Longway Bluegrass Music

The music that came to be known as Bluegrass evolved from the Old-Time Appalachian fiddle tradition. Old-time music was for dancing to, and relied on heavily-rhythmical playing and the use of drones to emphasise chords. Eventually, this changed as guitars and banjos came into popularity, and were used to provide rhythm and harmony. By the 1920’s, there was a great jazz boom in America, and many more sophisticated styles of fiddle playing developed, such as Joe Venuti’s swing fiddle. The mountain musicians heard this music over the radio, and from records, and gradually some of the elements of the swing and jazz found its way into the old-time repertoire.

A singer and mandolin player, Bill Monroe, had been brought up on old-time fiddling from his Uncle, Pen Vanderver, and had listened to black Blues musicians in his home town. When he formed his band, the Bluegrass Boys, he hand-picked musicians who would be able to incorporate these styles and merge them into a new kind of music. He succeeded in the mid-1940’s, and his style hit audiences across the states by radio, and they were almost an overnight sensation. Characterised by high, soaring vocals, fast-paced banjo, jazzy fiddling and staccato bluesy mandolin, all driven by rhythm guitar and bass, the music came to be called “Bluegrass”.

Bill Monroe demanded much of his band members, pushing them in technical abilities by playing in other keys than G,D and A. He would raise the pitch up to E, F, Bb and B, making it more difficult to play with open strings or drones. This had the effect of creating the need for double-stops on the fiddle.

The role of the bluegrass fiddler is to play lead breaks in a song, sometimes to kick-off the song, but usually to back up the other band members. Occasionally, the fiddle will play a showy fiddle tune, but even then, the banjo and mandolin will take turns during the tune. For backup work, ie, 80% of the time, the fiddle will either be playing sympathetic harmonies on long bow strokes, quietly (!!) or keeping a rhythm by means of a “shuffle” or short percussive “chops” with the bow. A sign of a really good bluegrass fiddler is to occasionally NOT PLAY ANYTHING for a few bars !!

A typical bluegrass fiddle break will consist of 1) roughly following the melody.2) Long bow strokes, often with double stops in third or fifth intervals, followed by bursts of 16^th notes 3) “Bluesy” notes, usually flatted 3^rd, flatted 5^th or flatted 7^th notes in the scale. 4) Improvisation around the melody. 5) At the end of the break, there is often a bar or two before the singer comes back in:- the fiddle will noodle around over the chord that is playing, commonly called “filling in”

There are a few show tunes that audiences expect, eg, “Orange Blossom Special” where the fiddler does some fancy Double Shuffle work, as well as train noises, pizzicato with the left pinky, and other cheesy stuff. A lot of playing is done in the second & third positions;- in fact, most songs that are done in key of E or B would be achieved by “barring” two strings with the index and holding it there, whilst using the other 3 fingers to stop higher up.

A good knowledge of chords is essential, as most of the fiddling is improvisational, and it can get boring to listen to if just one double-stop was held for each chord. You can easily find at least 5 double stops for each chord….a great source to help you work them out is a very cheap MANDOLIN chord book.

There is no such thing as “unison” playing in bluegrass;- the fiddle never plays the melody along with the singer, or any of the other lead instruments. Use of vibrato is very sparse, and is usually only used on slow songs.