Pete Seegar's is great - did you know he invented the terms 'hammer on' and 'pull off' in his seminal banjo instruction book? He was also one of the only two people to plead the first amendment rather than the fifth when hauled before the Unamerican Activities Committee.

From a purely musical point of view, I do prefer his bother Mike, especially as a banjo player:



Here he is backing up the the unparallelled Doc Watson:



And here's Mike and Pete together - got to hand it to Pete here, as mandolin is far from being his primary instrument:



And one last thing about Pete, is that he gave national exposure to geniuses such a Rev. Gary Davies on his TV show, as seen here:



The look of pleasure, fascination and respect on Pete Seegar's face is just perfect.

As the thread rerails itself with talk of plucky-plucky instruments, I'll just leave you with what I think is a marvellous example of an unclassical violin technique, demonstrated brilliantly by Casey Driessen.

If you need anyone to be rubbish at guitar during a jam session, you know where to find me.

Tempy wrote:

Re: fretting a bass note with a thumb: nothing wrong with it, I do it all the time, but not learning proper thumb placement means I now have a lot of trouble exerting pressure in some chord shapes due to sloppy technique. Better to learn some rigid ass form early on when you're rubbish, so that the good effects carry through.

I dunno, I like being a mess of poor form and bad habits. And I don't much care for closed-position chords (although I can quite easily switch my grip to play them if I feel like it). No one will ever hire me as a session musician for noodling around in in open C tuning while barely ever fretting more than three strings at once, but that's not why I picked up a guitar in the first place.

nick_md & Yossarian - cool, let the jam commence! Any other interested parties are welcome to join. Maybe we could do it round at mine as there are (at last count) around twenty stringed instruments in the house - lots of guitars (including couple of twelve strings and a couple of electrics) plus banjos, ukes, a mountain dulcimer, a mandola and a mandolin which I will strum very hard directly into Yossarian's ear for an hour.

So let me know when you're back nick, and we'll arrange. I'm happy to give finger picking tips (and actually Yoss is no slouch at the old picking these days as I discovered the other week). Here's me doing a bit of picking what I did made up myself.



Yoss can have the dungarees by the way, I'm just going to chew on a piece of straw.

Tempy wrote:

It's very neat, but no Stairway pls

But it's two SGs. I'd be happy with one, how amazing must two feel?

igorgetmeabrain wrote:

As the thread rerails itself with talk of plucky-plucky instruments, I'll just leave you with what I think is a marvellous example of an unclassical violin technique, demonstrated brilliantly by Casey Driessen.

This is fucking splendid.

Yossarian wrote:

But it's two SGs. I'd be happy with one, how amazing must two feel?

It's actually an electric mandolin coupled with an electric tenor guitar (four strings tuned in fifths like a banjo/mando). You just said something nice about mandolins.

krs wrote:

It's actually an electric mandolin coupled with an electric tenor guitar (four strings tuned in fifths like a banjo/mando). You just said something nice about mandolins.

Ha yes! I didn't count the machine heads! It's a bloody mandolin! Haha! That's why the scale-length is so short, of course. I didn't count the machine heads on the guitar either. I wouldn't mind a tenor guitar, but it's not high on my list of instruments to own. They're good for chords because you've got one finger per string. But I like open strings personally, being an open-tuning kind of guy. Lots of chords with flattened fifths and augmented what-have-yous ain't my bag. I only like jazz when other people play it.

The four long strings on a five string banjo are tuned differently - most commonly to DGBD (open G -almost all bluegrass and a lot of oldtime) CDBD ('old' standard or drop C) CGCD (double C - hundreds of oldtime fiddle tunes) or DGCD (saw-mill, mountain modal, mountain minor - for Dorian mode old time tunes, and sometimes used by bluegrass players to play an occasional 'spooky' tune.) There are loads of other tunings with awesome names - Cumberland Gap tuning, Graveyard tuning, Last Chance tuning. For some tunings the short string is tuned down from G to F or F# or E. I love 'em all.

Cool cool cool. I'm tied up this week and the weekend, but completely free from next Monday onward. I'm not working at the moment, just studying to my own schedule so I can do week days, or otherwise I can keep next weekend (26/27) free.

Yoss, you are welcome, if there's any time next week you can't do let me know.

Any other interested parties are also welcome.

I'm easy.

Works for me.

Nice one, this'll be fun! Nick, if you PM me your email address then I'll be in touch with you and Yoss via email nearer the time to confirm and arrange a time on that day and give directions to mine and stuff.

Anyone else reading this that would like to come and play stringed instruments with us (or even keyboards - I have a fully functioning bontempi electric organ that I found on the street that's actually quite a decent instrument) at my house in North London on the 25th is more than welcome to send me their email address too. No need to bring an instrument, as I have a house full of them - unless you want to play fiddle as I don't have one of those.

I've spent the day playing my Dad's hand-made guitar (which is older than I am I think) tuned to open G. It's a great tuning in which to wistfully improvise whilst sounding much better than you actually are. I'll show you guys how easy it is to sound cool on guitar in open G. That will be especially useful to you, Nick, as it's essentially the same as bluegrass banjo tuning. If you spend some time playing guitar out of open G you'll get a bit of a head-start for if/when you do get a banjo. Standard tuning is indispensable of course, as it allows for lots of different keys, but if your coming round my gaff be prepared to have me foist some alternative tuning stuff on you, I'm a bit of fanatic about it - something I inherited through my Dad via John Fahey, as well as directly from Fahey (via recordings and writings obviously).

'Morning is the end of idealism. [Skip] James has no guitar. Bill Barth goes to the car and gets his... Tuned in standard tuning. He does know standard a little. But not much.

Slowly, confidently, he changes the tuning. He's going back towards a - no, it can't be.

He's headed for open D minor. Primarily a theoretical tuning that no one in their right mind uses.

But there it is.

And he knows chord shapes in it too. Beautiful, terribly intense, hitherto-unknown chord positions. He sings and plays "Cherry Ball Blues," "Illinois Blues," and "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues." A few others.

James is a little rusty but that is all.

And he shows me how to make the chords. Great Sphinx chords. I could never have found them.

Then, abruptly, he shoves the guitar into me.

"Show me."

I have it all.'

- John Fahey, How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life. 2000.

Yeehaw, it's some Romanian Gypsy folk. It has violins and accordions but otherwise probably shouldn't be in this thread. Even so, these people play with such skill and joy that it makes me want to practice being a better human being as well as a better musician.