Give It A Try!

This week in Dobro

Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone! As today is usually a day when I sit around and accomplish very little, I thought I would use this down time to write down some thoughts

I had this week regarding the Dobro. First off, I went to SPBGMA last night. For those who don’t know it’s the Society for the Preservation of BlueGrass Music in America. Almost sounds like a super pac or something. I waffle about going each year, and my lovely wife always convinces me to go, and I always have fun. We get to see all kinds of

bluegrass friends that we haven’t seen all year, and usually I get a chance to do some good old fashioned hallway pickin. Which I did last night. There were quite a few Dobroists over there. I even saw a few AOB students! Saw Randy Kohrs jamming, and ran into a young fella I met years back who now plays with Rhonda Vincent named Brent Burke. I walked around the hotel a bit, and ran into an old buddy and winfield winning guitarist Adam Wright. So, we got em out there in the hall and started at it. A few other good pickers joined in, and my friend Steve Thomas came by and got out his fiddle. I played with Steve years back in the Ronnie Bowman band, and he played on and helped engineer my Redwing record. Amazing musician. We sang and picked, and then banjo virtuoso Ryan Cavanaugh stopped by and joined in. Ryan got his national acclaim playing with jazz legend John McLaughlin for the past few years, as well as Bill Evans. His website is www.ryancavanaughnomansland.com if you want to hear some hot jazz banjo. He really pushes me when I play with him, which is what I look for in a jam, so it was a lot of fun. He also makes me want to practice, which is also good! We did maybe an hour or two like that, and then it was time to git, as they say. Of course, SPBGMA holds it’s annual awards right smack in the middle of the super bowl, so needless to say, I won’t be returning this evening. : )

So, I have my inspiration to practice for the week. A lot of times, when I’m feeling a little

stuck on what to practice, all I need is to see some awesome pickin and I have new ideas on what to work on. So this week, it may be some jazz. Usually what that means for me is learning a new melody or song. There are so many ways to examine a new song, it can turn into a weeks worth of practice. This process can be applied to the lessons here on my site as well. First off, you learn the melody of the song. That can take some time to get it just right. Then the chords. If they’re not standard diatonic chords, this can also take some time. (I cover other chord options in the advanced section) Then it’s time to see if I can play through the melody in time with a metronome. This will illuminate any melody rhythm issues. Now play the chord changes with the metronome. Here you can figure out a variety of ways to play the chords. This process is the bulk of the work, but there’s one more step that I take after this. Now I begin to improvise over the chords. I can start very simple. For those that are intimidated by improvising, start by playing the root notes of the chords. Then try to play little pieces of licks or melody. I’ll play over a chord progression like this maybe 20 or 30 times, trying all manner of things. Anything really. That’s what this time is for, experimentation. You can’t be wrong when you’re trying stuff out. If you don’t like the sound of something, do something else. Just spend the time to try stuff, and don’t be afraid. If you heard the god awful stuff I end up with sometimes, you’d be amazed. But this is how we learn. Just give it a try. That’s the main path to success. Going for it. You’re not missing any piece of information. You have all you need to experiment, no matter where you are in your learning. So I think I’ll call this blog, Give It A Try! Tell me how it goes.