Now on the other hand, sometimes, if you are lucky, a special group of pickers gets together where the jam session just clicks and the experience rises to an incredible groove. The groove is sort of a holy grail in our music – it can be very elusive and hard to achieve but it is something that each and every one of us is trying for in our performances. Today in our blog, Key of Bluegrass, we are going to take a closer look at the musical elements that conspire to produce a good groove.
For now, we are going to stick with the basics - the fundamental elements of groove. Perhaps the most important “basic” in achieving the groove is good timing. To net it out, accurate timing is when everyone stays fully aligned to the same 'beat' - not speeding up or slowing down. As Ralph Stanley once said, “if you ain’t got timing you ain’t got nothin’!” And if you think the timing is off, just blame the bass player (no matter what, this ploy will always work and everyone will agree with you, trust me). Actually, the subject of timing and syncopation and manipulating the beat is far more complex than one might imagine - there are lots of subtleties to be explored in future Key of Bluegrass blog posts.
Being in tune is, of course important. If people are not quite in tune then obviously the resulting music won't sound very good and there will be no point in searching for any kind of groove. With today’s high tech tuners, there is simply no excuse for being out of tune but it can and does happen. Negative things occur when people aren't in tune. Nobody knows exactly why the music seems to suck and people start blaming each other. Friendships are ruined; marriages end, and people can die. Just kidding about the people dying.
Another important basic is getting great tone out of your instrument. Professional pickers tend to always get excellent tone and this is a function of mastering all kinds of complex factors such as pick angle, attack speeds and good right hand technique - these things can take a lifetime to perfect. However, even if you haven't got your 10,000 hours in on your instrument yet, one of the most common and easily fixable things that can ruin good tone is always playing as-loud-as-you-possibly-can. This will tend to make one's performance choppy and inconsistent with hard-to-execute phrases becoming impossible to perform. Unless of course you are Arnold Schwarzenegger with a pick and remembered to take your steroid pill. Matching your volume to the capabilities of your instrument is easy to do and will pay big dividends in your next jam session.
One other observation regarding volume: when one person is playing too loudly, the tendency is for everyone else in the session or performance to raise his or her volume as well. Pretty soon, the entire group is playing at full volume, and with the subsequent degradation of tone, the groove will have left the building. When people in the audience start turning down their hearing aids, it is probably a bad sign. This volume "war" can be avoided by keeping loudness at a reasonable level.
Furthermore, playing at moderate loudness allows one to emphasize particular notes and phrases by temporarily increasing or decreasing volume. This will add important dynamics to your performance - if you are taking a break and already playing at full volume and want to add some drama to your already excellent series of notes, it is impossible to do. This can be highly frustrating and lead to mental health issues.
Finally, the “control of volume” factor operates at the ensemble level as well - excellent band-level dynamics is often a characteristic of a great performance and can impart expressive feeling to the music. People in the audience will weep out loud and roll in the aisles with emotion and your banjo player will be moved to tears. Good thing his “parts banjo” is made of stainless steel and won’t rust. With everyone in the jam playing at full volume like they usually do, this wonderful opportunity to make the world of bluegrass a better place is missed.
Next time we will delve into some of the subtleties of timing and syncopation.
Keep on pickin’!
Jeff
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