Hear the Whole Bluegrass Machine

Day 1 | about 25 minutes

Who was Uncle Pen?

Focus: meet the human story before touching the instrument.

• Listen to Bill Monroe's recording once, with no task except enjoying it.
• Listen again, this time following the fiddle rather than the vocal.
• Find the words and read them while the song plays a third time. Notice how many of the lines are about music itself: a fiddle, dancing, rhythm, people playing together.

What to notice: Bill Monroe was born in Rosine, Kentucky, in 1911. After his parents died, the teenage Monroe lived with his mother's brother, James Pendleton Vandiver, the fiddler everybody called Uncle Pen. Vandiver played dances, and Monroe accompanied him. Before he became the Father of Bluegrass, Monroe learned what music could do by standing beside an older Kentucky fiddler.

• Uncle PenBill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, 1950, mandolin and vocalThe original, cut for Decca. This is the record the whole week works from, so start here and keep coming back to it. The link is a search: the master is on a label, and the copies on video sites come and go.Listenhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Bill+Monroe+and+His+Blue+Grass+Boys+Uncle+Pen+1950+Decca
• Uncle PenRicky Skaggs, 1984, mandolin and vocalThe same song taken to country radio thirty four years later, faster and brighter, with the fiddle further forward. Worth hearing second, once Monroe's version is in your ear, because the difference between the two is mostly the thing Friday is about. The link is a search.Listenhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Ricky+Skaggs+Uncle+Pen+1984

• End-of-day check: I can explain who Uncle Pen was and name two musical images in the words.

Day 2 | 20 to 30 minutes

Find the heartbeat

Focus: build the rhythmic skeleton before learning any melody.

• Mute the strings and count out loud: one and two and three and four and.
• Play the basic bluegrass backbeat: rest, chop, rest, chop. Think bass on 1 and 3, mandolin on 2 and 4.
• Put the song on and lock in, with no melody added.
• Experiment on purpose: place the chop slightly late, then slightly early, then settle it in the pocket.

What to notice: The mandolin chop does almost the job a snare drum does in a band that has no drums. A tiny shift in timing can make the whole groove drag, push, or sit comfortably.

Jam along with a bass and a guitarA recorded bass and guitar that play any chart on this site at the speed you set, so 2 and 4 have somewhere to land once the song is off. Pick a chart in A, the key of Monroe's record, leave the melody alone, and chop.mandolintrainer.com/jam/

• End-of-day check: I can hold a relaxed chop on 2 and 4 through a whole verse or chorus.

Day 3 | about 30 minutes

Draw the chord map

Focus: hear what a chord is doing instead of memorizing which letter it is.

• Learn the changes in the key of the version you are studying.
• Translate every chord into a number as you go. In A, the key of the record: A is I, D is IV, E is V.
• Play I, IV, I and listen to the mild feeling of leaving home and coming back.
• Play I, V, I and listen to the stronger pull back home.
• Play the song with no chart in front of you and call out ONE, FOUR, or FIVE as the harmony changes.
• Tap what you called into the empty chart linked below, one chord to a bar, and let the band play it back against the record. A wrong bar is audible. The finished chart waits until Sunday.

What to notice: I is home. IV moves away without demanding to be resolved straight away. V creates stronger tension, the feeling that it needs to return to I.

The chord chartEvery shape on one page, with a grid for each. Today only needs three of them.mandolintrainer.com/chords/

A, the I chordmandolintrainer.com/chords/a/

D, the IV chordmandolintrainer.com/chords/d/

E, the V chordmandolintrainer.com/chords/e/

An empty chart in A, for you to fill inThe Jam Builder, opened in A with a verse and a chorus laid out, eight bars each and every bar blank. Tap in the chords you heard, then play it back with the band.mandolintrainer.com/app/#jam?c=1~A~Week%201%20changes~Verse.1.-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-~Chorus.1.-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-%7C-

• End-of-day check: I can label the changes as I, IV, and V in real time through at least one section.

Day 4 | 30 to 40 minutes

Melody detective

Focus: use your ears first, and bring in notation only after you have hunted for the phrase.

• Take only the opening vocal phrase. Find its first note on the mandolin.
• Hunt for the next note, then the next. Rewind as often as you need to. Four notes found by ear matter more than forty memorized from tablature.
• Once you have the phrase, work out the chord under each important note.
• Name those notes where you can: root, third, fifth, or something else.

Bach transfer: this is the bridge to the week's Bach track. In the Bourrée, a melody can imply the harmony. In Uncle Pen, a melody can interact with it. The musical language differs, but the listening skill is the same.

• End-of-day check: I can play the opening phrase from memory and name at least one chord tone in it.

Day 5 | about 30 minutes

Make it sound like bluegrass

Focus: turn correct pitches into phrasing with direction and personality.

• Learn a larger chunk of the melody.
• Play it dead straight on purpose: even notes, no accents, no personality.
• Now lean on the important melody notes and let the passing notes lead toward them.
• Notice where the phrase breathes. Compare the shape of the vocal line with the way you shape it on the mandolin.
• Record both versions and listen back without playing.

What to notice: The notes do not fully define a style. Accent, timing, space, attack, and the direction of the passing notes are what make the line begin to speak.

• End-of-day check: I can make two clearly different phrasings out of the same melody notes.

Day 6 | 30 to 40 minutes

Meet the fiddler inside the mandolin player

Focus: ask a picked instrument to borrow the continuity and color of a fiddle.

• Listen briefly to traditional Kentucky or Appalachian fiddle music, then go back to Uncle Pen.
• Think of the young Monroe accompanying Pendleton Vandiver at dances.
• Play your melody with more connected notes.
• Try one two-note slur, one drone or open string, and one double stop, each where it sounds natural.
• Keep only the ideas that help the phrase speak. Technique is not the point by itself.

What to notice: A fiddle can sustain, slide, drone, and connect notes without being asked. The mandolin has to create those impressions through picking, slurs, open strings, double stops, timing, and touch.

• Glory In the Meeting HouseLuther Strong, 1937, fiddleFree to hear. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Strong at Hazard, in Perry County, Kentucky, in October 1937, when Monroe was twenty six. Listen for how much of the tune is played on two strings at once, and how much of it sits on a drone.Listenhttps://archive.org/details/afc1937001_1536A2
• Bonaparte's RetreatWilliam Hamilton Stepp, 1937, fiddleFree to hear, from the same Kentucky trip: Stepp was recorded at Salyersville, in Magoffin County, later that month. A slower one, and the clearest lesson in sustain a mandolin player can get, because every place the bow holds a note is a place the pick has to invent something.Listenhttps://archive.org/details/afc1937001_1568A2

• End-of-day check: I can play one phrase in a plain version and in a convincing fiddle-influenced version.

Day 7 | 30 to 40 minutes

Put the machine together

Focus: integrate story, rhythm, harmony, melody, and phrasing. Learn nothing new today.

• Chop through the whole song.
• Play as much melody as you learned during the week.
• Play with the song off and feel where I, IV, and V belong.
• Play the opening phrase and stop on several important notes. Ask why each one works over that chord.
• Go back to Monroe's lyric: "You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing."

What to notice: Monroe grew up hearing a fiddler make an instrument talk, and then built one of the most distinctive mandolin voices in American music. The larger question is how much of his language came from making a picked instrument behave like the fiddle music he knew.

Chop and play the whole song with the bandThe finished chart: the week's changes in A, verse and chorus, looping under a recorded bass and guitar at whatever speed you set. Compare it with the one you built on Wednesday before you play.mandolintrainer.com/app/#jam?c=1~A~Week%201%20changes~Verse.1.A%7CA%7CA%7CE%20A%7CA%7CA%7CA%7CE%20A~Chorus.1.D%7CA%7CA%7CE%20A%7CA%7CA%7CA%7CE%20A&go=play

• End-of-day check: Work through the Sunday checkpoint below before closing Week 1.