Instrumental Workshops - Hone Your Skills
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these items. Liza Jane - a Tablature for Banjo
BILL EVANS IS a well-known banjoist from the San Francisco Bay area of California. He plays a wide variety of styles, all very expertly. Bill is one-time banjoist for the Dry Branch Fire Squad and is presently their manager. He has tabbed out this break for us from his wonderful CD Native and Fine. It involves some tricky thumb work and is none too easy. But it sounds really good and is worth working at. Contact Bill Evans at 5801 Poinsett Ave., El Cerrito, CA 94530-1478 Write to: bevans@dnai.com IBMA At Large Board Member Love Please Come Home - A Tablature for Mandolin
THE TAB THIS TIME round features a particular bluegrass mandolin technique previewed in the high break to Rawhide (see NWBN Vol. 5 No 6). This involves playing a break 'up the neck' in a closed position. The song Love Please Come Home has been popular in jam sessions for years. Bill Monroe had it in his repertoire during the 70s, and it was also recorded by Reno and Smiley, I think at an earlier date. The break here is in the key of B. Hold down a B chop chord (which is just a long G chord moved up 4 frets). Your fingers will now be in the correct position to start playing the tab. Follow the fingering carefully as you learn this break. It may help you to think in terms of double stop positions related to the chord sequence. In bar 10 (counting from the double bar line) you have tostretch the second finger to get back to the B chop position from the E double stop. While this break is not for absolute beginners, it is a fairly straightforward arrangement which doesn't stray too far from the melody of the song. This kind of playing is bluegrass mandolin, Bill Monroe style, and very different from the melodic 'fiddle tune' approach. Like much else about bluegrass mandolin it seems to have been Bill Monroe's invention, I guess out of a need to be able to go into a mandolinbreak after playing rhythm on chop chords, particularly in the high keys (like B) in which he sang. For further help in playing in closed positions, I thoroughly recommend Niles Hokkanen's instruction book/cassette, Bluegrass Up The Neck, obtainable from Niles, PO Box 3585, Winchester, VA 22604, USA, or Write to Niles for full info at Mandoman@monumental.com My mandolin tablature book has another break for Love Please Come Home in the key ofB, at the bottom of the neck, in a contrasting arrangement. Available from me for £2 in UK, or $5 US cash overseas (prices include post and packing). Write: John Baldry, 38 Northgate Road, Northgate, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10-1YA, England; or Write to to: john.baldry@btinternet.com Recorded references:
Unfortunately these are all LPs, and I don't know what is available out there in the world of CD re-issues. The Bill Monroe recording should be on the Bear Family 4-CD set, 1970-1979. Please let NWBN know if you have any CD recorded references for Love Please Come Home, and I will pass them on next time around. Good news for beginning mandolin players! Some simple tabs for well-known tunes are available (in TabRite format!) from Roland White's website, also a lot of CDs for sale on which Roland appears. URL is : http://www.rolandwhite.com His site includes a link to the TabRite viewer. The tunes (which came to me in Word format when I downloaded them in a Zip) are: Clinch Mountain Backstep, Cripple Creek, Ragtime Annie, Salt Creek and Soldier's Joy. Looks a good freebie for any beginning bluegrass mandolin player - they are deliberately simple versions for teaching purposes.
John Baldry, Crawley. September 1999
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By Bill Evans
By John Baldry