As a longtime bluegrass musician. There's some great advice here. Bottom line is that if you wanna be good you gotta put in the work. It's A LOT of work. And much of that work is exploring many of the things that are listed as "bad" advice. Scales. Melody. Etc. You gotta work on it all. Tony Rice was a master of playing the melody even tho he soloed pretty wildly a lot of times. It ain't easy people!
Marcel, you are a very good teacher! Thank you sir! Billy Strings brought me to bluegrass and now I’m working from a rock/blues background into bluegrass. Your videos are really helping.
I'm an Irish session player (close cousin to bluegrass). Can't tell you how many times in the beginning I heard the advice "Don't play if you don't know the tune." I ignored it and sat in and learned, coming in when I felt comfortable, stepping out when I needed to watch. Your advice about "bad advice" is good advice!! Thanks.
OMG that's awful. I was in a music club for years--for Appalachian dulcimer--and the advice was always "Definitely play if you don't know the tune". The understanding was that you'd only be able to hit a note here and there at first, but you'd hit a few more each time until you could play the tune.
As another Irish session player, I feel moved to expound upon this. In an old-time or bluegrass context, I think this approach is definitely appropriate and generally well received. Both of those styles are going to have more of an opportunity for the musician who doesn't know the song or the tune to grab it. But in an Irish session, typically a tune gets played 3 or so times before moving to another tune entirely. So unless you have very good ears, or unless your attempts at grabbing the tune are very quiet, you are going to really get in the way of the other musicians who know the tune. I received the exact same advice when I started playing Irish (and also ignored it), and I had someone pull me aside after a few sessions of doing this and explain that the etiquette for Irish was different than old-time music, and my attempts to find the melody during the session were not being well received. Don't be this guy! I had to learn this lesson through embarrassing myself. Even backers in my opinion should be hesitant to play unless they really have a good grasp on the tune. I found much more success after I started getting out a tape recorder, learning the tune at home and coming back the next time ready to play it. In bluegrass, you typically are playing chords and taking breaks over vocal melodies, and everyone gets a chance to play, if you screw up when you play your solo, nobody really cares, because the focus is just on one performer at a time. But in Irish, the objective is for everyone to play as tight of a unison as possible, folks fumbling at the tune while the others are playing really does bring down the music. In old-time, the tune gets played maybe 15-20 times, so you will have much more of an opportunity to learn the tune by the time its over. Just my two cents as a guy who came to Irish from old-time and had to really learn how to be mindful about what I did when tunes that I didn't know came up to be played.
Marcel, I love your lessons, your sense of humor, but most important, your fund of knowledge and teaching skills. For a recently retired 70-year-old hacker now with time on my hands and trying to improve my guitar skills (bluegrass and blues mostly), I listen to you and it has helped. Thanks.
Very helpful - thanks. It is so easy to get intimidated while playing with folks you don't know and then to go home and beat oneself up while practicing.
I love your down to earth approach in the fast forward world of bluegrass! If your parents never played this stuff, but you did inherate the odd appreciation somehow, you need someone to take a step back and not judge. I salute you for that! I consider myself a slow learner. But I will get there!
Hexatonic scales happen in fiddle tunes most often.They are based on triad pairs and provide authentic colour. Running the same seven note mode or diatonic scale and randomly mixing blues is the bane of tunes.
For Red Haired Boy there are two six note scales used. Firstly there is the one which has the triad from the Tonic and a minor from a whole step above so in G that would be GBD plus ACE or GABCDE, you can look at this as a G major pentatonic plus a fourth as a passing note. The mixolydian sound of the flat seventh is actually WITHHELD until the chord of the flat seventh (that is F in the key of G) for that part of the melody the six note scale is a G triad plus an F triad, that is GABCDF or the mixolydian scale minus the sixth (E). The chord on the Dominant which is used to connect the b7chord to the tonic (ie F,D7/F#,G) is not reflected in the melody and should be considered a chromatic passing chord which takes us out of the mode but without changing the melodic material (there are not Fsharps in the melody). In fact there are no Fs, natural or sharp, until the B part of the tune where the F note appears supported by an F triad, this is common in the Scottish tradition where the defining note is withheld until the B part of the tune (sometimes in tunes like Flower of Scotland the note is withheld until the final measure making it's appearance super telling ). The soloist had best avoid F till then in his solo. Six note scales are where it is at for mislabelled 'modal' tunes based on Scottish and Irish traditions. Buy a book of traditional fiddle tunes and see how many have only six notes and are in fact NOT modal but bitonal or hexatonic. It's about ninety percent. Kinda laughable that people don't notice these things, they would if there wasn't a fake theory of music talking about modes out there sending everyone off in the wrong direction.
Just found your channel searching for Bryan Sutton lessons. Thank You so much. I have been playing bluegrass since I was a kid but you're helping me tremendously with your ability to articulate the ideas and concepts so well!
wow !!! thank you thank you thank you ....you have a gift brother you r a real teacher most videos just make me mad they talk to fucking much you get to the point dont stop ..its new years eve and im sitting alone with my guitar but you helped me get over a BIG hump happy 2019
Very Cool Marcel! Have you ever done a video along these lines demonstrating how you hold the pick, how you settled on he current fav pick (size, thickness, etc.) and how to eliminate tension in the picking hand? I'd love to see a video with that info. Thanks!
Thanks for the wonderful videos and teaching you do! After a few failed attempts over the years at learning, and feeling Bluegrass, I'm finally getting somewhere thanks to you! I've played and performed for many years in different genres of music. Always loved listening to Bluegrass, and finally enjoying playing some...... thanks!
7’s and other chords with odd numbers (and while we’re at it the maligned diminished ) used as a shape in the solo also very cool as a partial with some open strings.
You are a blessing. I have been trying to play bluegrass for a couple years now. I come from playing blues mostly with almost no theory knowledge. These videos I think will help me tremendously. I’m taking notes!
Good advice would be, outline the harmony, which the melody WILL do. Here is some CLASSIC bad advice. 'Here is a Tony Rice lick, play it whenever and hope for the best.....
I love this!!.. jam jitters!!!... the fear of playing .. it’s a tremendous topic on Mandolin Cafe!!.. some folks wrote in that they got to the door of the jam and had to turn around and go to their car and head home..do more on this topic.. I myself have done that.. practiced the crap out of my mando and got ready to leave and talked myself out of it!!.. it’s a (pardon this) crazy psychology!!!
If you can play basic rhythm and are willing to sing, then learn some songs. Choose the right key for your voice. In every jam that I have ever been to, somebody who sings is always more of a jam hero than any hot lickin' instrumental hotshot. You don't even have to be a good singer - just be smiling. No more fear.
I do play scales sometimes but mostly for practice picking and coordinating right and left hand, because I don't have to think about everything at once. And I don't do it a lot. I'm trying to retrain myself after decades of playing rhythm guitar for square-dance bands, which is a lot of heavy downstrokes and a few basic runs. (Hilariously, you'll be a better backup guitarist, too, if you do some flatpicking practice, but we didn't have a bass and dance fiddlers are insanely fast so I never caught up.)
This video is from before I put out the album with the theme song you know on it! This track is an instrumental I wrote called Pencil Pusher, we played it at our last lesson together!
I was told lefties can never learn to play right handed. That’s not true! I’m left handed but we had no left handed instruments laying around the house when I was a kid. So decades later I couldn’t play left handed if I tried 😁 Hopefully that is a helpful tip for a beginning bluegrass guitar player.
As a longtime bluegrass musician. There's some great advice here. Bottom line is that if you wanna be good you gotta put in the work. It's A LOT of work. And much of that work is exploring many of the things that are listed as "bad" advice. Scales. Melody. Etc. You gotta work on it all. Tony Rice was a master of playing the melody even tho he soloed pretty wildly a lot of times. It ain't easy people!
Marcel, you are a very good teacher! Thank you sir! Billy Strings brought me to bluegrass and now I’m working from a rock/blues background into bluegrass. Your videos are really helping.
I'm an Irish session player (close cousin to bluegrass). Can't tell you how many times in the beginning I heard the advice "Don't play if you don't know the tune." I ignored it and sat in and learned, coming in when I felt comfortable, stepping out when I needed to watch. Your advice about "bad advice" is good advice!! Thanks.
OMG that's awful. I was in a music club for years--for Appalachian dulcimer--and the advice was always "Definitely play if you don't know the tune". The understanding was that you'd only be able to hit a note here and there at first, but you'd hit a few more each time until you could play the tune.
As another Irish session player, I feel moved to expound upon this. In an old-time or bluegrass context, I think this approach is definitely appropriate and generally well received. Both of those styles are going to have more of an opportunity for the musician who doesn't know the song or the tune to grab it.
But in an Irish session, typically a tune gets played 3 or so times before moving to another tune entirely. So unless you have very good ears, or unless your attempts at grabbing the tune are very quiet, you are going to really get in the way of the other musicians who know the tune. I received the exact same advice when I started playing Irish (and also ignored it), and I had someone pull me aside after a few sessions of doing this and explain that the etiquette for Irish was different than old-time music, and my attempts to find the melody during the session were not being well received. Don't be this guy! I had to learn this lesson through embarrassing myself. Even backers in my opinion should be hesitant to play unless they really have a good grasp on the tune.
I found much more success after I started getting out a tape recorder, learning the tune at home and coming back the next time ready to play it. In bluegrass, you typically are playing chords and taking breaks over vocal melodies, and everyone gets a chance to play, if you screw up when you play your solo, nobody really cares, because the focus is just on one performer at a time.
But in Irish, the objective is for everyone to play as tight of a unison as possible, folks fumbling at the tune while the others are playing really does bring down the music. In old-time, the tune gets played maybe 15-20 times, so you will have much more of an opportunity to learn the tune by the time its over.
Just my two cents as a guy who came to Irish from old-time and had to really learn how to be mindful about what I did when tunes that I didn't know came up to be played.
Marcel, I love your lessons, your sense of humor, but most important, your fund of knowledge and teaching skills. For a recently retired 70-year-old hacker now with time on my hands and trying to improve my guitar skills (bluegrass and blues mostly), I listen to you and it has helped. Thanks.
Very helpful - thanks.
It is so easy to get intimidated while playing with folks you don't know and then to go home and beat oneself up while practicing.
I know this video is like a year and a half old, but just putting it out there, I'd still love those dobro videos!
5:50 BOOM!!! There's the tip I've been searching for for 20 years!!! Thank You.
"BOOM!" LOL earth shattering😁
I love your down to earth approach in the fast forward world of bluegrass! If your parents never played this stuff, but you did inherate the odd appreciation somehow, you need someone to take a step back and not judge. I salute you for that! I consider myself a slow learner. But I will get there!
telling mandolinists with stiff wrists to pick without moving their arm or bending the picking wrist
You a fine instructor Marcel. Also enjoyed playing with you last Wed and hope you keep coming.
Nice to hear some relaxed, straightforward words with the intent of encouraging folk to enjoy making music.
Hexatonic scales happen in fiddle tunes most often.They are based on triad pairs and provide authentic colour. Running the same seven note mode or diatonic scale and randomly mixing blues is the bane of tunes.
For Red Haired Boy there are two six note scales used. Firstly there is the one which has the triad from the Tonic and a minor from a whole step above so in G that would be GBD plus ACE or GABCDE, you can look at this as a G major pentatonic plus a fourth as a passing note. The mixolydian sound of the flat seventh is actually WITHHELD until the chord of the flat seventh (that is F in the key of G) for that part of the melody the six note scale is a G triad plus an F triad, that is GABCDF or the mixolydian scale minus the sixth (E). The chord on the Dominant which is used to connect the b7chord to the tonic (ie F,D7/F#,G) is not reflected in the melody and should be considered a chromatic passing chord which takes us out of the mode but without changing the melodic material (there are not Fsharps in the melody). In fact there are no Fs, natural or sharp, until the B part of the tune where the F note appears supported by an F triad, this is common in the Scottish tradition where the defining note is withheld until the B part of the tune (sometimes in tunes like Flower of Scotland the note is withheld until the final measure making it's appearance super telling ). The soloist had best avoid F till then in his solo. Six note scales are where it is at for mislabelled 'modal' tunes based on Scottish and Irish traditions. Buy a book of traditional fiddle tunes and see how many have only six notes and are in fact NOT modal but bitonal or hexatonic. It's about ninety percent. Kinda laughable that people don't notice these things, they would if there wasn't a fake theory of music talking about modes out there sending everyone off in the wrong direction.
@@davidfreel1451 and one can play great breaks on fiddle tunes without knowing or caring about anything your long winded post said.
@@davidfreel1451 whhhhhyyyyy?
@@paulawhtkr001 Ask your mother.
Just found your channel searching for Bryan Sutton lessons. Thank You so much. I have been playing bluegrass since I was a kid but you're helping me tremendously with your ability to articulate the ideas and concepts so well!
wow !!! thank you thank you thank you ....you have a gift brother you r a real teacher most videos just make me mad they talk to fucking much you get to the point dont stop ..its new years eve and im sitting alone with my guitar but you helped me get over a BIG hump happy 2019
Very Cool Marcel! Have you ever done a video along these lines demonstrating how you hold the pick, how you settled on he current fav pick (size, thickness, etc.) and how to eliminate tension in the picking hand? I'd love to see a video with that info. Thanks!
Thanks for the wonderful videos and teaching you do! After a few failed attempts over the years at learning, and feeling Bluegrass, I'm finally getting somewhere thanks to you! I've played and performed for many years in different genres of music. Always loved listening to Bluegrass, and finally enjoying playing some...... thanks!
7’s and other chords with odd numbers (and while we’re at it the maligned diminished ) used as a shape in the solo also very cool as a partial with some open strings.
You are a blessing. I have been trying to play bluegrass for a couple years now. I come from playing blues mostly with almost no theory knowledge. These videos I think will help me tremendously. I’m taking notes!
Good advice would be, outline the harmony, which the melody WILL do. Here is some CLASSIC bad advice. 'Here is a Tony Rice lick, play it whenever and hope for the best.....
Thanks for posting this very positive approach to teaching.
Watching this when you have 30k subs, and you're celebrating your 1k subs, good for you brotha!
Love your videos man.
Bluegrass is my roots. Looking forward to gaining some traction.
I love this!!.. jam jitters!!!... the fear of playing .. it’s a tremendous topic on Mandolin Cafe!!.. some folks wrote in that they got to the door of the jam and had to turn around and go to their car and head home..do more on this topic.. I myself have done that.. practiced the crap out of my mando and got ready to leave and talked myself out of it!!.. it’s a (pardon this) crazy psychology!!!
If you can play basic rhythm and are willing to sing, then learn some songs. Choose the right key for your voice. In every jam that I have ever been to, somebody who sings is always more of a jam hero than any hot lickin' instrumental hotshot. You don't even have to be a good singer - just be smiling. No more fear.
Very grounded, and always well delivered. Love your teaching style...welll done !!!
where have u been all my life!!!! much obliged, brotha
Great info and delivery. Thanks for the content!
I do play scales sometimes but mostly for practice picking and coordinating right and left hand, because I don't have to think about everything at once. And I don't do it a lot. I'm trying to retrain myself after decades of playing rhythm guitar for square-dance bands, which is a lot of heavy downstrokes and a few basic runs. (Hilariously, you'll be a better backup guitarist, too, if you do some flatpicking practice, but we didn't have a bass and dance fiddlers are insanely fast so I never caught up.)
Dobro!!
Yes!!
Thanks for the vid! Your advice is much appreciated!
Love this video. It is right on.
Very useful advice. Thank you!
Marcel! Great video 😍 Thanks!
Thanks Marcel!
Well said and much needed!
This is excellent.
Wait... what was the intro song?
This video is from before I put out the album with the theme song you know on it! This track is an instrumental I wrote called Pencil Pusher, we played it at our last lesson together!
Lessons With Marcel yeah, I know. I thought it was funny we were talking about it and CZcams recommends this video and it’s the intro LOL
I’m a fiddle player… why am I watching this haha
More bad advice, demonstrating a pentatonic for G with the sixth and fourth on the first two beats (see above).
Bad beginner banjo advice but good intermediate/ advanced banjo advice:
Learn to play other keys without a capo.
just play faster
Fixing advice for bad bluegrass guitar players...😄
I was told lefties can never learn to play right handed. That’s not true! I’m left handed but we had no left handed instruments laying around the house when I was a kid. So decades later I couldn’t play left handed if I tried 😁 Hopefully that is a helpful tip for a beginning bluegrass guitar player.
First