Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Discuss the lesson: PickAlong: You Are My Sunshine

https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/pick-along-you-are-my-sunshine-intermediate

This is a must-know song around the pickin’ & family circles, so grab you a seat and pick along with me!

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Excellent! I think the song choice is perfect as the melody and tempo makes it very accessible. I also love showing the fills on various instruments and even discussing how the other instruments adjust for the fills. Adding a Lloyd Loar to the mix makes it phenomenal!

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As I listen to this more and more, I’m able to understand and appreciate more and more! This sounds like one of the “Must Know” basic lessons for a Guitar jam player. It has all the necessary ingredients (syncopation, chromatic, double-stops etc.) and incorporates all the techniques I guess (hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides etc.). Also, I guess you can gather a bag full of licks out of this! This has challenged me with a task to slow it down, break it up, and to pay attention to collect all the pieces to put it all back together to conquer it. Wonderful lesson! I guess my description is fair. Thanks a bunch, Ben!! :+1:

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I just recently completed building the break for this song in beginners mandolin. I am having difficulty making what I learned fit into the mandolin break space in this video. Any tips on learning how to make a break impromptu?

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@janice.b.kincaid, welcome to the forum!

This POV lesson is greatly improvised that it may not touch all the melody notes. And this is more like a backup tune to the melody. In guitar it starts like this, and I hardly see any resemblance to the melody in the beginning.

Also, unless both build-a-break and pick-along used the same rhythm pattern, the break may vary.

So, I’d say, listen to as many times as you can at normal speed to get the tune, then replay it at 50% tempo to catch it phrase by phrase to put it all together.

Is there a tab for this? New member/banjo player.

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This reads like me talking to myself after seeing the video for the first time haha. This one’s gonna be fun.

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:+1: I’m loving it! :slight_smile:

Hi @adcock.o51 Ollie the simple answer is NO! PickAlong lessons are indented to encourage you to find your own melody notes and improvise as the name suggests PickAlong.

@adcock.o51 there is a banjo lesson available for this song which might help you learn a break. It’s a Build-a-Break lesson, which is beneficial because it goes through the though process you can use to begin to develop your own breaks. But there is tab available through the build-a-break lesson.

Hope this helps!

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thankyou @rspillers Ryan I had forgotten about this lesson.

Hi @adcock.o51 Ollie there are TABs with this lesson
https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/you-are-my-sunshine-banjo-build-a-break-banjo-intermediate

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@adcock.o51 Welcome back to the forum! Yeah, the PickAlongs are meant to try and get you playing along. If you’re completely lost, you can use the lesson I’ve created that Archie linked. But after you get a hang of the melody, come back to PickAlong and try playing it and incorporate rolls and licks. Try not to just play a tabbed solo along with me, but feel it out and make mistakes and waller in it a while. The MP3 without the banjo is a great way to do this!

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