working up breaks
Anyone have advice on working up breaks? I'm feeling lame, in a wash of post-gig angst on the subject. Singing is usually what I'm hired to do, and I do lots of songs in less-than-friendly string keys (flat keys, F#, like that). Obviously more practice is the ticket, but I don't know how to practice. Should I create a break and then memorize it or hope my musical vocabulary improves to the point I can spit out something coherent in the moment. Oddly enough, I can usually manage a fine or at least a passable off-the-cuff break in a jam, but when the crunch comes all those good ideas seem inaccessible. val -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
Re: working up breaks
Funny you should mention that. After realising that the excitement of launching into a break was making me speed up and lose timing, I spent yesterday working out and practicing breaks to some of our newer songs: It did seem to be useful to figure out something that sounds good in context using the various ideas that are in my head somewhere: I'm definitely not good enough to have those ideas in my fingers, and to be able to reproduce them on the cuff. Also, once you get confident about the learned break, it seems to be easier to improvise off of that, or at least to develop it with other ideas. But I speak as someone who is fumbling around with this! Also, what I realised recently is that in our group practices, we don't really practice solos, just play them: so we started doing each solo three times each time we play the song: I think it really helps to get that time to play something comfortably without the pressure of creating a masterpiece in the one moment you have available On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Val Mindel vmin...@gmail.com wrote: Anyone have advice on working up breaks? I'm feeling lame, in a wash of post-gig angst on the subject. Singing is usually what I'm hired to do, and I do lots of songs in less-than-friendly string keys (flat keys, F#, like that). Obviously more practice is the ticket, but I don't know how to practice. Should I create a break and then memorize it or hope my musical vocabulary improves to the point I can spit out something coherent in the moment. Oddly enough, I can usually manage a fine or at least a passable off-the-cuff break in a jam, but when the crunch comes all those good ideas seem inaccessible. val -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comtaterbugmando%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
Re: working up breaks
I am the last one to know anything worth sharing about breaks, but am currently in a circumstance where I am asked to improvise over what others are playing. When I practice at home, its first, going to the scale, then noodling on that. Finding things that suggest or fit with the tune. Also I look and mess around with the notes in the given chords and consider rhythm, a twist maybe. Leaving something out or suggested seems cool. From the noodling, ideas seem to pop out. I don't really ever do breaks yet but am playing with someone who plays claw-hammer style banjo, old time tunes, occasionally. I try to have more than one take of the tune. Seems like that is what a break is...kinda, another take on the tune, a suggestion or comment on what is already happening, like an aside, like in Shakespeare drama. I like to see notation of Monroe's ideas on old time tunes as there are clues in there about breaks..for me anyway. The other thing I do is find a box position on the neck, using that position to play the chords, and see what is nearby that sounds cool with the tune. I think if I were going to do a break, I would use a similar approach, get a few things I like going and then go over that till I have two or three things pat, up my sleeve that are interesting that can be plugged into the tune, things that become part of that tune for me. Since I only have a few years experience, I can't go off the cuff, so I just agree to do this work hoping it will eventually take me there, to spontaneous efforts of genius. HAR All my stuff is fairly simple and elementary now but building in complexity. The Tater said once that my vocabulary was not very large. Its true. After a while, I gather one could create great things off the cuff, by knowing the key, the given chords of a tune and its basic shape and what its about. I love doing the improv. thing. Seems my own notes are easier to play than those of any others. What I can make up, seems pretty good. Its an interesting and creative exercise. It would be cool to read what the Tater and other more experienced people have to say. Good question. Val, I doubt any of this is useful to you but it gave me a chance to clarify what I am up to. Robin, I feel like you do, re excitement of a break, its worse for me if they are not my ideas, I don't seem to believe in the thing unless I created it. Linda On Nov 11, 12:29 am, Robin Gravina robin.grav...@gmail.com wrote: Funny you should mention that. After realising that the excitement of launching into a break was making me speed up and lose timing, I spent yesterday working out and practicing breaks to some of our newer songs: It did seem to be useful to figure out something that sounds good in context using the various ideas that are in my head somewhere: I'm definitely not good enough to have those ideas in my fingers, and to be able to reproduce them on the cuff. Also, once you get confident about the learned break, it seems to be easier to improvise off of that, or at least to develop it with other ideas. But I speak as someone who is fumbling around with this! Also, what I realised recently is that in our group practices, we don't really practice solos, just play them: so we started doing each solo three times each time we play the song: I think it really helps to get that time to play something comfortably without the pressure of creating a masterpiece in the one moment you have available On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Val Mindel vmin...@gmail.com wrote: Anyone have advice on working up breaks? I'm feeling lame, in a wash of post-gig angst on the subject. Singing is usually what I'm hired to do, and I do lots of songs in less-than-friendly string keys (flat keys, F#, like that). Obviously more practice is the ticket, but I don't know how to practice. Should I create a break and then memorize it or hope my musical vocabulary improves to the point I can spit out something coherent in the moment. Oddly enough, I can usually manage a fine or at least a passable off-the-cuff break in a jam, but when the crunch comes all those good ideas seem inaccessible. val -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.comtaterbugmando%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
Re: working up breaks
On creating your break: -- There are many approaches to this, so you'll have to try different things to see what works best for you. And also expect your approach to change over time as your interests and abilities change and grow. Some folks improvise the whole break from scratch, some carefully create a solo off-line and memorize it, some play a slightly ornamented version of the melody, and some mix up these ideas. In an arrangement which features several soloists, I think it makes musical sense to start close to the melody and then depart from it. So if one player tends to play close to the melody, start with them, and then get progressively crazier. But this is just one approach. Playing the melody (or something sort of like it) is always a good thing to do. When in doubt, this will work. And in fact I like to hear solos that reflect the melody from time to time. So even if your goal is free improvisation, or a composed not-quite-the-melody-break, I think it makes sense to be able to play the melody and insert recognizable bits of it into the break. All that said, I find there are two important things you can try to improve your odds of getting off to a good start on an improvised break. First, stop playing a few seconds before you start your break. No one will notice, usually, and it gives you a chance to think about when you want your break to start. You might want to start with some pickup notes. This gives you a little breathing room to get that ready to go. And it lets you find a good starting note, which is vital. If you put your finger on the wrong note to start, it can really discombobulate you. Second, it's good to have a little inventory of ending licks which typically are little notey flourishes, such as the Flatt G-run. They signal your listeners and bandmates that you are done done done. On practicing taking breaks: Your idea of practicing three breaks per tune is a very good one. If you tend to play single passes through the tune in your songs in performance, though, playing three breaks in a row might not give you the practice in beginning and ending that you might need, so I'd suggest you play one break per person in a circle and go around the whole circle three times to give you that much more practice in starting and stopping. Hope this was interesting. Topher On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 6:53 AM, Linda lj...@intas.net.au wrote: I am the last one to know anything worth sharing about breaks, but am currently in a circumstance where I am asked to improvise over what others are playing. When I practice at home, its first, going to the scale, then noodling on that. Finding things that suggest or fit with the tune. Also I look and mess around with the notes in the given chords and consider rhythm, a twist maybe. Leaving something out or suggested seems cool. From the noodling, ideas seem to pop out. I don't really ever do breaks yet but am playing with someone who plays claw-hammer style banjo, old time tunes, occasionally. I try to have more than one take of the tune. Seems like that is what a break is...kinda, another take on the tune, a suggestion or comment on what is already happening, like an aside, like in Shakespeare drama. I like to see notation of Monroe's ideas on old time tunes as there are clues in there about breaks..for me anyway. The other thing I do is find a box position on the neck, using that position to play the chords, and see what is nearby that sounds cool with the tune. I think if I were going to do a break, I would use a similar approach, get a few things I like going and then go over that till I have two or three things pat, up my sleeve that are interesting that can be plugged into the tune, things that become part of that tune for me. Since I only have a few years experience, I can't go off the cuff, so I just agree to do this work hoping it will eventually take me there, to spontaneous efforts of genius. HAR All my stuff is fairly simple and elementary now but building in complexity. The Tater said once that my vocabulary was not very large. Its true. After a while, I gather one could create great things off the cuff, by knowing the key, the given chords of a tune and its basic shape and what its about. I love doing the improv. thing. Seems my own notes are easier to play than those of any others. What I can make up, seems pretty good. Its an interesting and creative exercise. It would be cool to read what the Tater and other more experienced people have to say. Good question. Val, I doubt any of this is useful to you but it gave me a chance to clarify what I am up to. Robin, I feel like you do, re excitement of a break, its worse for me if they are not my ideas, I don't seem to believe in the thing unless I created it. Linda On Nov 11, 12:29 am, Robin Gravina robin.grav...@gmail.com wrote: Funny you should
Re: working up breaks
What I like to do is work out some rough sketches for various possibilities of what I could play rather than a totally memorized solo. Then I have some ideas I can draw on depending on the feeling/emotion I have for the song at the time. I can play the straight/embellished melody. I can play down in the first position and use open strings for a bigger sound. I can play up the neck out of doublestop positions (find the melody up in a closed position and embellish). I can play something notey out of the pentatonic (say it ain't so). I can play a tremolo break. I can play something bluesy. I can play a Monroe style break out of chop chord positions. If I've worked out all these ideas, I really know the song and I can use one or more of these ideas to come up with something appropriate and coherent. If there's a highly recognizable solo for the song already, ie Monroe's break for I'm Going Back To Old Kentucky, then I'm going to learn that and play it note for note for at least one of my breaks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
Re: action
voila! TBug On Nov 9, 3:18 pm, Robin Gravina robin.grav...@gmail.com wrote: yeah... gimme some actually, I read this article, which is worth a regular look at: http://www.mandozine.com/resources/CGOW/mikecompton2.php got my spark plug feelers out and found my action was much lower than the 5/64 of an inch (or 2mm if you use a sane system for measuring), and jacked it up, changed the strings, without worrying too much about having a radiussed fretboard, not very radiussed bridge and so on... put the E and G at about 2mm and suddenly the thing is singing. Then I remembered elliptical tremolo from the same article: loose wrist, circular motion, tried doing that thing I had been thinking about whereby you double stop tremolo from one string to another rather than both strings equally, and some of the sounds I had been working for came... And it's funny how once the tone starts working the rhythm seems easier and more natural. So yes, I had a nice bank holiday today! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
Re: working up breaks
Some of this is repetitive from the good advice above but may get you thinking. Know the melody in its simplest form. Try it with double stops. Try playing the melody for half the break and veering elsewhere on the second half. Try it ala Sam Bush or Bobby Osborne which were both heavily influenced by fiddlers( which I am no good at). Start it in one octave and jump up or down an octave to finish it in. Alter the melody with the bluest of blue notes. It is hard to do some of this on the fly. If it is a song I intend to play a lot or perform I always get the melody then experiment with a couple other ways to play it to keep things interesting. The melody is king but sometimes it gets tiresome and a slight twist can keep things interesting. On Nov 10, 12:25 pm, Don adobeinthepi...@gmail.com wrote: What I like to do is work out some rough sketches for various possibilities of what I could play rather than a totally memorized solo. Then I have some ideas I can draw on depending on the feeling/emotion I have for the song at the time. I can play the straight/embellished melody. I can play down in the first position and use open strings for a bigger sound. I can play up the neck out of doublestop positions (find the melody up in a closed position and embellish). I can play something notey out of the pentatonic (say it ain't so). I can play a tremolo break. I can play something bluesy. I can play a Monroe style break out of chop chord positions. If I've worked out all these ideas, I really know the song and I can use one or more of these ideas to come up with something appropriate and coherent. If there's a highly recognizable solo for the song already, ie Monroe's break for I'm Going Back To Old Kentucky, then I'm going to learn that and play it note for note for at least one of my breaks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Taterbugmando group. To post to this group, send email to taterbugma...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to taterbugmando+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/taterbugmando?hl=en.
