SOONER RATHER THAN LATER you’ll come across a song you don’t know or that your’e hearing for the first time, so what do you do? It’s easy - don’t play, listen! Get a copy of it either by carrying a tape recorder around or finding the source. Ask someone who does know it to block out the chords for you - bluegrass people are usually extremely friendly and helpful. If you heard the song for the first time on Friday night then, under ‘Steve Kaufman’s 20-minute Rule’ “you should be able to jam in by Sunday, or next week or next month.”

I’ve had the good fortune to jam in with The Greenbriar Boys, Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, The Seldom Scene and many others.

That’s how I learned to play - me and the turntable (vinyl days!), the tape recorder and Bert Weedon’s Play In A Day, and listening. Learn the rules then put your own interpretation on them. But above all listen carefully.

Somebody told me recently, at a session, that when we played Jimmy Brown the Newsboy and I capo’d way up the guitar neck to play C-shapes that somebody had told him that Flatt & Scruggs did it that way. I was feeling quite smug because I knew it 30 years ago - by listening.

Learning is a series of plateaux. You realise that you know a little, then nothing seems to happen for ages, then suddenly you realise you know a bit more and so it goes on.

Finally, practise, practise, practise. As an example of what can be achieved I remember the early days of the Cambridge Folk Festival (before ‘Edale’) a certain young man who was always playing on the edge of every picking session there was - seemingly 24 hours a day. His name is Chris Moreton....

Updated 23rd Jan 1999