be good it can be great. Its just not old timey. Pet peave of mine I suppose, but it irks me when someone plays an old time tune in a more modern way, and still calls it OT. Call it a jazz riff on OT if you want, I will clap and enjoy it. But don't call it OT.>

[JeffD]

No, but give me a few minutes and I will write one.

Seriously, let me think on that one. Maybe someone else has a clue.

Let me tell you what I was told in an OT mandolin workshop. You can agree or not, but its interesting.

The fiddle and the banjo in OT compliment each other perfectly. The fiddle has everyting the banjo lacks and the banjo has everything the fiddle needs. You are walking up to this completely whole perfect OT machine, mandolin in hand. What do you think you are going to add? Well first off all, don't detract. Do no harm...

[Caleb]

JeffD: "I would spend some time concentrating on how OT playing of a tune differs from BG..."

Excellent point. Probably the most fundamental thing in all reality.

[Charlieshafer]

OK, here's what I'd do if I had ten minutes to put it together.

Over-all goal: You don't have time to teach people amazing things, and with the variety in skill levels, it'll be tough to do much more than lead a semi-educational jam session. I'd actually accentuate arranging, where everyone can pitch in with ideas, simply teaching the tunes so there's a common point to jump off of.

First, if people really need to know the short-answer difference between old-time and bluegrass is that one can be a lot sloppier, the precision of bluegrass just isn't necessary. Like the old story about the difference between Irish and Scots fiddling (no one scream now, just repeating someone else's line) for Scots fiddling, you need to actually be able to play. Also, the obvious "old-time is for small-group playing or cranking away at dance halls. Most contra-dance music is based on old-time tunes. With bluegrass, you're either on the stage or sitting and listening, nothing in between"

History regarding the mandolin? See what Jim Garber comes up with, it's got to be better than fact. But, it's always been interesting to me that the old-time string bands are a lot more all-encompassing as far as instruments; cellos, accordions, horns, whatever it takes to make big noise. So, in old-time, where the story and the dance/drive are king, making instrumentation less critical (fiddles and banjos are just loud and portable, making them a great choice), in bluegrass the mandolin is the Main Man.

An accompanist will most certainly help, but I'd actually go for a bass player. With the mandolin, you have a slightly unusual beast in that you'll be teaching both rhythm and fiddle tune lines, so a guitar player sort of gets in the way. With our large groups, the bass player is a real rock, a way cool metronome, and if the guy can do walking bass lines to give a repetitive tune a lift, even better.

Pick three tunes in one key. D is easy, so is G. You don't want to be spending hours teaching the newbies chord shapes while the better players sit, bored out of their minds. We play Angeline The Baker to death, as the pentatonic nature makes it easy to learn. We'll teach a phrase, then intersperse a couple of chords, then back and forth. Obviously, taking little chunks at a time, this could take 20-30 minutes. No matter who is there, you need to aim down the middle; the hopeless ones just have to hang on, the really good ones should know they should be paying for private lessons. So, we'd up teaching lines and chords by having everyone repeat the phrases, followed by a chop: An-gel-ine-the-ba-ker CHOP repeat, repeat. Then next phrase, then stick it all together. At that point, you can play the tune through 37 times, with the weaker ones just chopping, hopefully in time, and the better ones being allowed to solo over everyone else so they get a little chance to improvise. Try a different arrangement, with the better ones playing a harmony line. That may not be strictly old-time, but if you have two hours to fill, you'll need them to get creative, too.

Now, lather, rinse, repeat, with a couple of other tunes. I wouldn't get tricky, and you can use the tunes to perhaps show the historical story-telling bent of old-time, with tunes like Booth Shot Lincoln, Bony On The Isle of St. Helena, Bonapart's Retreat, whatever. Black-eyed Suzie is one that isn't historical, but is fun to play and easy to teach.

Just remember the key is to get them to realize that the beat is the key to success in old-time. The wrong notes played on the right beat still sound good and danceable; the right notes with bad timing sound unlistenable.

[Bill Foss]

Let me tell you what I was told in an OT mandolin workshop. You can agree or not, but its interesting.

The fiddle and the banjo in OT compliment each other perfectly. The fiddle has everyting the banjo lacks and the banjo has everything the fiddle needs. You are walking up to this completely whole perfect OT machine, mandolin in hand. What do you think you are going to add? Well first off all, don't detract. Do no harm...

Perfectly said, JeffD!
There aren't a whole lot of examples of Old Time mandolin playing, as far as I can tell, on the old 78s or from field recordings, so I would give students names of Old Time mandolin players to listen to such as Verlin Clifton (who mostly played rhythm with the Round Peak fiddlers), Jim Collier and Caleb Klauder.

[JeffD]

for Scots fiddling, you need to actually be able to play..

Ron Thomason, of Dry Branch Fire Squad, said once that old time is as close as you can get to not being able to pick at all and still be holding an instrument.

[Steve Ostrander]

I've done some presentations, but none on OT mando. If you know your material, and you are enthusiastic about it, 2 hours will go by fast. Especially if you have a Q&A session at the end. Perhaps 15 minutes.

[Jim Garber]

Mandolirius: what is the context of this workshop? Is it part of a festival? Is the festival strictly old time or does it include other styles of music?

I have to disagree with a few of my esteemed colleagues. Old time music is truly an artificial construct of modern times. Bluegrass is a definite category that grew out of the moderately vast sea of country styles. Old time music is really a retronym like acoustic guitar and is really more or less what you have when you take away bluegrass and C&W from country music. It encompasses a bunch of regions and styles as well.

To say that old time music, however, is sloppier (tho of course, good for a a few jokes) maybe just refers to the modern narrow concept of the music that is primarily played in parking lots and festivals in jam sessions, completely ignoring the fact that back in the day there were pro performers and bands playing this music for entertainment purposes (see the grand Old Opry and country radio stations). This tradition goes on to this day with some performers BION even earning at least some of their living playing this music as playing it well. Many of these folks pride themselves with high quality of music and soulful playing.

As to JeffD's quote (and I have a feeling that he is not in complete agreement either) I find that a statement like that is a little too absolute. Yes, fiddle and banjo are a very nice combination and I love hearing and playing duets that way. However, that would be the equivalent of saying that a violin and viola are the only instruments that play together with no room for any other. There is always room for a savvy mandolinist to fit nicely into a band or jam situation.

I know because I was in a long time band starting as a fiddler then switching to guitar when we had two other fiddlers and then playing primarily mandolin when we expanded with two guitarists. The key to it all was fitting in where appropriate, not cluttering the music, supporting the vocals, etc. However, those are rules for any instruments IMHO and in any music.

As far as the teaching the differences between bluegrass and old time -- if you are teaching this workshop at a bluegrass festival then I would say that makes a whole lot of sense. OTOH if there are a lot of beginners they would not be playing bluegrass anyway and if it is an old time gathering, there is little need at all except maybe in a passing mention.

[Geno]

Here's a pretty good article with some historical information and other stuff.

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...ld-Time-Herald

[Jim Garber]

Geno: Thanks for posting that link. Cary's article was a good one indeed and, as those go, was a good overview for sure. Phew! Now I don't have to do it (or make it up).

[JeffD]

Of course there is this essay by Mike Seeger: http://mikeseeger.info/music.html

[JeffD]

The original fiddle and banjo would have been fiddle and fretless banjo, so you could get all slippy and slidy with the tone. The introduction of the guitar, with its frets, was disconcerting to more than a few, and I have seen copies of copies of letters complaining about these guitars imposing notes on pefrectly happy musicians.

No, of course mandolin has a place in old time. Because we are not reconstructionists, or reenactors, we are playing music. But I thought the comment was interesting.

[Jim Garber]

Well, we can certainly get deep into this topic of what old time music is and isn't and how the mandolin fits in, but perhaps we need to get back to the OP, who is waiting (I imagine) very patiently.

Essentially, the way I would approach it would be to assess what levels the workshop attendees, how many there are and what they are looking for. I would prepare some brief introductory remarks about mandolins and old time music and then pick a choose a few tunes to demonstrate and possibly teach. I would give them a variety: reel, rag, waltz, song. Perhaps at the end get a fiddler, banjo player, guitarist and play together to demonstrate how the mandolin would fit in. It will be a great workshop.

Let us know how it goes.

[Perry]

Jim, do you have a good source for the history of mandolin in old time music?

http://oldtimemandolin.com/Old_Time_...c/Welcome.html


If you did have a guitar player there you can demonstrate the OT effect of playing a minor melody against major chords.....the horror the horror

As far as level of teaching...I've witnessed first hand many times where the teacher teaches to the least experienced in the class. This is not fair to everyone else especially when the workshop was billed as intermediate or advanced. I suppose you need to pick a happy medium and pure beginner's will just have to be inspired.

[Marcelyn]

One thing that could help is either demonstrating techniques that bring out the OT style yourself or offering a few You Tube clips. Several folks on the Cafe I've found to be extremely knowledgeable and helpful in the old time style are, Steve Cantrel, Michael Pastuche, and Don Grieser. They all have tons of great stuff on their You Tube channels. Steve, for example is a master at getting the driving rhythm OT music needs just with his mandolin. Like early Monroe brother recordings, Michael is amazing at using fiddle-like double stops to back vocals and breaks. And Don is such a good example of how a solo mandolin played with double stops, slides, and other ornamentation can sound so much like an OT fiddle. It would be helpful to play a tune straight--just the plain notes on the page, and then play it again using techniques to bring out that old time sound.
The history of OT in general and how it differs from BG is really well addressed in this CD liner...
http://scottalarik.com/?page=stories...es&display=240

One other question that gets asked a lot around here is how the styles of OT and Irish Trad differ and how you can make these styles distinctive in your playing. That might be of interest. Personally, I think the thing that grabs me about my favorite old time mandolin players is how they can capture the rhythm and sound of OT fiddling in their mandolin picking. That might be an interesting topic to open for discussion.
Where's the workshop? That would be a fun one to attend.

[Charlieshafer]

Mandolirius: what is the context of this workshop? Is it part of a festival? Is the festival strictly old time or does it include other styles of music?

I have to disagree with a few of my esteemed colleagues. Old time music is truly an artificial construct of modern times. Bluegrass is a definite category that grew out of the moderately vast sea of country styles. Old time music is really a retronym like acoustic guitar and is really more or less what you have when you take away bluegrass and C&W from country music. It encompasses a bunch of regions and styles as well.

Well, I agree to a point, but if you go back far enough, there seems to have been two purposes to what we refer to as old-time. There are the songs, essentially ballads, like Omie Wise and so on, and there are the fiddle tunes, which most people consider "old-time." These were almost exclusively performed as dance tunes, and sure, while you may get some guys sitting down and picking away at them, the purpose was to drive country dances, of whatever form they may take. They may have evolved into the parking lot picking sessions we see now, or the old-time fiddling contests all over the place, but there's plenty of written works about the rural itinerant old-time fiddlers being hired just for dances. The same is true in Ireland. If you didn't have a huge repertoire of tunes, and weren't able to drive the local dances, you weren't in business for very long.

Obviously, as time goes on, fiddlers and bands were called upon to simply entertain, but for the most part, the tunes are dance-oriented. Many tunes picked up words later on, and were then called by different names, but that was after the fact. There's still a lot of disagreement over where a tune as simple as Angeline came from. The Civil war musicologists swear it was an early fife tune, and then was picked up by dance fiddlers.

In short, it's a really complicated question, and any one simple article won't tell the whole story as it's simply way too broad.

So, you're left picking a jumping-off point for something like a two-hour workshop, and from my research through the years, the common denominator always seems to come back to fiddle tunes for dances, and the bands that played them had various forms of instrumentation.

In the Smithsonian, there's a violin on display of a soldier's, and he had inscribed in the back all the battles he had been in. There was also a letter he'd written where he was a company favorite, as he could play for dances in the off-hours, however few they may have been. There are also some records of some soldiers who formed bands after the war, and they had a couple of fiddlers and fifes. Easy traveling instruments, for sure.

So no, there's no answer, probably long or short, as there are way too many influences. The picking sessions of today are just an evolutionary waypoint of the music.