The Tishomingo String Band (my band) to Play Regular Sunday Nights at the Portside Pub in Gastown, Vancouver

This is a bit of a celebratory/ promotional post that will only be of interest to readers living in, or planning to visit, the Vancouver area (Canada).  Our band will be playing Sunday nights from roughly 9:00-midnight at the Portside Pub in Gastown (7 Alexander).

It is a little late on a Sunday for most but if you feel like being bleary eyed at work Monday morning is a small price to pay for an evening of fun we will do our best to make sure you are not disappointed.

Here is a clip from Sunday before last at Portside.  Our mandolin player was unable to attend that night but we made do.  Thanks to my mom for the stellar camerawork!

Blackberry Blossom Banjo Harmony

Came up with a little Blackberry Blossom banjo harmony I thought I might share with my faithful readers...

    It's a fairly straightforward harmony, mostly parrallel 3rds, but I think it does the trick of harmonizing with a standard melodic arrangement nicely.  

    If you have tabledit (the viewer is a free download from tabledit.com) you can view the tablature here in tabledit form where, among other things, you can hear the two parts together with robotic MIDI Sounds.Will try and post a video of the harmony as soon as I can wrangle up a willing 2nd banjo.

Exploring Blackberry Blossom - Part IV Abstract Break

So far in this micro series we've covered a simple backup arrangement, a low single string break and a high break. For this, the forth and final chapter, we'll look at what I'll be calling an abstract break.

Perhaps abstract is not the most correct term. Fantasia? Noodlefest? Whatever we call it what I am refering to is a break which is not tied down to the melody. It uses the melody in quite a few places and the melody remains the bedrock foundation on which it grows but from that place it sort of meanders into the twilight zone (not much, just a little).

Have a listen here and then I will explain a little.





The first part of the break picks descending chord inversions with a forward/revers roll. I pick a dead note (muted with the left hand) on the 'and' after the 2 beat. I like the sound of dead notes occasionally. Here are the pros and cons of dead notes as I see it:

Pros: Creates a nice contrast with the more common ringing notes and provides an interresting percussive effect

Cons: Can sound like you messed up while trying to fret a note

The next part begins ascending chord inversions with some chromatic sliding movement on the third string.

After that it returns, for the most part, to single string melody playing for the rest of the A section.

For the B section I begin with an Em arpeggio which ascends a fair ways up the neck. For the B chord I play B diminished tones. The second time it returns to the B chord I also use B diminished chord tones only this time in triplet form.

That's the general gist of it. Hope you enjoyed these posts on Blackberry Blossom. It was suggested on the Banjohangout forums by Grumpy7 that we do more of these 'Exploring' series with different standards so I am going to try to do that as well and as regular as possible.

Write a quick comment if you have a favourite standard you think might be good for the 'Exploring' thing.

Exploring Blackberry Blossom - Part III High Break

The last post in this series covered a low single string break for Blackberry Blossom. Once you've gone as low as you possibly can there's only one to go: up.

For the high Blackberry break we begin with some single string way up at the 17th fret of the first string. We stay on the first string for a while, shifting the index finger back whenever neccesary (to the 16th and then the 14th fret) and then use a bit of a melodic escape at the end of measure 2 to skip back to 7th position. The 2nd half of the A section (measures 5-8) is the same as the first only with a slightly different ending.

The B section veers away from the single string technique to a forward/ reverse roll barring at the 12th fret and adding and removing the 14th fret on the first string as neccesary.

Because I wanted to make this high break as high as humanly possible I put a jump up to the 22nd fret on the first string over the B chord.

The end of the B section returns to single string on the melody.

Here is the arrangement in tablature form (click for a larger image)



And here is what it sounds like.



Also, for anyone looking for backing tracks to play the break along with there are some in mp3 form here;

NEXT: Exploring Blackberry Blossom Part IV: Abstact Break

Exploring Blackberry Blossom Part II: Low Break

Last post we covered a simple backup arrangement for the Blackberry Blossom. In this post we will explore some single string picking with a sweet and low Blackberry break.

For those of you not familiar with single string playing it is a technique similar to scalewise guitar playing whereby a single string is often plucked several times in a row (in Scruggs and melodic styles the same string is rarely plucked twice in a row) traditionally alternating the thumb and index finger of the picking hand.

Some players prefer using the thumb and middle for singlestring playing and others favour a TITM pattern. I find the TITM pattern is best for generating speed but tend to use TITI for most everyday single string.

This arrangement brings the melody an octave lower than the standard Keith style arrangement. Because the banjo runs out of lower notes at the D I bring things up the octave when necesary.

The break stays somewhat true to the original melody in the A section and then steps a little more into its own in the B section. I really love playing on the low D string; something about the big wound string and how it just crackles and pops.

Here is the arrangement for you in tablature form (click on the image to make it larger).



Here is what it sounds like slow.



And here it is a little faster (threw in a couple alternate licks in this one)



As always let me know if you have any questions.

NEXT: Exploring Blackberry Blossom Part III: High Break

Exploring Blackberry Blossom Part I: Simple Backup

Blackberry Blossom is one of the most common and popular bluegrass instrumentals. It's melody posesses both an intangible 'prettiness' and an infectious cadence which set it apart from the hordes of similar tunes.

It was first popularized on the banjo by Bill Keith and was one of his very first melodic arrangements. It has since become a standard almost every bluegrass banjo player learns at some point in his education.

The purpose of the series of posts I am writing on Blackberry Blossom is not to teach the standard Keith derived banjo arrangement (I will cover it breifly for those not familliar with it) but to explore various possibilities for playing banjo on the song. Anyone reading this blog is welcomed and encouraged to try out the ideas and arrangements presented in these posts in any and all playing scenarios as well as to play around with the concepts and develop their own variations.

For this, the initial Blackberry post, we will look at a simple backup arrangement using a diatonically descending bass line. It is easy enough to play and I personally find descending basslines quite appealing. (This arrangement also works for the Greatful Dead's 'Friend of the Devil' with a few minor adjustments).

Here is the arrangement in tablature form (click on it to get the larger image)



And here is what it sounds like.



As always let me know if you have any questions.

Bonus: Here is a standard Keith Style version of the melody.





NEXT UP: Exploring Blackberry Blossom Part II : Low Single String Break

Slo-mo Blackberry

Here's a little taste of the Tishomingo String Band - my bluegrass band who will be playing Saturday January 29th at Place des Arts in Coquitlam.

This video is from a while back; it's Blackberry Blossom slowed to a crawl...

Banjo ------------------> Guitar Transmogrifier: How to Easily Convert Any Banjo Tune for Performance on the Guitar

Yes, just like the title says.

Well, actually it's not really EASY easy (crowd disperses). The concepts may take a while to fully soak in but once you have the trick you will be able to convert banjo to guitar relatively quickly and painlessly.

There are a number of tunings we could use to get the guitar prepped for banjo duty (open G would seem the obvious choice) but for this particular method we will use open D tuning. Open D tuning involves tuning your guitar from low to high D A D F# A D.

Once you have your guitar in D tuning you are ready to begin.

The idea is this; think of your guitar's 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings (A D F# A) as being relative to the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st strings (D G B D) on your banjo (in standard G tuning). Then think of the 1st string of your guitar as being relative to the high 5th string of the banjo.

Making sense? Here is a tab example of the transmogrification in action.

The first 2 measure of Cripple Creek in banjo tab...



And those same 2 measures converted for open D tuned guitar...



How's that? The idea is essentially treating these strings on the guitar



like these strings on the banjo



And then treating the 1st string on the guitar like the 5th sting on the jo.



For a full song example lets try a little of the old Blackberry Blossom.

Here is a standard melodic style banjo version...



And here it is converted for open D tuned guitar (added some harmonic strums but otherwise transferred directly from banjo)...



Here is a vid of that Blackberry Blossom arrangement on guitar...



Soothing, ringing stuff (a little string noise but what the hay).

You may have noticed that the 6th string on the guitar is not used at all. This is simply because thus far we have only been transferring directly from banjo and the 5 string banjo has 5 strings. If you want to make use of the low string for whatever purpose (probably to provide some harmony/ bass) it is right there waiting to be used. This method allows you to transfer banjo arrangements directly to guitar but once you have done that you can alter them for their new environment as you see fit.

Also, if you want to keep things in their original banjo key you can use the capo. If something is uncapoed on banjo then capoing on the 5th fret of the guitar will make it make it match. If you are capoed on the 2nd fret on banjo then capo 7th fret on guitar.

Hope that proves helpful/ fun for some people. It may be a bit of a headful to get down at first so take your time and as always don't hesitate to write me with any questions.