Playing by ear is, or should be, the holy grail of playing music. You just about never see a banjo picker, fiddler or mandolin player performing with their nose buried in a book of music notation or tab. It just ain’t done. Of course, there are plenty of beginner musicians who completely depend on tab… Read More »
There are certainly as many ways to learn to play bluegrass style banjo as my dog has fleas, bless his heart. After playing and teaching banjo for many years, I came up with an approach that is different from any banjo books that I’ve seen. Let me explain. The most common way to teach a… Read More »
I’m excited to announce that my newest book is at the printer. Entitled Clawhammer Banjo – Tunes, Tips and Jamming, the book was at least three years in the making, and I hope that people who want to learn to play in the clawhammer style on the banjo will think it’s a humdinger. Let’s take… Read More »
(This is a guest post by Ted Parrish, co-author with Wayne Erbsen of our newest book, Ukulele for the Complete Ignoramus. It was be available on August 17, 2015) One of the many wonders of the modern world has been the proliferation of ukulele clubs in almost every metropolitan area of the country. A Google… Read More »
One of my students recently asked me to give him a sheet with all the fiddles chords he would need to play most any bluegrass song. I certainly wanted to help him out, but I decided that I wouldn’t be doing him any big favors by handing him the chords on a sheet of paper.… Read More »
One of my struggling banjo students recently wrote me and asked if his fat fingers are to blame for muting the adjacent strings when he played. He even went so far as to send me a photo of his fingers to prove his point. A lot of people have given me the finger, but he… Read More »
“Hangman’s Reel” always reminds me of my old friend and mentor, Albert Hash. I first met Albert at the Grayson County Fiddlers Convenion in the summer of 1972, and took an instant liking to him. Not only was he a great old-time fiddler, but I was drawn to him by his plain-spoken ways and his… Read More »
You’ve got your heart set on learning to play the banjo. Come to find out, there are currently two popular styles of banjo playing: bluegrass or clawhammer banjo. Which one should you choose? And most important, which style is easier? First, let me explain each style and then we’ll talk about which one is easier… Read More »
Among the many stringed instruments, the fiddle or violin has long been revered but also feared. Somewhere along the line, it got the reputation of being the most difficult instrument to play. Let’s look this question right in the eye and answer it right here and now, once and for all. What do I say… Read More »
Talk about a dark and spooky song, “In the Pines” has it all: a young girl who shivers when the cold winds blow, and then sells herself to the men in the mines. As if that’s not quite bad enough, she then gets her head cut off when she fell under the driving wheel of a… Read More »
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