Facebook
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
(Register, which increases your permissions on the spot, and then email me to elevate your status to "full" f you'd like access to the entire site - that last part is a waste of time, btw - the good stuff is here anyway)
Search
Archives
Recent Entries
Syndicate
[ Tuesday, December 15, 2009 ]
Dusty Trail Banjo Tab
Jens Kruger is a banjo player’s banjo player, needless to say. In fact, he is everybody’s banjo player, since even people who don’t like the banjo like it when Jens plays it. You don’t get bored when you listen to Jens, and also your ears don’t bleed the way they do listening to some of the rest of us hammering away. All Kruger Brothers CD’s are great and I would recommend buying them all, as I have done over the years.
On this one, Up 18 North, the 8th cut is Dusty Trail. This is a banjo tune in classic “D” tuning (“D” tuning is a must learn tuning for banjo players - more on that in a future post), and you’ll hear Earl doing Reuben and John Henry, among others, in this tuning. Jens also uses the Keith tuners in this tune. You’ll hear Earl using these (well, Scruggs tuners) in Flint Hill Special and Earl’s Breakdown. But what makes this tune a breath of fresh air is that it is actually musical, i.e., it doesn’t fall into the “Q: How do you tell one banjo tune from another? A: By its name” category. The MIDI posted here is just reading the tab, and it doesn’t sound as nice as the tune really sounds (the tuners come up a little flat in the MIDI, among other limitations - they’ll come up flat in real life too, btw, if you don’t keep your nut and bridge lubed with a little graphite or Nut Lube ... wait, that can’t be the name of it ... no, it’s GraphitALL), but you get the idea. Listen to it on the CD and you will find it impossible to resist learning and playing this beautiful banjo tune. With just a banjo in hand, people will mistake you for a musician when you play this thing. Read More
Jens Kruger is a banjo player’s banjo player, needless to say. In fact, he is everybody’s banjo player, since even people who don’t like the banjo like it when Jens plays it. You don’t get bored when you listen to Jens, and also your ears don’t bleed the way they do listening to some of the rest of us hammering away. All Kruger Brothers CD’s are great and I would recommend buying them all, as I have done over the years.
On this one, Up 18 North, the 8th cut is Dusty Trail. This is a banjo tune in classic “D” tuning (“D” tuning is a must learn tuning for banjo players - more on that in a future post), and you’ll hear Earl doing Reuben and John Henry, among others, in this tuning. Jens also uses the Keith tuners in this tune. You’ll hear Earl using these (well, Scruggs tuners) in Flint Hill Special and Earl’s Breakdown. But what makes this tune a breath of fresh air is that it is actually musical, i.e., it doesn’t fall into the “Q: How do you tell one banjo tune from another? A: By its name” category. The MIDI posted here is just reading the tab, and it doesn’t sound as nice as the tune really sounds (the tuners come up a little flat in the MIDI, among other limitations - they’ll come up flat in real life too, btw, if you don’t keep your nut and bridge lubed with a little graphite or Nut Lube ... wait, that can’t be the name of it ... no, it’s GraphitALL), but you get the idea. Listen to it on the CD and you will find it impossible to resist learning and playing this beautiful banjo tune. With just a banjo in hand, people will mistake you for a musician when you play this thing.
So, just a few notes on performance. First, you have to get the banjo into “D” tuning, so drop the “B” string to “A” and the “G” string to “F#” and then drop the high “G” to “F#” as well. This takes considerable tension off the head, so you may need to tweak everything again to fine tune. Now, admire this wonderful tuning. Note the low rumble it gives you, as you are now playing down in “D” - one of music’s finest keys anyway, IMHO. Also, note that the lowest note on the instrument is also the root of the key - that is, the low “D” - that is crucial to this sound and many other possibilities I’ll address in a future post. Another interesting fact is that the 1st and 2nd strings are now tuned to a fourth, just like the guitar. This has huge implications for this tuning, but again, we’ll save that for another time. For now, just admire this tuning, and learn the Scruggs tunes in it too. Okay, but for Dusty Trail, you now need to set the tuners. On the third string tuner, you will be setting the low stop down a whole step to an “E” and the high stop at the “F#.” Most of the time, in playing, you will crank the tuner down before plucking the string, and then raise it to the “F#” pitch. On the second string tuner, the low stop is at the “A” and high stop is up a whole step to “B.” The trick here is that when you are in “D” tuning, the tuners are set so that the 3rd string can be dropped a whole step, and the second string can be raised a whole step - a little departure from the usual.
Jens plays the tuner part both straight and also in false harmonics - in fact, the tune starts with the tuner lick in false harmonics, so you have to deal with that right off. It’s not as hard as it sounds though. Since I usually play this tune using fingerpicks, I end up using the third finger of my right hand to touch the harmonic at the 12th fret while my right thumb plays the string with the thumbpick. My left hand is free to crank the tuners. This requires a little stretch of the right thumb, but with a very little practice, you can get the false harmonics with the tuners ringing loud and clear, and it sounds awesome. One final note on how you notate tuners in TablEdit: You use pitch shifting, so in the notation, you will see some up or down arrows where the tuners are used. There will be the starting note and the ending note, next to each other, and they will look the same, but the pitch is shifted in the direction of the arrows. You don’t play both notes - just the first one, and then the tuner brings you to the second one. It’s a little funny looking in the notation, but it’s really pretty easy to figure out. Also, if you’re going to play the third string and it says to shift the pitch up, then you will realize you have to crank the tuner down first, before you play the note, and then crank it up after you pluck the string. Listening to the tab played back, or better still, the CD will make all of this obvious.
One other note: This tab is a labor of love. I have sat down and figured out these tunes on the banjo, and would like to share my work with other players, small in number that we are. While I confine most of my work to public domain tunes, this one is one of Jens’s compositions and is copyrighted material. I profit in no material way from tab at this site, and I do not post tabs that musicians sell themselves or otherwise want unpublished. I have no reason to believe that the Kruger Brothers do not wish others to learn their music freely, but will remove this tab if requested. In the meantime, it is a great tune, and you do yourselves and the Kruger Brothers a disservice if you do not also buy the CD.
I have included an exported MIDI of the tab below. It sounds better than when the tab is played directly in TablEdit, but again, it is still nowhere near the actual sound of acoustic instruments played by humans.
Play MIDI of the tab
Download: Dusty Trail tab here (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 12/15/09, you do not have the latest version)
(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)
Enjoy!
[ Wednesday, January 07, 2009 ]
Tranjo Demonstration
I was at IBMA a few months ago, and I stopped by Sam Farris’s booth where he was selling his invention, The Tranjo. The Tranjo is a travel banjo, i.e., a banjo that can be hauled around with you in a suitcase anywhere you go, and yet still sounds and plays like a banjo. This is a tall order, believe me.
I ordered one right away. This was primarily because 1) this was a full scale instrument, allowing practice of intricate “up the neck” playing, and 2) it sounds amazingly good.
What you do is you loosen the strings a little, slip the bridge out, capo at the 6th fret to hold the top half of the strings tight to the neck, and then just unscrew a wooden knobbed bolt to take the neck off, with the strings still attached! Then you can lay the neck side by side with the body, set the whole thing in a suitcase, and off you go.
When you arrive at the home of the victim(s), you unpack the innocent looking suitcase, extract the Tranjo, lay the neck in the slot, and bolt it tight, pulling the strings tight. Slip the bridge in, tune up, and off you go, charming your hosts with some sweet banjo playing! The Tranjo is an amazingly efficient bit of craftsmanship.
So here’s a quick one-take demo of the thing. I start with it disassembled (put it together off camera, but it only takes a few minutes), then play a couple of tunes - the mildly jazzy Panhandle Rag, and then Four Leaf Clover. I hope it’s enjoyable. I have no financial interest in the Tranjo, I am just a very satisfied customer.
When I posted this on YouTube, a related video came up of Bill Knopff playing Stars & Stripes Forever. He plays the high part in the middle on a Tranjo! It’s great. Be sure to check it out!
I was at IBMA a few months ago, and I stopped by Sam Farris’s booth where he was selling his invention, The Tranjo. The Tranjo is a travel banjo, i.e., a banjo that can be hauled around with you in a suitcase anywhere you go, and yet still sounds and plays like a banjo. This is a tall order, believe me.
I ordered one right away. This was primarily because 1) this was a full scale instrument, allowing practice of intricate “up the neck” playing, and 2) it sounds amazingly good.
What you do is you loosen the strings a little, slip the bridge out, capo at the 6th fret to hold the top half of the strings tight to the neck, and then just unscrew a wooden knobbed bolt to take the neck off, with the strings still attached! Then you can lay the neck side by side with the body, set the whole thing in a suitcase, and off you go.
When you arrive at the home of the victim(s), you unpack the innocent looking suitcase, extract the Tranjo, lay the neck in the slot, and bolt it tight, pulling the strings tight. Slip the bridge in, tune up, and off you go, charming your hosts with some sweet banjo playing! The Tranjo is an amazingly efficient bit of craftsmanship.
So here’s a quick one-take demo of the thing. I start with it disassembled (put it together off camera, but it only takes a few minutes), then play a couple of tunes - the mildly jazzy Panhandle Rag, and then Four Leaf Clover. I hope it’s enjoyable. I have no financial interest in the Tranjo, I am just a very satisfied customer.
When I posted this on YouTube, a related video came up of Bill Knopff playing Stars & Stripes Forever. He plays the high part in the middle on a Tranjo! It’s great. Be sure to check it out!
[ Sunday, March 09, 2008 ]
Sassy Tab
NOTE: Jerry Reed's health is very bad and declining, and this video goes out to him with love for changing, and probably even saving my life with his music. Sadly, Jerry Reed died August 31, 2008, and will be missed by all of us.
On that note, wish Jerry a Happy Birthday here.
Okay, so I dragged myself to SPBGMA last month and it was great fun, with tons of jamming. But there is ... Read More
NOTE: Jerry Reed’s health is very bad and declining, and this video goes out to him with love for changing, and probably even saving my life with his music. Sadly, Jerry Reed died August 31, 2008, and will be missed by all of us.
On that note, wish Jerry a Happy Birthday here.
Okay, so I dragged myself to SPBGMA last month and it was great fun, with tons of jamming. But there is only so much bluegrass and banjo playing a person can stand, even me. Someone there had asked me if I had tab for Jerry Reed’s Sassy, a great newer guitar tune of Jerry’s, and I said I had always been too lazy to figure it out, and that I just played the Craig Dobbins version of it. I was never satisfied with Craig’s version though. I don’t know why he wrote it out the way he did, though I’m sure he had a reason (see note below). He is ten times the guitar player that I am.
But once I got to thinking about it, I decided I’d better figure out a version of my own that is closer to my ear to what Jerry does with the tune. So, one afternoon at SPBGMA, I took refuge in my room, put my banjo to bed, and sat down with my guitar and Reed’s recording of Sassy and transcribed it as well as I could. I found some cool stuff he does in there!
Note: Craig Dobbins was kind enough to contact me about his transcription, and it turns out he had not been satisfied with it either. He had re-thought it some time ago and includes a different page with some changes in new copies of his book. The subject of perfectionism reminds me, by the way, that I took some liberties in my transcription of adding a few notes that Jerry doesn’t play. In measures 82 and 83 there are three bass notes that are played by the bass in the recording, but I threw them in because they fill out a solo version and are easy to play. Also, in the part beginning in measure 37, I use several three finger pulls to get the chords, but it just sounds best to me that way for solo guitar. I think Jerry probably does it with the two finger (right hand) chording that Craig notates in his version. Okay, those are my disclaimers.
People ask me all the time if I can really play any of this music that I transcribe, so I practiced this one up for a few weeks and made a video just for the heck of it. There’s also an mp3, if you like it enough to want to hear it again.
Like the previous transcription, this one too is in swing time, but in this case, since I have a video for you, I just wrote it out in straight eighth notes (I guess they’re really sixteenth notes) which makes it a lot easier to read, but you get the idea, about swingin’ it up a bit. I think I play the notes (not the timing) pretty close to the transcription in the video, but there’s a little noodling around at the beginning and end - and probably some other minor departures.
Here’s an mp3 of the video - it will probably have better quality sound than the video, if you’re interested:
So, that’s Sassy, the way I hear it. I hope you enjoy the video and the mp3, and if you play guitar, I hope you’ll download the tab and take this one on. It’s really not hard to play, and it’s a blast. How does Jerry write this stuff??
Download: Sassy tab here (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 3/9/08, you do not have the latest version)
(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)
Enjoy!
Guitar & Banjo • Tablature • Comments and Trackbacks (1) • Permalink
[ Sunday, October 28, 2007 ]
A Little Bit Of Blues Tab
So, I’m at the 2007 IBMA in Nashville, and I’m sitting in the Bishline Banjos booth, where I am discovering that not only is Rob is a great banjo player and a super guy, but he is also building gorgeous and great sounding banjos. I covet them. Anyway, there was a woman there doing the same thing who turns out to be my new friend, Kat Duke. Kat and I seem to have precisely the same musical tastes. She loves everything from Earl Scruggs to Delbert McClinton, but she loves nothing more than Atkins/Reed style guitar, of course. She told me about this young ... Read More
So, I’m at the 2007 IBMA in Nashville, and I’m sitting in the Bishline Banjos booth, where I am discovering that not only is Rob is a great banjo player and a super guy, but he is also building gorgeous and great sounding banjos. I covet them. Anyway, there was a woman there doing the same thing who turns out to be my new friend, Kat Duke. Kat and I seem to have precisely the same musical tastes. She loves everything from Earl Scruggs to Delbert McClinton, but she loves nothing more than Atkins/Reed style guitar, of course. She told me about this young man, on YouTube to your left, named Gareth Pearson and his great version of the Jerry Reed tune, A Little Bit Of Blues. Check it out yourself. She’s not wrong, right?
I have always thought this was one of Jerry’s great tunes, but I never learned it, in part because I didn’t think it would be easy to play well on steel string guitar. Guess I’m wrong about that. At least for Gareth. After Kat told me about Gareth, I decided to order his CD, called Adrenaline Rush EP, and I’m glad I did. There is some great great guitar playing on there! I did this transcription of A Little Bit Of Blues from the cut on that CD, and it is almost identical to the YouTube clip embedded here.
A few words about the tab. For one thing, it is in swing time, and in order to get it sounding right and to capture the feel of Gareth’s performance, I notated it as precisely as I could, rather than using straight eighth notes. This makes for a very ungainly looking tab, but don’t let it intimidate you - it’s all pretty obvious once you get going on it. Also, some of the slides and rhythms will sound funny on the MIDI here since the TablEdit generated MIDI’s don’t capture the subtlety of guitar slides. But, for practical purposes, almost all of Gareth’s slides fall right out of the chord changes, so they will be as easy to play as anything else about this tune, FWIW. Also, I tried to capture some of Gareth’s more complicated rhythmic adventures, like the measure of 12/8, and I think I have done it fairly well, but it’s best to listen to the real thing while learning this.
If you download the tab, be sure to check out the Notes section where I have tried to offer a few hints on playing this beast. A couple of things right off the bat. The first is that Gareth uses a lot of percussive effects in this tune, and it sounds great. I did not notate that in the tab. Once you learn it, you can throw those in fairly easily if you like. He also does a sort of reverse rasqueado on parts of the up-the-neck variations which I also did not notate - but once you learn the tune, you can think about adding that if you like.
There is one very important technique, that I should mention. You have probably noticed that this tune is built around what Dr. John calls The Famous Lick, to wit:
Or at least that’s how I hear it. The Famous Lick feel was co-opted for guitar long ago by Chet and especially Jerry, but it seems to be enjoying a rising and recent popularity in bluegrass in the playing of Bryan Sutton on guitar and also in the playing of Noam Pikelny on banjo - both great players, btw. Of course, Bill Keith has been doing this on banjo for more than thirty years. Suffice to say, great musicians just love The Famous Lick, and so do I. This is the long way around to saying that to get it on the guitar, such as in the first two measures of A Little Bit Of Blues, you have to drag your first finger across the strings, sometimes using a pull-off - to get the deedle-lit-DUM - be thankful I’m note there singing it for you. Anyway, you’ll get the idea, and that’s enough technical notes.
Play MIDI of the tab
Download: A Little Bit Of Blues tab here (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 10/28/07, you do not have the latest version)
(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)
Enjoy!
Guitar & Banjo • Tablature • Comments and Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
[ Thursday, September 20, 2007 ]
Access All Areas Banjo Tab
NOTE (10/3/08): Okay, every now and then a guy gets something all wrong, and that’s me today. I had the privilege of meeting Jens Kruger at IBMA, and I asked him to show me how in the world he plays the C part to this tune. He graciously and generously showed me. What I took most careful note of is that the tune is NOT in Mounatin Minor, but rather in open G Minor tuning, i.e., with the B string tuned down to Bb. The transcription is now updated, and I apologize to those, like me, who have tried to learn it the other way - it’s not ALL that much different, but the fingerings are a LOT easier.. Thanks, Jens, for both the tune and the tip!!!
There’s an old banjo joke that goes, “Q: How can you tell one banjo tune from another? A: By their names!” True enough most of the time, but not in this case. You’ve probably never heard anything quite like this on the banjo. And no banjo jokes apply to Jens Kruger. I wish I had the time to learn every note he ever played.
As I’ve probably said before, I am happy to have lived long enough for Jens Kruger and Alison Brown to have brought their respective geniuses to the banjo, and tunes like this one by Jens are the reason for that.
He’s not just kidding about Access All Areas. Any time I think I’m accessing a new area on the banjo, I discover that Jens has already been there, and been there better. I wish I had written this tune, but I had to settle for tabbing it out instead, enough of a challenge in its own right, I might add. It is not easy to play, and you will have to work at the fingerings. It is in G Modal tuning (brought up to A with the capo), also known as Sawmill tuning, or Mountain Minor. Believe me, it is worth the effort to learn! I think it was the Jerry Reed-like “C-Part” that got me going on it - I still think that’s just the coolest thing ever, knuckle-buster that it is. ... Read More
NOTE (10/3/08): Okay, every now and then a guy gets something all wrong, and that’s me today. I had the privilege of meeting Jens Kruger at IBMA, and I asked him to show me how in the world he plays the C part to this tune. He graciously and generously showed me. What I took most careful note of is that the tune is NOT in Mounatin Minor, but rather in open G Minor tuning, i.e., with the B string tuned down to Bb. The transcription is now updated, and I apologize to those, like me, who have tried to learn it the other way - it’s not ALL that much different, but the fingerings are a LOT easier.. Thanks, Jens, for both the tune and the tip!!!
There’s an old banjo joke that goes, “Q: How can you tell one banjo tune from another? A: By their names!” True enough most of the time, but not in this case. You’ve probably never heard anything quite like this on the banjo. And no banjo jokes apply to Jens Kruger. I wish I had the time to learn every note he ever played.
As I’ve probably said before, I am happy to have lived long enough for Jens Kruger and Alison Brown to have brought their respective geniuses to the banjo, and tunes like this one by Jens are the reason for that.
He’s not just kidding about Access All Areas. Any time I think I’m accessing a new area on the banjo, I discover that Jens has already been there, and been there better. I wish I had written this tune, but I had to settle for tabbing it out instead, enough of a challenge in its own right, I might add. It is not easy to play, and you will have to work at the fingerings. It is in G Modal tuning (brought up to A with the capo), also known as Sawmill tuning, or Mountain Minor. Believe me, it is worth the effort to learn! I think it was the Jerry Reed-like “C-Part” that got me going on it - I still think that’s just the coolest thing ever, knuckle-buster that it is.
As I have said in the past, I try not to tab out contemporary music for copyright reasons, but with tunes like this, I can’t believe many people will want to try it, and those who do will want to buy the CD. I would hope that, if anything, it will advertise further for the Kruger Brothers, but, of course, if they object to it here, I will remove it. To me, though, banjo playing is a labor of love, and I’m hoping people will share. This tune is just too great to resist. If you play the banjo, you owe it to yourself to buy every recorded thing by the Kruger Brothers, including their stuff from the Kaufman Kamps, and to download every YouTube!
I have included an exported MIDI of the tab below. It sounds better than when the tab is played directly in TablEdit, but again, it is still nowhere near the actual sounds of acoustic instruments played by people, and especially not by Jens who is as good as it’s possible to get. I have not included the guitar part - maybe I’ll add it when I catch my breath, or if anyone really wants it (this ain’t exactly a jam tune, unless you are the Kruger Brothers!)
Play MIDI of the tab
Download: Access All Areas tab here (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 10/12/08, you do not have the latest version)
(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)
Enjoy!
[ Saturday, February 17, 2007 ]
Professors of Bluegrass At This Year’s ROMP!
The Professors of Bluegrass
Professors of Bluegrass MySpace Site
Update: July 1, 2007: YouTube Videos of The Professors Of Bluegrass At ROMP 2007 - Check out banjo Dixie Breakdown
... Read More
The Professors of Bluegrass
Professors of Bluegrass MySpace Site
Update: July 1, 2007: YouTube Videos of The Professors Of Bluegrass At ROMP 2007 - Check out banjo Dixie Breakdown
[ Wednesday, January 31, 2007 ]
Early Times Guitar Tab
Progressive Pickin’ was released in 1964 and for some reason, it was kicking around the house when I was a kid in those years. I didn’t know of Chet Atkins or Jerry Reed at the time, but I loved that album, and I vowed I would learn to play guitar like that one day. Every tune on it is great! I must have listened to it a thousand times, and not only did it leave an indelible impression, but it changed the course of my life as I became determined to play guitar like that.
Even then, though, I noticed that there were two tunes, Kicky and Early Times, that had a different quality from the rest. They were new and imaginative in a way that said they were written on and for the guitar, by some kind of genius. I could tell that then, and I only knew how to strum a few chords on the guitar, but some things you just know. This is to say that I loved Jerry Reed long before I knew he was Jerry Reed or anything else about his music. Over the years, I learned to play most of the tunes on this great Chet record, but in none too disciplined a way, to which my old recording of Early Times here on the website will testify. Read More
Progressive Pickin’ was released in 1964 and for some reason, it was kicking around the house when I was a kid in those years. I didn’t know of Chet Atkins or Jerry Reed at the time, but I loved that album, and I vowed I would learn to play guitar like that one day. Every tune on it is great! I must have listened to it a thousand times, and not only did it leave an indelible impression, but it changed the course of my life as I became determined to play guitar like that.
Even then, though, I noticed that there were two tunes, Kicky and Early Times, that had a different quality from the rest. They were new and imaginative in a way that said they were written on and for the guitar, by some kind of genius. I could tell that then, and I only knew how to strum a few chords on the guitar, but some things you just know. This is to say that I loved Jerry Reed long before I knew he was Jerry Reed or anything else about his music. Over the years, I learned to play most of the tunes on this great Chet record, but in none too disciplined a way, to which my old recording of Early Times here on the website will testify.
A couple of die-hard Reed fans over the last year, however, have been asking me for tab for Early Times, and it would have been embarrassing to tab out what I have hitherto passed off as Early Times. So, I finally caught a little break and had a chance to sit down and figure this thing out properly. What a great tune! It will probably bore the non-guitarist to listen to the MIDI, but it is a true thrill to play and to watch and hear being played. The voicings and lines are totally cool, and the whole thing ... well, who thinks of stuff like this?!? Jerry Reed is who. Don’t pass this one up. Download it and learn it. If you like fingerstyle at all, you won’t regret it. I find it a complete gem of a guitar tune, and I have learned subtleties I hadn’t noticed before in the process of transcribing it, only increasing my love for the thing.
I have included an exported MIDI of the tab below. It sounds better than when the tab is played directly in TablEdit, but again, it is still nowhere near the actual sounds of acoustic instruments played by people, and especially not by Chet or Jerry (arguably not people at all).
Play MIDI of the tab
Download: Early Times tab here (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 1/31/07, you do not have the latest version)
(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)
Enjoy!
Guitar & Banjo • Tablature • Comments and Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
[ Sunday, November 05, 2006 ]
Return To Pelican Bay Banjo Tab
A couple of years ago, when I began playing a little more banjo than I had for a long time, I started listening to what people had been doing with the banjo since I last paid much attention, two decades earlier. I tend to gravitate toward the progressive stuff, but honestly, as truly great as some of it is, most of the time I still feel like “who really wants to listen to this?” The players I like the best are Jens Kruger, Tony Furtado, Dennis Caplinger, Noam Pikelny, and of course, Bela. That’s just me, of course.
But, then, there’s GODDESS Alison Brown. Now, I know many people say she plays too much guitar-like cocktail jazz, but I don’t see it that way. I guess what I like are little compositional gems, like Jerry Reed’s great guitar tunes. Very few banjo players manage even one of these. I think maybe Tony Furtado has the most of them, to my ear. But this one of Alison Brown’s, Return to Pelican Bay is just a masterpiece. I can’t even begin to articulate why I like it so much, but I think it’s a work of banjo genius (it’s a reprise of her earlier Pelican Bay, also great). Alison manages to create something that remains completely true to bluegrass banjo picking at its core, and yet draws upon the best of “cocktail jazz” with complete musicality. On top of this, it lays great on the instrument, just written on and for it alone. This is the mark of a Platonic Form of a tune, IMHO, of course 
. Anyway, I just love this tune, and ... Read More
A couple of years ago, when I began playing a little more banjo than I had for a long time, I started listening to what people had been doing with the banjo since I last paid much attention, two decades earlier. I tend to gravitate toward the progressive stuff, but honestly, as truly great as some of it is, most of the time I still feel like “who really wants to listen to this?” The players I like the best are Jens Kruger, Tony Furtado, Dennis Caplinger, Noam Pikelny, and of course, Bela. That’s just me, of course.
But, then, there’s GODDESS Alison Brown. Now, I know many people say she plays too much guitar-like cocktail jazz, but I don’t see it that way. I guess what I like are little compositional gems, like Jerry Reed’s great guitar tunes. Very few banjo players manage even one of these. I think maybe Tony Furtado has the most of them, to my ear. But this one of Alison Brown’s, Return to Pelican Bay is just a masterpiece. I can’t even begin to articulate why I like it so much, but I think it’s a work of banjo genius (it’s a reprise of her earlier Pelican Bay, also great). Alison manages to create something that remains completely true to bluegrass banjo picking at its core, and yet draws upon the best of “cocktail jazz” with complete musicality. On top of this, it lays great on the instrument, just written on and for it alone. This is the mark of a Platonic Form of a tune, IMHO, of course . Anyway, I just love this tune, and for that matter, its composer. The head is easy to play, so there’s just no excuse not to learn it!
I know how people are getting about free tab these days. I usually don’t post stuff that’s not in the public domain, and in the rare instance that I do, I hope it’ll sell more CD’s than whatever harm it does, but there’s always the chance I’ll be asked to take it down (or worse). Anyway, here is the transcription of Return To Pelican Bay. I have included the head and first solo, as well as the reprise at the end. There is also some guitar chording to help contextualize the thing. There is other great stuff on the tune on the CD, like a piano solo and some trading fours, but this is enough to get you started! Note 0n 8/8/07: I have played around a little more with this tune and I noticed a few careless tab errors that I fixed. Also, I have now included the final B part and A part from the original Pelican Bay from the Twilight Motel CD (another gorgeous variation).
I have included an exported MIDI of the tab below. It sounds better than when the tab is played directly in TablEdit, but again, it is still nowhere near the actual sounds of acoustic instruments played by people, or a goddess in this case. The fictitious rhythm guitar track is just to put the melody in context, as I said.
Play MIDI of the tab
Download: Return To Pelican Bay tab here (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 8/8/07, you do not have the latest version)
(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)
Enjoy!
