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Exploring The Fingerboard - Flop-Eared Mule

Editor's note: this article originally ran in Banjo Newsletter's September 1977 edition. It is re-published here by permission from the author and the Banjo Newsletter.

"Flop-Eared Mule" is such a simple tune, with a very basic chord progression that it may surprise some readers  to find it in 'Exploring The Fingerboard'  this month. It hardly can compare with some of the discussions of recent months  where "diminished repeats", playing out of the keys of F and Bb on an open G neck, and other techniques have been examined.

The reason for the "Mule" is to cover a very easy but effective technique that can be used in many other tunes, especially fiddle tunes where you wish to 'drive' the fiddle. The "bass-drone" has been mentioned previously, and is a technique that Jimmy Arnold uses most effectively.

We sometimes forget about droning on the bass string on the 5-string banjo because we have the natural drone on the 5th string. But there is no better way to get a pulsating drive to your rhythm, especially when playing out of a D chord. It can be used for G chords also as will be covered below.

For those unfamiliar with "Flop-Eared Mule" the basic melody is presented in tab. Notice that the song is circular; i.e. it modulates between its opening key of G to the key of D, and back again. Since it is in two keys it is a good example to use for the bass-drone.

 
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Here is the basic melody again with quarter notes and eighth notes added to demonstrate the bouncy feeling of the tune. The rhythm here is similar to the 'bump-di-ty/bump-di-ty' of the old time musician.

 
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The melody is smoothed out in this version by adding some G/D/A scales. The drone appears on the open G (3rd) string and the fretted 4th (5th fret) in the 2nd ending of the A part.

 
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Here is a back up exercise to play behind the fiddler; highly rhythmic with only a skeleton of the melody. The drone on the bass strings for the G and D chords is now used quite a bit.

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A lick that I find very useful for D 'noise' is the position where you fret the 5th string at the 7th fret, and play the open D on the first string, and add the F# by fretting the 2nd string, and at the 7th fret. By rolling around this position and also adding the low D on the open 4th string you get a most effective D sound, a growl of a D sound. Split the lick with the standard D position as is the example and again growl off the open Low D.

Notice that the 2nd ending changes the A chord position slightly to set the fingers up for the next position. Again that D lick position by fretting the 5th at the 7th but adding a B^b to the roll or a D+ to resolve back to the G, instead of using a 7th chord for the modulation.

Here are some G licks that can be used to open up the G part of  "Flop-Eared Mule" , or for that matter they can be effectively used to open any break in the key of G.

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 The use of the drone on other strings than the 5th can be used as stated above as a way to play behind the fiddler, or also as ways to play back-up behind other instruments or the vocalist. It has a nice 'bottom' sound to it, and once you get the feel of it you can add your own touches to it. Try to add some synchopation to these drone licks; they sound very nice with a bounce to them.