A series of editorials from Daily Frail, posted over several weeks in the spring of 2011.
When I first started playing the banjo all the pickers I knew treated clawhammer and frailing as interchangeable terms. Clawhammer, frailing and old-time banjo were just words that were used to generally describe a way to play banjo other than bluegrass fingerpicking.
The distinction between bluegrass and old-time music also used to be pretty vague. Before Earl Scuggs made his debut Bill Monroe had Stringbean frailing in his band.
Strinbean's frailing (or clawhammer - or old-time) banjo in the above video is pretty much what I heard everywhere when I was starting out. The drive. The foot-tapping rhythm. The raw power of the down-picking technique presented with a calm and joyful demeanor. Watch how easy Stringbean makes it look. Then watch Grandpa Jones in this clip from Hee-Haw:
When people compliment me about my ability to play and teach I always scratch my head because when I was a kid being able to entertain and communicate were part and parcel of being a banjo player. It wasn't enough to just learn t0 play songs. You also were expected to learn presentation. Picking, singing, teaching and entertaining were all equally stressed by my teachers.
Sometime in the 1980's we started reading about something called "melodic clawhammer". It was apparently from New York and the goal was to play every note in a tune that a fiddle would play. I couldn't find anyplace to hear this new approach to the banjo. It was just stuff that was showing up in music magazines. Weird single note tab files with no lyrics.
Keep in mind that before the Internet we had to rely on print media. There was no way to easily get sound files out to people so writers were free to claim pretty much anything they wanted about their musical accomplishments. All of a sudden newsletters and magazines were claiming that melodic clawhammer - soon later shortened to just plain old clawhammer - was the be-all end-all of old time music.
I can remember as a kid sitting with the latest melodic clawhammer tab and wondering how on earth this could work. It was all single notes. Where was the drive?
Compare this clip of Ken Pearlman to the earlier videos of Grandpa Jones and Stringbean. Ken is down-picking just like in frailing - but the results are wildly different. Also take note of how Ken handles himself on stage.
I am not saying that Ken's playing or performance is good or bad. That is up for you to decide for yourself. The thing I want you to notice is the differences in the music and the demeanor.
When clawhammer became a separate banjo subculture there were some pretty huge changes in how some people approached old time banjo - but it was all optional. If you didn't want to play fiddle tunes all you had to do was find a jam session than played music you liked. No big deal.
In the late 1990's internet banjo forums happened and suddenly the differences between frailing and clawhammer banjo became a very big deal indeed to some people.
The Internet gave musicians a worldwide forum. In some ways that's a good thing - but in other ways it changed the dynamics of teaching. When I was a kid the only players I was exposed to were the people I met in and around Philadelphia. I sat knee-to-knee with them and knew from that experience who could actually play and who was faking it. When the Internet started jumping banjo students were suddenly confronted with chatrooms where - like print media - there was only text. Sound files were still fairly rare in the late 90's so there was no way to know if somebody was giving good or bad advice.
For example: Bill Rogers started attacking my music, teaching methods and my personality back in the late 90's. To this day he still pops up to dismiss my work in forums. After more than fifteen years of abuse I finally got to hear and see the guy play and . . . well . . .
In addition to people pretending to be banjo players, the chatroom thing took the banjo out of context. Instead of sitting with your banjo talking to another person with a banjo and actually playing through ideas and examples web-based discussion was all abstract. There was no musical interaction in the conversation so topics could be stretched, twisted and bent to surreal extremes. How well you played mattered less than how well you could write. As a result banjo history got rewritten on the fly by people who by and large didn't know what they were talking about.
For example, twenty years ago some banjo players played over the fretboard and some didn't. After the banjo forums talked things over for a few years suddenly ALL banjo players are expected to play over the fretboard - and to make things even crazier the "frailing scoop" was invented to facilitate the technique.
The creepy thing about the frailing scoop is that in addition to being unnecessary it limits a banjo student's viewpoint of how to get tone out of a banjo. The simple fact is that you will get a huge difference in tone if you strike the strings moving from right next to the bridge to over the fretboard. The scoop makes people think that only one tonal choice is available - and that limits how far a student can progress.
In the midst of all of the discussing, debating and ranting the idea of clawhammer as a separate approach to the banjo came up again. In the abstract, banjo-free, discussion environment people started saying that the basic frailing strum was somehow limiting. They couldn't say exactly how it was limiting - but the general agreement was that it had to be because it was just too strummy.
So now the lines were clearly drawn: clawhammer was down picking single notes played by the fingernail and thumb and frailing was chord strumming.
As The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjo started being read by more and more people the attempts to paint frailing as simplistic fumbling got more and more bizarre and desperate.Bump dit-ty, the rhythmic count I used to help students get the quarter note and two eighth note rhythm of frailing was dumbed-down to bumditty. Later on quarter notes were deemed too unwieldy and beginners were told that the pattern was an eighth note, an eighth note rest and then two more eighth notes.
Like the old saying goes, If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with . . .
Here is an example of Dan Levenson using the single-note-only approach with You Are My Sunshine. Notice that he is creating a sort of rippling pattern by dropping his thumb (and yes I do teach drop-thumbing!)
Now compare that rendition of the song with this one by Tim in Korea. In the sound file Tim is playing banjo and a friend who had only been playing a few months is on the guitar:
http://tangiersound.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/sunshine7-14-2009-1.mp3
Again, I am not saying that Dan's playing or performance is good or bad. That is up for you to decide for yourself. The thing I want you to notice is the differences in the two. Can you hear how the chord strum in the basic frailing motion is carrying the rhythm along?
Also . . . ask yourself who sounds like he is having more fun.
In the end, clawhammer and frailing are just words. The art of old time banjo is all about variety. Just as a door works by being sometimes open and sometimes closed, in old-time banjo sometimes you pick single notes and sometimes you strum chords. To make it an either/or choice misses the whole point of the craft.
Also, keep in mind that being part of a group of like-minded people can close you off to new avenues of discovery. Thinking of yourself as a clawhammer banjo player or a frailing banjo player or an old-time banjo player limits you to playing that particular role. In the end we are supposed to be musicians - and all musicians regardless of background or lifestyle are our brothers and sisters through the shared language of music.
The craft of music is not supposed to define us - it's supposed to shape us. Forget about definitions and focus on refining your skills - and, most of all, sharing the joy of playing the banjo.
Response to the Clawhammer vs Frailing post has been largely positive, but there have been a few odd reactions that I feel compelled to respond to.
In the comments Greg McCracken (who has only commented once before) wrote:
So, Patrick, I love and respect your work for music. But I want to make sure that these conversations don’t become too one sided
Greg, this is a personal weblog and the post was written from my personal experience and perspective. Given that sites where people "converse" like the Banjo Hangout have decided to ban both my father and myself it's a bit disingenuous to accuse us of being one-sided.
Yes, the Hangout banned Dear Old Dad. Now, stop and ask yourself; who would kick somebody like Dear Old Dad to the curb?
So, just to make it clear: dailyfrail.com is not a forum. It is a personal weblog. If you don't like what I post here you are free to go somewhere else. Start your own blog.
On top of accusations of being one-sided on a personal blog post, there has been some whining about the videos I used in the post. Apparently people think I chose bad videos to disgrace the performers in question.
The truth is that the Ken Perlman video was the most recent clip I could find. I did some searching this morning and could not find a video where Ken was behaving any differently on stage.
I chose Dan Levenson's video because he was playing a folk song that a lot of you are already playing and singing. I could have chosen any of his other videos to make the same point.
If you see something lacking in the performances that has nothing to do with me. These guys call themselves professionals. They take a lot of money from banjo students. Dan was comfortable posting his video on his own web page and the more information box on the Ken Pearlman video bills him as, "The world's finest clawhammer banjo player". It's not my fault if people viewing the videos are unimpressed by their work. I was simply posting examples from two modern teachers.
Last, but not least, some of you didn't like that I pointed out that Stringbean and Grandpa Jones looked like they were having more fun. Apparently looking like you are passing a peach pit is required for serious music. I for one would rather master my craft to a point where I take joy in the entire process. Playing, teaching, learning and all the rest as an expression of joy.
But that, ladies and gentlemen, is just my opinion.
One of the criticisms and complaints Dear Old Dad hear constantly from banjo students (and this gets thrown at us by quite a few would-be teachers) is that basic frailing banjo is not exciting. Basically the average person wants to take up a craft and somehow instantly be tearing up the five string banjo with dazzling fretboard acrobatics. It's human nature to want a shortcut. We want it now. We want to be banjo players rather than become banjo players.
I want you to watch two video files with me. In this first clip we have Grandmaster Remy Presas giving a knife fighting workshop. Remy was my teacher and he was a pretty cool guy.
Now compare what you saw in the video above with this collection of auditions for a karate studio commercial:
Both clips are fun to watch for different reasons. In one case we have a legendary fighter sharing insights into his craft. In the other we have people faking it hoping to be in a TV commercial. The guys in the second clip are trying really hard - so hard that it's actually funny - but they cannot carry themselves or move the same way as a person who has been refining his skills for most of his or her life.
Nobody is born knowing how to fight, play the banjo, hammer iron on a forge or anything else. Most of us know this, but we constantly fall back on the idea of talent - that the universe randomly hands out free passes in some skills to a chosen few - because the reality of learning through hard work and soul searching is so mundane and disappointing. Let's face it, when we start out with an instrument like the banjo there is almost always a moment where we have the crushing realization that The Grand Ole Opry is a long way away.
Back in 2006 the New York Times Magazine ran an excellent article on the release of Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. I had to laugh at how shocked people were that a bunch of scientists were trying to assure the general public that ability came from deliberate practice rather than genetics or a mystical draw of the cards.
Their work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.
Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.
Notice that the study points out the difference between repetition and deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
When I started out in karate my instructors had me spend hours in a horse stance throwing blocks and punches over and over again. At first I was just moving my arms, but then I was told, ordered, really, to visualize the strike coming at me and to block through my opponent's arm. From there I was taught to think of the moves I was executing as one step in a process. I'll never forget Ed Parker looming over me with the question, "You have blocked the punch, but what comes next?" It wasn't enough just to move, I was expected to learn how think about what comes next as a set of endless variables.
At first thinking of all those variables was terrifying because every solution to a scenario always ended up with a new response from my opponent. In and out of the ring I was almost paralyzed because it seemed I was lost in a sea of possibilities. Takuan Sōhō explains this process in a letter with the slightly over-serious title, The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom.
As the beginner knows nothing about either his body posture or the positioning of his sword, neither does his mind stop anywhere within him. If a man strikes at him with the sword, he simply meets the attack without anything in mind.
As he studies various things and is taught the diverse ways of how to take a stance, the manner of grasping his sword and where to put his mind, his mind stops in many places. Now if he wants to strike at an opponent, he is extraordinarily discomforted. Later, as days pass and time piles up, in accordance with his practice, neither the postures of his body nor the ways of grasping the sword are weighed in his mind. His mind simply becomes as it was in the beginning when he knew nothing and had yet to be taught anything at all.
In this one sees the sense of the beginning being the same as the end, as when one counts from one to ten, and the first and last numbers become adjacent.
Notice that Takuan compares getting comfortable with the basics as a weight being lifted from the mind. That is an important concept because when we first start out we are unaware of the work involved and so we take up the task easily. For example, when you hand you banjo to a child he or she will happily bang on the strings without a care in the world. Ask an adult banjo student to strike the third string and suddenly everything becomes work. Serious work.
The end result of practice is to become so familiar with the motions and variables of a task until it starts taking on the aspects of an involuntary motion. Practice eventually allows us to go back to that childlike state where we act fearlessly. Working directly from the heart, easy in mind and spirit.
So when Dear Old Dad and I ask you to work on the basic frailing banjo strum (or other skills) we are not trying to limit you to an endless stream of bumditty banjo. We are simply presenting the building blocks of our craft. Our only goal is to give you information and support so that you can get to the point where you are walking your own students through the process.
A series of posts that started writing back in 2009 has generated quite a bit of controversy: The series was a reaction to the way various members of the banjo community were dismissing my work.
Some folks have a hard time understanding that this is a personal weblog and the posts were written from my personal experience and perspective. I have been getting a lot of notes telling me that to play their kind of music (insert a huge roll of the eyes here) I should be teaching double C tuning or some other nonsense.
I also get requests to play the politician. Fit in. Get along. Be reasonable.
To the folks who want me to play politics I have a short reply and a long reply.
My short reply is:
When you start kissing backsides you end up getting your face so dirty that nobody will ever want to kiss you.
My long reply says the same thing, but with a bit more back story.
Here we go:
I had a lot of musical adventures when I was supposed to be in school. At first my tendency for truancy got me into a lot of trouble, but after a while my teachers just sort of gave up and let me be. I was the kid who was always carrying a banjo or a guitar through the hallways - and I was also the kid who would just up and disappear as soon as nobody was looking.
things eventually got to the point where my principal stopped me in the hallway and asked me if I would be interested in buying a banjo. His grandmother had played in a band and he had inherited her instruments. He didn't know much about them, but mentioned that the banjo was an old Gibson.
The banjo turned out to be a nice late 20's 40-hole archtop Gibson Mastertone tenor. I bought it at a fair price and was thrilled to own such a cool old banjo. Dear Old Dad and I even bought T-shirts that had a reproduction of the Mastertone label. We talked about getting a 5-string neck made, but I loved the old thing so much that I wanted to play it as a tenor for a while.
At the time we were playing banjo in the Greater Overbrook String Band. As heavy as the Mastertone was, I was thrilled to march up Broad Street strumming it next to my dad.
At that time we were just starting to explore the world of folk music. We had some trouble fitting in at bluegrass and modern old time (back then it was called old-timey in a lot of places - and the argument about the difference between old time and old-timey could get vicious!) jam sessions.
At the bluegrass events we ran into a lot of mean drunks and a lot of strange old men who couldn't play for beans but would pontificate endlessly about how Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe were the only true sources of musical inspiration.
At the old time jams we ran into people who played from tunes lists to the point where everything was memorized. Follow the tab while you try really hard to look serious.
In both subcultures we were surprised to discover that the main emphasis was on things other than just making music. In order to fit into one of these groups you had to dress a certain way, play the right brand of instrument and basically follow the rest of the herd. Agree that Earl Scruggs was a "jenus" in the bluegrass crowd and when you were around the old time aficionados any song that was not on the pre-approved set list was not to be played or spoken of.
I was barfed on by a drunk at my first campfire bluegrass jam. The next day at a workshop a very famous bluegrass banjo teacher answered every one of my questions with, "Buy my book." That day ended with another legendary banjo picker dropping the f-bomb on me.
At my first old time music festival I had adults making fun of my banjo, received comments that my technique was too clean to be "real" old time banjo and I got dehydrated because the festival attendees were bathing in the only source of drinking water.
It was confusing and heartbreaking because I loved music more than anything in the world, but every time I ran into people from the bluegrass or old time music communities I found myself being told that I was not welcome. When I bought the Mastertone I thought that there was a chance that I would maybe be welcome now that I had a wonderful banjo.
Turned out that the old Gibson just made everything worse. At old time jams I was met with disapproving looks because it was a tenor and at bluegrass events people would just get angry at the sight of it. I kept having old guys demand that I pull the resonator off so they could see the Mastertone label - and once they saw it was real they would complain that I was wasting the instrument playing it as a tenor.
Dear Old Dad and I decided to just ignore the two scenes. We had found ourselves welcome at modern folk music events and at the fiddler's conventions throughout Pennsylvania I had met a gang of cool old dudes who had been playing since the 20's and were thrilled to have me around.
The only problem was that bluegrass and old time players were everywhere. Dear Old Dad used to say it was like kitty litter because, "that stuff gets everywhere." While I stopped trying to fit into either genre of jam session the players from both camps would come stomping up to wherever I was playing and start giving me a hard time. The cool old dudes would back me up, but they weren't always around. If I left them to grab a soda or get something from my car I would find myself being confronted.
One day at a festival I was at my dad's truck gathering up some stuff and one of the local bluegrass pickers strutted up and started screaming at me about how I didn't deserve that old Gibson. He screamed until he was red in the face and the veins stuck out in his neck. It was ugly, it was terrifying and it upset me enough that I almost gave up playing altogether.
At our next festival I walked up to a dealer, handed him my Mastertone and told him to give me a five-string in trade. I walked away with a nice five-string knowing that I was taking a beating on the deal.
To this day I still regret parting with that banjo. I loved the way it played. I loved owning a banjo that was old and special. I just couldn't stand the envy and abuse I was subjected to whenever I opened the case.
In the end I had to pretty much turn my back on both the old time and bluegrass scenes. I was welcome everywhere but the two communities that were pretty much built around the banjo. Even today, after introducing literally tens of thousands of people around the world to the five-string banjo I am still an outcast in those scenes. Dear Old Dad and I just tell each other, "Noli nothis permittere te terere" (do not let the bastards get you down).
Over the years I started getting good. After a few more years all I had to do to shut up my critics was pick up my instruments and start playing. As time went on even the bickering on the Internet went away.
My father likes to point out that by standing on my own I was able to avoid being lost in a sea of sound-alikes. I was free to follow my own creative instincts and find my own voice.
Ten years ago the idea of frailing bluegrass tunes or using a slide were thought of as impossible in the banjo communities but my workshops on both subjects have so many people doing nowadays that it is no big deal to see somebody f rail Foggy Mountain Fakedown or knock out some bottleneck blues.
Looking back, the places where I was made welcome were pretty amazing. Musicians like Elizabeth Cotten and Peggy Seeger were willing to spend a moment going over the basics of frailing banjo. The old guitar players I met were always quick with advice and slow to criticize.
I will never forget the day old Tiny, a giant of a man who played a 1928 National guitar he had bought back when it new (I dedicated The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjo to Tiny), walked up to me with a pin advertising Lyons Park Fiddle Festival saying, "Here. Put this on. You are one of us now!"
As you grow and develop as an artist people are going to give you a hard time about truly stupid things. People will tell you that you are playing the wrong instrument with the wrong technique in the wrong tuning. People will try very hard to knock you down to make themselves feel tall. People will laugh and sneer and complain and generally do everything in their power to make you miserable.
The reasoning behind their actions is easy to understand. Everybody wants to be a banjo player (or a guitar player, or a rodeo clown or a football hero - name a field of expertise and this will fit), but most folks give up when they realize the actual work involved to become a banjo player. So they wrap themselves up in the trappings of the craft and snark at the rest of the world.
The trouble is, understanding doesn't make it easier to deal with being yelled at or cursed or having a big fat redneck knock you down with your banjo in your hands. No amount of understanding can make that hurt easier to bear, but the amazing thing about our craft is that we can take that hurt and use it as fuel to build something positive.
I think in order to get good at anything you have to be willing to stand on your own and discover your craft on your own terms. A teacher such as myself can provide the basic skills, but it is up to the individual to blaze his or her own trail.
If you work hard enough -and get good enough - the armchair generals and critics will eventually leave you alone in favor of weaker prey. When that happens be willing to forgive them, but don't cut them too much slack until they cowboy up and actually acquire some chops. Otherwise you run the risk of creating a whole new culture club that will be used to beat a young picker about the head and shoulders.