Monroe dyslexia

[Vincent]

is it just me that listens to Monroe sometimes and has a hell of a time getting exactly what he just played, even after close listening? I just spent 20 minutes learning one of his pretty basic sounding ascending arpeggios in G... and the timing and number of doubled notes just throws me. Can I get an amen?

[JMOSS99]

is it just me that listens to Monroe sometimes and has a hell of a time getting exactly what he just played, even after close listening?

I think you just hit on what makes Monroe so great, it is
his depth in playing. Both Monroe and Baker have that
elusive nature to their playing. I would sit right in
front of Monroe as he was teaching me a tune and after I
thought I had the melody, Monroe would say something like
"Can't you hear that?". So, I dug even deeper as I really
had no other choice sitting there.

To me, it is like Jimi Hendrix in that there are levels to
their playing. The first level is what one hears as the melody.
The next level is how what we thought we heard as the melody
was delivered. With Baker, for example, I had learned
Katy Hill from a tape I had made of him playing in a
jam at Bean Blossom. I really thought I had it, but there
was something missing. It just didn't have the bigness or
the depth of Baker's. I had all the notes...
Well, maybe not.

One of the first things I worked on that first winter I
stayed at Baker's farm was Katy Hill. oh boy...

As an aside, I would go there thinking I pretty much knew
what I was doing. By the time I was ready to leave,
after two weeks or so, I was ready to quite fiddle and
go into aluminum siding or something. Well, it turns out
that where I was playing a simple note, the note that I
had heard in the recording, Baker might be playing a
combination of notes using one strategy or another like
a slide or brush or whatever... to create the sound I heard
as one note. SO in effect, there were maybe 2 to 4 notes
making up what I had heard as one.

With Monroe it was the same thing and there was this
resonance thing he wanted me to get. Monroe was hard on
you if you were learning his tune. You didn't get to slide
one bit. It was his way or he just kept working on you.
That was pretty intense I must say.

SO, I would say it is a great thing to realize that you
don't have it and you need to go back and work on it more.
You will get better as a musician when you do this.
It will develop your ear, because if you could hear it
you would be playing it. Maybe the problem is more with
your ear than your playing. What this bring us to is the
fact that very few people can actually hear what Monroe,
Baker or any great player is actually playing.

So what are they listening to? I think they hear levels,
just as you do when you try to learn one of those tunes.
Now, maybe they just watch the musicians and hear just an
outline or something that would really surprise you.
A woman who should know better, who knew Baker and Monroe,
and was a fiddler/guitar player, said about my arm that
she "knew that the women were watching my bow arm because
it reminded them of"... well we won't go into that here.

It actually made me mad to hear that. Here I had spent
some 30 years, at the time, playing and studying...
and what did get for it? I had to remember how I came
to appreciate Monroe's playing and realized that this
response is just a point on a learning curve.
What this means is, if you don't recognize what you just
pointed out in your post, then maybe your ears are not
really very far along on that learning curve.

So, be happy that you can hear this.
I learn new things each time I listen to Baker. It seems
like I am only willing to grasp so much in a sitting then
go off and work on that, but these are great artists and
they have a lot to offer in their playing.

This goes for FW too, but with him there is so much
improvisation that it is hard to hear exactly the same
thing twice. FW is really like Jimi Hendrix.

With any of these guys, I feel that I need to be able to
understand the roots of their influences so to get handle
on what is being played. I found it easier to learn the second
tune after learning the first, and the third after the second...
and so on. No one said being a musician was going to be easy.

Jim Moss
FWB

[John Flynn]

Mike Compton talked about it in a workshop I took. He related the anecdote that someone asked Monroe about this phenomenom and Bill said, "Yeah, I don't actually play all the notes people think I do." Mike was making the point that there is a quality to Monroe's playing that causes the listener to mentally "fill-in" notes that aren't actually there.

[GTison]

VooDoo. I recently took up 'watson Blues' to play. I played the "easy" version of what I thought the melody was. Then listened to 'Bill and Doc's version I was close. Then I listened to the Recorded Version from the 70's. WOW what a difference. Each verse has completly different different licks. The positions change also to get the same tone Monroe got. Each time I get into a Monroe tune I learn something. I usually learn what I think is the tune. Then go back and correct (over time) phrase by phrase until it's closer and closer. I was listening to Big Sandy the other day and heard that on one phrase Monroe never goes to the low A on the G string. I've been playing the whole song different for a long time! I've been chasing that melody a long time now...

[Garrett]

The Homespun Bill Monroe tape is really helpful for getting a sense of how Monroe fingered and attacked the tunes, and how complicated his playing was. It's also mesmerizing, I love the way the older Monroe played.

[mandopete]

Amen to that brother!

[mandopete]

To me, it is like Jimi Hendrix in that there are levels to
their playing.

That's eerie Jim as I was just thinking the same thing yesterday. I was listening to a Hendrix tune on the radio and I thought about Bill Monroe and John Coltrane.

Wierd ain't it!

[swampstomper]

Mandopete,

No it's not weird -- the three guys being mentioned were so far "out of the box" that the listener never knows just what they're going to do. Their musical ideas within their genres are just so original.

[earthsave]

"Note insinuation" was the terminology Mike Compton uses to describe Bill Monroe's picking in his later years.

[mandopete]

No it's not weird -- the three guys being mentioned were so far "out of the box" that the listener never knows just what they're going to do. Their musical ideas within their genres are just so original.

I'm not sure they were "out of the box", maybe in their heydays. #I just think it's an approach to music that is more about a feeling than technique. #Sure, there is individual technique involved, but it's not Chris Thile or Eddie Van Halen or that sort of thing.

I like the idea of "note insinuation" - that's spot on! #So many things Monroe did make almost no sense in a strictly musical sense. #Man, it sure sounds good. #That's what I think makes the blues sound like the blues.

What we're we talking about?

[Jonathan Reinhardt]

good discussion!
On many tunes, Mr. Monroe was not as complex, notewise. as one might think. #Timing, well, that's another thing. But his phrasing was all about efficiency. If one listens carefully, over and over, it sorts itself out. #It's a wonderful learning experience.
And I actually save some of the "on the way" attempts for variations. Some of them have the feel and the spirit.
I'm sure your learning process, Jim, was considerably more stressful while under the watchful eye! That is always too brief an experience to absorb all the nuance and repeat it well on the spot.

rasa

[Don Grieser]

One of the coolest things Monroe does is play runs where he uses two pick strokes on one note and changes notes on the upstrokes. One of the best examples of that is the next to last run in the B part of Paddy on the Turnpike. Something like this (no mando in front of me to figure it out).

-----------------------------0-1-0-----------------
-----------------0-0-2-2-5--------5-2--------------
--------0-0-5-5---------------------------------
-0-4-4-----------------------------------------

He does similar runs in Dusty Miller and that low run he does in Pike County Breakdown has that in it too. It's got great rythmic drive up to speed.

[Garrett]

That's great Don.

So much of it is the right hand, trying to get that Monroe blacksnake whip in the hand. I often feel that the right hand determines the left hand.

[Frankmc]

I loop about 10 sec. at a time on myCD/ DVD player and follow the lick or tune part until I think I've got it. Then , turn of f the player and #go away for a bit, then tell myself to relax and play the part, The frustrating thing is going to festivals where you get into the groove all day and nite for 3 or 4 days , come home all jazzed only to find out after a day at work the Monroe nuaunce you finally got going is gone. I'm convinced the only way #is to be thinking about it, hearing it #and playing it all day. I've started going to sleep with headphones on .... my wife supports me playing but is starting to wonder.

#Frankmc

[Coy Wylie]

Excellent post Don! Dusty Miller is a great example of WSM's understated style. It's easy to grasp but difficult to replicate. I could watch that Homespun video over and over.

[Vincent]

I was listening to a 80% speed live version of Dusty Miller in the car this morning and heard the weirdest string of off-chord notes. Didn't slow him down a whit- never really noticed it before. You could splice all of Monroe's recorded Dusty Millers together and never hear the same exact note selection twice. But it might be kinda of boring after an hour...