On and On

On and On - in the key of G.
This is an old favorite and very common in jams. Mike transcribed Bill Monroe's solo and it's really interesting. The intro and first few bars are fairly standard and typical of a Monroe break. Mike pointed out that as the progression moves from G to C, you almost don't think Bill's solo is going to work out. There won't be enough time to get through that descending G scale. But of course Bill knows what he's doing and he jumps straight from the descending G scale to a low C and makes it work.

A few bars later Bill does an interesting jump up to some double stops that descend from the D to the G followed by really cool rhythmic harmonics played on the D and G strings.

Anyway, here's Bill Monroe's version:



and here's me playing it as transcribed by Mike Compton.

First slow:




and then faster. This is still only about 70% of Bill's tempo. He makes it sound easy, but he's really cooking.

Travelin' Down This Lonesome Road

This next recording is Bill Monroe's break on the recording of Travelin' Down This Lonesome Road found on Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys - All The Classic Releases 1937-1949 (Disc 4).

Mike wants me to move to the key of F next. Playing out of this key requires mostly playing in second position with the root F found by your index finger on the third fret of the d-string. You can easily get lost if you don't learn your positions for playing out of F.

In this song, there's a pretty cool section where Bill plays a series of double stops, from second position using the pinky and ring, to first position with the index and ring sliding back up to second with the index and ring.

The song has a great, bluesy feel to it. It reminds me some of True Life Blues and Sugar Coated Love. Lot's of down strokes and slides. You can really here a bluesy precursor to rock and roll in this break.

Here's Bill's version.



And here's my attempt.

Back from Vacation and ready to pick some

Well when Mike got back from down under and I had my first lesson again, it was obvious I had not practiced the last couple of songs he gave me to work up. Of course, I have plenty of excuses - as my other posts show, I have been working on other stuff and learning to record, etc.

Mike: " sure, sure, I see how you are :)"

So I decided I better start working on some of Mike's material in earnest.

My first challenge is Monroe's Hornpipe. It's a straight forward fiddle tune in A that has a really driving dynamic to it. I still don't have it nearly up to Mr. Monroe's speed, but I hope I at least have the "feel" of it. It'll take a year (or a lifetime) to get it up to his speed.

I also am trying a new recording approach. I took my Michael Kelly to the beach (Vieques - an island off the coast of Puerto Rico) as my travel mandolin. I decided to remove the pickup so that it wouldn't get lost or corroded in the sea air. I haven't gotten it back together yet, so I decided to just record with iChat using the built-in iSight camera and built in microphone. The recorder is called the conference recorder from eCamm. I also use this to record my online lessons with Mike, which is great. I can review the lessons over and over.

For this recording, I used my Silver Angel F5 by Ken Ratcliff. This was the first really nice mandolin I bought - with proceeds from a poker tournament!

The mandolin sounds great, and has a really strong bluegrass chop. Don't let the poor recording equipment and my mediocre playing fool you. This mando is a hoss.