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[ Friday, October 01, 2004 ]
Mark O’Connor’s Dixie Breakdown Guitar Tablature
Everyone knows Mark O’Connor, right? Well, it turns out that there are some people who do not, even though I myself, given my background, cannot conceive of this.
When I was 12 years old, I started teaching myself the guitar, and at 13 I started teaching myself the banjo. By 16, I was a good banjo player, and at 17 and 18, I won two banjo contests. At Topanga Canyon, at 17, I was the last guy to play at a 9 hour contest and I won. After that, I learned more music, but kind of coasted along, thinking I was pretty good.
Along the way, I heard of this kid, Mark O’Connor, who was winning fiddle contests at 12 years old - by that time, I was almost 20. And, I also heard but instantly repressed that he was a skateboard expert and a flatpicking guitar champion. These were the kinds of things I would want to be if I had more intelligence, talent, and drive. I dealt with this news by summoning the opposite of those qualities - denial - and just put Mark out of my mind.
Years later, I started to hear Mark all over the place, playing every kind of fiddle music beautifully - to say the least. Later, I heard his fiddle solo on Bill Keith’s Beating Around the Bush banjo album, on the Alan Shelton tune, Bending The Strings. I think this is the most awesome bluegrass fiddle break I have ever heard on a three chord bluegrass song! It just blew my mind. So, I then snapped up a lot of Mark’s CD’s.
So, for whatever reason, about six months ago, I started teaching myself bluegrass flatpick style guitar - a whole body of music that I had always loved, but never learned. This led me to Bryan Sutton (well, he led me back to the guitar actually - his playing is just second to none, IMHO). From there, I started more of a study of flatpicking, and I was forced to remember that Mark O’Connor had won the flatpicking championship at Winfield, at like 12 years old, and played guitar with Grisman as well. I bit the bullet, and bought Markology, one of Mark’s guitar albums.
I had also bought a tab book called Flatpicking Guitar Masterpieces, but I hate learning tunes from tab. For one thing, I don’t trust them. Anyway, I heard Mark’s latest take on his contest winning guitar version of Don Reno’s Dixie Breakdown, a banjo tune that won me a contest once. It was transcribed in the book, but it was all wrong, and sort of seemed that the transcriber didn’t understand what Mark was up to on the guitar.
It turns out that lots of people have learned Mark’s version as they learned to flatpick, and I felt I needed to also. Some folks find it too “notey” and too chromatic, and too cerebral, and too much “someone else’s version,” and a lot of other things, but I decided to transcribe it myself, and learn it. I have had an absolute blast with it. I’m having as much fun playing this as any tune in recent memory.
So for what it’s worth, here is my transcription of Mark’s version from Markology, and I think it’s about as close as you’re going to get to what Mark does on the guitar. For us beginners in a new style, I think it’s important to learn the great players correctly. Just my opinion.
Download: Mark’s Flatpicking Guitar Dixie Breakdown Tab
(TablEdit Format - you can download a free viewer there too)
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