3rd Ear training song picked - Join me? /Ben's Jamming lesson

[Oldhat2]

I’ve settled on the next song I will work on via ear. It’s another Jerry Garcia/David Grisman tune…anyone care to join me?

Why this song? Plenty of room to breath on a lead break.

If you have been following Ben’s “jamming” lessons and are wanting an easy song to jam over then this is a nice slow one. It’s also a great reference to how powerful just a few notes can be in a measure. So for those starting to make up their own lines an wanting to start jamming I suggest you listen to how simple a lot of the lead lines are in this song. This is a good place to start learning how to jam.

Why I’ve picked a lot of Jerry Garcia songs? Jerry loved playing and following the chord (triads) changes all over the neck or the “CAGED System”. I might be working on this for ear training but it will also help solidify moving around the neck and following/playing out of chord shapes…and I need more practice on that also. I will try and play David’s mando break on the guitar too…at least as close as possible since I play guitar.

Jerry was the master at hitting the right notes at the right time during his lead break to complement the chord changes and/or the mode. That’s why Jerry Garcia was an exceptional musician - he simply hit the right notes at the right time to complement the chord he was playing over. Sounds simple enough but you must know your scales/chord shapes up and down the neck.

How I learn these “ear training songs”…

I grab the head phones, guitar, click play and then start getting the rhythm down. I don’t start working on the lead breaks until I think I know the song well enough to play the rhythm and sing the song (even though I am not a singer) w/out messing up. Once I get that down then I start working through the lead breaks. Once I start on the lead breaks/intro then it’s a method that goes one single note at a time.

Any takers on joining me? Has a nice blues/jazz feel.

Lead break starts around the 2:00 mark in vid.

[Simone]

Noodled with this some today… will definitely need to work it some more…

[Oldhat2]

I’m just now getting the chord progression down/embedded into this thick skull of mine and working on that little guitar intro. I think I’ll start picking some on it this eve.

I like this song a lot. Smooth.

[Simone]

It’ll prob be Monday before I can get back to this one… Got a busy day today & I’ve also gotta relearn a Bb song for church tomorrow morn that I’ve forgotten how to play ! But I like this as well - it’s one of those songs ya either like it or not, no in between.

[Oldhat2]

Ha ha…Oh no not Bb.

I pick in a jam from time to time with about 12-15 people and you should hear them all start cackling when someone says “this one is out of Bb”. I just grab a capo and keep my mouth shut and listen to the rest complain. Bb is somewhat popular in the bluegrass world…surprising how often it comes up.

[Oldhat2]

For those curious as to why I am picking mainly Jerry Garcia stuff…

Three years ago I had been learning fiddle tunes and licks - but I didn’t truly understand what made those really cool sounds sound cool. So I backed WAY up.

I pretty much abandoned licks and fiddle tunes. I told you I backed way up. I backed up all the way back to scale practice. Yep, running up and down scales for nearly two years while wrapping my head around the music theory I really needed to learn.

Once I had the scale shapes down I then revisited and shored-up the ability to chase chords up and down neck based on the CAGED system. Once I could see the strings, frets, scale and chord patterns in my head I then asked myself “now how do you make it sound good”.

Getting a break to sound good then sent me down a path towards focusing on the melody. Bluegrass improv around the melody is my goal. But as it is right now I still fight staying on the melody when focused with the speed of bluegrass when I try to “jam”.

About the only thing remotely close to bluegrass sound I could find that was really melody based was some of Jerry Garcia’s stuff. After all he was a banjo picker so now you all know where his sound comes from - yep, playing bluegrass banjo. The added bonus was that Jerry chased chords around the neck when he played lead breaks.

So at the end of the day I am practicing this stuff before making the next move up to traditional bluegrass - where I want to chase chords around the neck during “jamming”.

Jerry and David both don’t add a lot of clutter around the melody so that leaves space (time). Space to breath, space to think about what’s going on w/the melody, and space to check to make sure you’re picking pattern, tone, etc. are advancing…lots of things taken into consideration.

Bluegrass tends to toss out a mouthful on lead breaks and I’m not yet proficient enough to follow the melody and play that fast. So Jerry Garcia was just about the only option for me to back up to and play at a comfortable speed. Don’t get me wrong here, I can play fiddle tunes and practiced bluegrass breaks at a pretty decent speed…but I am in way over my head when it’s time improv around the melody at those speeds.

So at this level - Ear training, pick stroke work, moving chord shapes for lead breaks, focusing on the root when moving chord shapes up and down the neck. focusing on and understanding melody notes and how to move between them…so there’s a lot going on outside of simply “ear training” right now in this journey of mine back into bluegrass and fiddle tunes with the ability to jam around the melody at the clean break-neck speeds of some bluegrass…baby steps. I want it to be decent when I arrive there. Some of these stages take years to advance through.

Just doing my time.

[Oldhat2]

No progression here.

Right when I was really starting to get my groove I was shut down. Bad ear infection. I’ve never had an ear infection in my life. Don’t know how or why I got it? But let me tell you - it hurt.

After the headaches and earaches started I went to our local nurse practitioner that operates a small clinic on the outskirts of our small town. She’s great. Of course she chided me. Always does when I come draggin’ my wounded self in for some repairs. So she gave me an injection of prednisone (anti inflammatory steroid ) , an antibiotic injection, and a B-12 injection.

She told me that I’d have “hell to pay” later that night before meds kicked in. Ha! She was not kidding. I only yelled out in pain 3 times when it should have been 100 or so from 11:00 at night until I somehow finally fell asleep at 4:00 in the morn. Ear ache was BAD!

Woke up the next morning at 9:00 feeling about as good as I a had in 20 years! How I go from passing out a 4:00 from pain to waking up 5 hrs later feeling like a champ can only be attributed to modern medicine.

Of course an ear drum ruptured with the infection… and I need hearing aides anyway (combat vet 30% loss) so I can barely hear because the other ear is clogged up too.

With that said I did manage to spend and hr working on this. Still a long way to go. Ear infection may take 3-4 weeks to clear up.

[C-Stewart]

That sounds pretty much like my experience.
Tried fiddle tunes but did not really progress much until I learned to travel around the whole fretboard.
Now, -how tunes are put together makes more since and am starting to fit in fills better.

One thing that has helped recently is watching youtube so that i can actually see where someone is playing
I found a group I like called Foghorn String Band -One of the lead singers alternates between Guitar, Mandolin and Fiddle and has a nice not to complicated style.

[Simone]

No progression here either…

Hated to find out that you had the ole ice pick jamming you in the ear pain… it’s my best description having been there/done that before… glad it’s feeling better & hopefully clears up sooner than expected !

Here’s how I got derailed:

I was hoping to work on this this past Monday, and ended up with totally different plans. Drove 10 hours out of state Monday & returned Friday. Happy we were able to make the trip. Close family member is very ill (not covid). They are maintaining… for now.

Got home, found out we (my sons & I) were needed to play at church as the person who usually plays was going to be absent. Was able to get a song practiced late Saturday nite.

Sunday evening found a half wild kitten in the shop, proceeded to catch said kitten, & got the crap bitten out of my fretting index finger & the thumb of the pickin hand which promptly bled everywhere & swelled up to 3x its normal size… From a kitten, kind of embarrassing …! So I didn’t pick at all today… almost physically impossible. Can’t believe I didnt grab the woodstove leather gloves first, Duh!

I will get back to this song as soon as I can bend my fretting finger again! I’ve got other mando things I was working on that are now on hold too… so I come on here & see what everyone else us up to…

[Mark_Rocka]

My wife references the “3rd eye” from time to time, so I came in here anxious to learn about a “3rd ear.” Needless to say, I feel silly.

[JohnM]

I’d like to attempt too, I know it is going to be challenging. I guess I got the key, but due to blues feel its tricky.

“3rd eye”, was that about Lord Shiva or about “illuminated ones”.

[Oldhat2]

Oh no on the kitten. I have an old high school buddy that lives in Florida. His daughter has a pet racoon. He fed his outside dogs in the garage one eve, walked away, came back and the pet racoon was eating with the dogs. So he grabs the racoon (it gets fed other stuff) and the racoon ate him up alive. He slung it across the garage just to get it off of his arm it was tearing up. Told me he was flaming mad so he decided that the racoon had to go so he grabbed it’s cage in the house to pen it up and went back out to the garage to get the racoon (it was eating dog food again) so he grabbed it, it tore him up again but managed to get it in the cage. Goes in the house to tell his daughter that the racoon is “out of here come tomorrow”. Ha ha ha. His daughter had her racoon in her bedroom…it was a wild one!

He was a mess for at least a month. His arm got infected and nasty. I mean the thing ate him up on his arm. He told me he was a bloody mess.