Grand Ole Orpy

Grand Ole Orpy (a skit on the Grand Ole Opry) is a training-orientated session for upbeat Bluegrass and Skiffle style music sponsored by the Orpington Folk & Blues Club, which has a strong culture of encouragement. Orpy provides a great opportunity for collaboration, bringing together those seeking improvement with expertise and experience.

When I first learnt about it I was just moving to Americana, and it's greatly influenced that move with its strongly upbeat approach. It has also exposed me to a wealth of songs and tunes which I might otherwise have taken a long time to discover. All in all it has greatly accelerated my progress and has now become the main focus of my musical development.

The clip shows me leading a rendition of Worried Man Blues from, I think, late 2014. I hadn't realised this was being filmed! AFAIK this constitutes my YouTube début...

Less is more

Doc Watson

When I was focusing on English traditional material, my repertoire of songs once bloated to nearly 200. This is not a boast but a warning. Trying to remember them all was like herding cats, and many songs were hardly performed and never perfected.

I get the impression that many professionals seem to be ready to sing songs only from their current album, so maybe 20-30 odd. Folk singers might need a few more to avoid too much repetition. At a festival I used to avoid singing the same song twice or even a song that I'd heard someone else sing. At clubs and sessions I didn't repeat a song in the same venue for at least a year. To keep that up I probably needed only about 50 songs, but I found it very hard to abandon songs that I had learnt. Anyway, I did manage to jettison more than half of them, cutting my English repertoire to about 70.

For my new interest in Americana, I have a current repertoire of just 24, most of which are now performable (on a good day). This number should be far more sustainable and, ultimately, provide a better performance level. Rather than adding more songs, I'm going to concentrate on improving these by developing melodic intros, turnarounds and breaks. I think that will be challenge enough.

The Mandolin and solo song accompaniment

Using a mandolin for solo song accompaniment seems to raise eyebrows if not comments, especially from guitarists. But I think it's perfectly acceptable. Indeed, I like the sound and at the very least I find it a refreshing change from the ubiquity of the guitar. In particular, it facilitates melodic interludes which can be much louder and more effective than on the guitar.

Here are some examples from YouTube of mandolin use in solo song performances which speak for themselves. Readers will appreciate that I don't control the continued availability of these videos.

Bill Monroe - 'The Wayfaring Stranger':



Maunus (Mandolin Cafe) - 'John Hardy':



Steve Earle - 'Copperhead Road':

The Mandolin, Americana and noisy pubs

Banjo, Mandolin & Guitar Club at Washington
& Jefferson College in the 1890s.

I haven't completely given up on English folk music and playing the concertina, but I'm currently hooked on the mandolin and Americana.

I was first attracted to the mandolin because of its logic - four courses (pairs of strings) for four fingers, each course ascending in fifths. It's also playable largely in first position, and you can begin with just two-finger chords.

I originally wanted it for English folk, but it got diverted to my growing interest in Americana. While many people my age and a little older started with Americana, I came into folk with English folk rock and then went for the very trad stuff, so Americana is a new experience for me, and I'm enjoying it.

A third element of my interest in the mandolin is the occasional need to sing in public bars as well as backroom folkclubs. Sometimes this has even been to a predominantly pub audience rather than a folkie one. Few people want to hear unaccompanied ballads even in the quite traditional folk circles in which I circulate, and while the concertina has curiosity value, I find it hard work to sing and play it in a noisy environment. The English public are much more open to American (or Irish) material than to their own heritage which is largely unknown and unappreciated. Sad but true.

Although my mandolin playing is very basic and glitchy, the rate of progress from zero to being able to perform after a fashion has been supersonic in comparison with the concertina. I have felt far more relaxed while performing, and quite a few people have told me that the mandolin and Americana suit my voice better.

Change and chop

The Monroe Brothers

No sooner had I begun to get my head around the alternating bass and strum style, when the penny dropped and I realised that what I should really be attempting for use in sessions and group situations were classic Bluegrass chop chords! And so I found myself relearning everything once again.

Now, at my time in life, I may not develop the agility to play full-on four-finger chops, but three-finger chops, avoiding the open string, should be doable. Fingering apart, making the percussive chop on the offbeat seems relatively straightforward.

Coincidentally I was privileged to chat to an experienced player about styles to use when playing solo, and he suggested playing a bass note on the first beat of the bar and then brushing the rest. This is good news as it essentially combines the two approaches I've already covered. Although it will be the fourth style I've attempted, it should allow me to recover my modest repertoire with a minimal amount of time and effort.

Adapting to boom-chick

My Eastman MD504. It was heavily
discounted by the Acoustic Music
Company, Brighton, when they
were discontinuing mid-range
models, and made me an offer
I couldn't refuse.

The mandolin was previously just a side project and I spent very little time on it. Over the course of a couple of years I built up a small repertoire of songs that I eventually felt confident to perform in public. But hot on the heels of this début, I started attending the Bluegrass workshops run by the Orpington Folk & Blues Club, and I now find I have to adapt my style to a more upbeat 'boom-chick' approach.

From what I can gather the classic Bluegrass mandolin method is to play a light chord (or nothing) on the downbeat and a chop chord on the upbeat. Chop chords are a bit of a stretch, so for the moment I'm compromising on a guitar-style approach - a bass note on the downbeat and an open chord on the upbeat. I think I'm going to need a variety of styles for different situations and types of song.

It's straightforward, but it will take time to get used to the correct succession of bass notes for each chord, to sustain the rhythm across chord changes, and, ultimately, to regain the same smoothness I had achieved with 'brushing' the chords. For now it's one step back, but I'll hopefully take two steps forward in the foreseeable future.

Hello again...

Charlie Poole and the North
Carolina Ramblers: a famous Old Time
stringband in the 1920s

This is my second attempt at a music blog. The first was terminated abruptly when it got accidentally deleted along with a misspelt email account…

The first blog touched on my entire musical engagement with English traditional folk music, including acapella singing, the Crane Duet Concertina and a host of other musical instruments which mostly gather dust. I don't know how much of that I'll bother to catalogue again. This new blog appears at a time when I have just turned a musical corner, so a clean slate feels quite appropriate.

 My current consuming interest, only publicly revealed at the beginning of last month, is in singing American songs with mandolin accompaniment. The songs are in the Old Time/Bluegrass/Early Country/Skiffle area, but I'm still coming to terms with definitions so let me pass on that for the time being.

Many if not most people are sceptical about mandolin accompaniment in a solo context. They suggest getting a guitar or a partner with a guitar, but there are precedents and I think it works. IMO the mandolin is good for both strumming and adding in melodic breaks (when I've learnt to pick). At some point I'll put some samples on SoundCloud.

As this new enthusiasm is absorbing a lot of my attention, I'm not sure how much time I'll have for my old interest in traditional English folk song, with or without concertina accompaniment. After several years of focusing on the concertina I felt I had reached a dead end. As and when I go back to it, I need to develop a more chordal approach.

In the meantime I'm concentrating on the mandolin and developing my repertoire of Americana.