|
Please note this is an archived topic, so it is locked and unable to be replied to. You may, however, start a new topic and refer to this topic with a link: http://www.banjohangout.org/archive/206414
Dave Magram - Posted - 05/11/2011: 09:07:09
There seems to be a lot of confusion on this forum between terms such as: “timing”, “accent”, “drive”, “bounce”, “syncopation”, etc.. Such confusion makes it difficult for newer players to communicate their questions. These definitions are an attempt to clear up some of the confusion and improve communication on the BHO forum.
I have based these definitions on many years of playing the banjo, performing in bands, teaching banjo, and talking to other banjo players, and I have supported them with pertinent quotes from the excellent “Masters of The Five String Banjo” (MOTFSB) book written by Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick. (I hope that Tony and Pete don’t mind.)
I strongly urge every serious student of Scruggs-style (and we’re all students, aren’t we?) to purchase this book. It contains extensive, fascinating interviews with 17 of the greatest banjo players of all time about how they learned, how they think about music and playing the banjo, photos of how they bend picks and hold their hands, and tablature of each player’s playing to highlight their stylistic differences.
This 400-page book also contains 30 pages of information on 68 leading banjo-players’ influences, choice of banjos, picks, bridges. Many of the questions I see being asked over and over on the BHO are answered in this book by some of the best banjo players ever.
It is a fascinating read and great value for the money. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BASICS OF SCRUGGS-STYLE
1. TIMING: Timing is about spacing the banjo notes evenly. This helps drive the rhythmic pulse of the band by keeping the tempo steady and the rhythm consistent. Good timing is essential and fundamental to becoming a good Scruggs-style banjo player. Allen Shelton: “Well, to me, music’s not much without it [good timing]. If you don’t have good time, it just doesn’t work.” (MOTFSB p. 134)
To establish a strong rhythm for the group, it is crucial for a banjo player to be able to play various combinations of right-hand roll patterns with consistently even timing, so that the spaces between the notes are exactly the same. Earl Scruggs describes a basic timing exercise: “The purpose of this exercise is to smooth out the rhythm in your playing – the duration between the notes should be the same, and the intensity or loudness of each note should be the same.” (Earl Scruggs and the Five String Banjo, 1968 edition, pg. 60.)
Wernick: “What do you have to say about the separation of notes?” JD Crowe: “That’s where you get your timing. It’s the same spacing between each roll, each finger…When you hit [the strings], you get all of them even.” (MOTFSB p. 159-60)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. ACCENT: To make the melody stand out from the continuous flow of evenly spaced eighth-notes, Earl would subtly accent the melody notes to emphasize them and make them stand out. When asked to describe how he does that, Earl replied: “I don’t have what you call a special technique to emphasize the melody. I am just very aware of it…The melody of most tunes moves around from one string to another, so different right-hand fingers are needed for emphasis at different times.” (MOTFSB p. 18)
Don Reno: “Earl is not fancy in his playing, and yet he is one of the best insinuation-of-his-notes banjo players that I’ve ever heard.” Trischka: “The best what?" Reno: “Insinuating. In other words, if he wants a note to really come out, he knows where to bring it out.” (MOTFSB p. 83)
A great example of the importance of Earl accenting certain notes just right is his version of “Sally Goodwin”, in which the up-the-neck D-shape portion uses nearly identical notes for the melodies of “Sally Ann” and “Cumberland Gap”. It is the subtle accents that Earl uses to emphasize the melodies that differentiates these tunes from one another.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. DRIVE: The next step is being able to align one’s timing of the notes with the band’s downbeat to create a driving, rhythmic “groove”. When Earl Scruggs began playing with Bill Monroe in 1945, his style of playing the banjo in a continuous rapid flow fit perfectly with Monroe’s vision of speeding up the tempo of old mountain songs and creating a new exciting style called “bluegrass”. Many bluegrass musicians came to call the resulting hard driving sound “bluegrass time”. (See the interview with Monroe in MOTFSB pages 10-13.)
Allen Shelton: “I loved the right hand of Scruggs, you know, the good, solid hard drive—solid time.” (MOTFSB p. 134)
Wernick: “What should a complete beginner do first?” JD Crowe: “…I really think myself that they should learn the basic drive, your driving timing on the banjo, because that’s actually what a banjo is…it’s the punch that you need to get out of it.” (MOTFSB p. 155)
As can be seen in the MOTFSB book, most accomplished banjo players believe that “drive” is achieved by playing slightly before the actual downbeat to “push” the beat, the hallmark of “bluegrass time”.
Trischka: “Bluegrass time, the way most people talk about it, generally kind of pushes the beat….Do you agree with that?” Sonny Osborne: “Yeah I do, I really do…If you can visualize the beat as a circle…on stage, you would maybe hit it [the note] from the three-quarters top of the round beat to the top of it [the metronomic downbeat].” (MOTFSB p. 114) “Scruggs is about three-quarters of the way through it [in other words, he is playing ahead of the beat]. (MOTFSB p. 115)
(To understand what Sonny is saying, it may help to visualize the beat as a circular clock with the top of the clock as the metronomic downbeat centered at 12:00, and the off-beat centered at 6:00-- thus 9:00 (“three-quarters around the circle”) would anticipate the metronomic downbeat at 12:00)
Being able to play ahead of the downbeat requires an exceptional sense of rhythm on the part of the banjo player, since he or she must anticipate the downbeat, not just coincide with it or follow it.
What makes this even more difficult on the banjo is that the difference in time between anticipating the beat and playing right on it is nearly infinitesimal. For example, at 120 bpm, a Scruggs-style banjo player is playing about 8 notes a second-- about 0.125 second between the notes. Anticipating the downbeat slightly may mean the difference of less than 0.06 second, which is five times faster than a fast eyeblink (0.30 seconds)!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. METRONOME TIMING vs. BLUEGRASS TIME
As can be seen in the MOTFSB book, there is a difference in the minds of many experienced players between metronomic timing and bluegrass timing. Bluegrass time “pushes the beat” (anticipates the metronomic downbeat), which it makes it difficult to use a metronome to learn to play with “drive”.
Trischka: “What about using a metronome?” Sonny Osborne: “A metronome is going to hit you right in the middle of that beat…And so [if you learn timing with a metronome] when you get with a guitar player that has that little lift, you’re going to be dragging…If you’re talking about the type of playing that I do, or like Scruggs or Crowe or Shelton…I don’t think a metronome would do the job.” (MOTFSB p. 115)
================================================================
ADVANCED CONCEPTS OF SCRUGGS-STYLE:
1. BOUNCE: Allen Shelton’s bluegrass banjo playing is what most knowledgeable players refer to when they use the word “bounce”. If you listen carefully to Allen Shelton’s playing of bluegrass songs with Jim & Jesse like ‘Standing On A Mountain’ and ‘Don’t Say Goodbye If You Love Me’, you can hear a forward tilt to his playing that differs from Earl and Ralph and most other banjo players-- who often refer to what they do as “straight time”. Trischka: “When I hear you play, I hear you playing a kind of a straight time. Each note is very even, as opposed to a bounce.” Don Reno: “Yes, right.”(MOTFSB p. 85)
Shelton played with unmistakable drive, but added what everyone called the Shelton “bounce” to it. If you read the interviews with Don Reno, Sonny Osborne, and others in the Masters of The Five String Banjo book, these master players differentiate between the “straight time” played by Earl Scruggs, Don Reno, and Ralph Stanley and the “bounce” of Allen Shelton. Sonny Osborne: “Earl is just like a piston. He’s so solid. He doesn’t have that bounce like Allen [Shelton] does.” (MOTFSB p. 115)
Even Shelton he couldn’t explain how achieved his famous “bounce”: Shelton: “I really don’t know what it is they’re hearing that makes you call it that…It just happens. (MOTFSB p. 134).
I believe that a key factor in Shelton’s “bounce” is that he accented many of his off-beat notes (as well as his downbeat notes) to give his playing the “bounce”. For example, he seems to accent his (off-beat) rhythm notes on the first string, while playing the (downbeat) melody notes on the other strings—which is much more difficult to do than it sounds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. SYNCOPATION: Syncopation is the displacement of melody notes from where they would normally occur rhythmically. Jazz players and singers will often syncopate to a much greater extent than bluegrass banjo players.
A great example of syncopation is Willie Nelson performing Crazy with Diana Krall and Elvis Costello at youtube.com/watch?v=F5BnCEPr7c...sp; At one point near the end of the clip, Willie actually compresses two vocal measures into one, an example of extreme syncopation. 
An example of Earl doing this is his second solo of Earl’s Breakdown, where he plays a long chromatic descending passage starting from the second string, eighth fret and continuing for six measures in a syncopated fashion down to the fourth string.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope this is helpful.
- Dave
ole blackie - Posted - 08/24/2011: 12:20:51
Dave, good topic, but very little response. Might I make a suggestion? Shorten your post. It's just way too long for most people to want to take the time to read. Try to be more concise in your questions. Be short and to the point. Just my thoughts.
Wil
Dave Magram - Posted - 08/26/2011: 18:19:26
Originally posted by Hotrodtruck
I was happy to read that I am not alone in my opinion of using a metronome. It is a useful tool, but playing along with a recording is so much better to get the feel of bluegrass music.
I always thought of bounce as being a sort of uneven cycle of notes played across one or more measures- kind of pushing the beat at different rates, from more to less, then repeat. Maybe playing the notes pushing the beat the most a bit louder than the ones that push it less. Maybe that is what the pros are saying?
Mike
Mike (Hotrodtruck),
I completely agree with you regarding playing along with Earl & Lester. It is far more useful than using a metronome, BIAB, etc. More educational and way more fun, too.
===============================================================
BOUNCE:
One of my primary reasons for posting the “Definitions”, was the confusion about what “bounce” is—as defined by not just me, but many, many expert banjo players, such as Reno, Osborne, Trischka, etc. plus dozens of others who I have spoken to personally.
It is not necessary to play with “bounce” to be a good banjo-player.
Earl Scruggs did not play with “bounce”, nor did Don Reno, Ralph Stanley, etc. To sound like them, you need to execute impeccably on The Three Essential Elements of Scruggs-style: Timing, Accentuation, and Drive, as I indicated in my original post.
“Bounce” is not something different from the Three Essential Elements—it is an additional flavoring added to them. If you are playing with bounce, you will not be playing like Earl. Period.
All of the master players acknowledge that the King of Bounce was Allen Shelton; they even called it the “Shelton Bounce”. (See Masters of the Five String Banjo by Wernick & Trischka)
Before learning to play with “bounce”, I would recommend that you first are able to execute impeccably on The Three Essential Elements of Scruggs-style: Timing, Accentuation, and Drive. The way to do this is to play along with Earl & Lester a lot (hundreds of hours), until Earl’s Timing, Accentuation, and Drive are burned into your brain and your finger muscles. Only after you have mastered those three things in both leads and backup, should you tackle “bounce”.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to learn to play with “bounce”, purchase as many recordings of Jim & Jesse with Allen Shelton as possible—especially Bluegrass Special and Bluegrass Classics (if they are still in print). Songs to look for: Standing On A Mountain, Don’t Say Goodbye If You Love Me; Are You Missing Me, I Wonder where You Are Tonight, Take My Ring From Your Finger, etc. Then spend hundreds of hours playing along with Allen Shelton, until the “Shelton Bounce” is burned into your brain and your finger muscles.
The difference between “bounce” and no-bounce is probably less than a 0.06 of a second—five times faster than a fast eye-blink. Analyzing “bounce” with wave-form analysis is a waste of time—it is like trying to photograph a bullet in mid-flight with a Kodak Brownie camera.
And for the folks that insist that Allen Shelton was not spacing his notes evenly—well then, not only is that in defiance of human neural capabilities, it also contradicts the Three Essential Elements of Scruggs-style (and Allen was a huge fan of Earl Scruggs), plus what Allen himself said about his own playing in the Masters of the Five String Banjo. Anyone who listens to Allen playing can hear the exceptional evenness of his note-spacing. It is like a finely-tuned sports car.
There are some people on this forum who want to analyze and analyze, and some who want to play. My goal here is to help people learn how to play, and if the analysis doesn’t help someone to learn to play, and in fact causes even more confusion, then I deem it of no practical use.
- Dave
Dave Magram - Posted - 08/27/2011: 09:07:25
quote:
Originally posted by doug.knecht
I tell you the truth, if I had to think about accent, drive, bounce and syncopation, I'd go crazy. I think about timing - either the band is playing in time or not. You can definately feel the push/pulls of being perfectly in time with the band, but you also feel the crazy push/pulls when a bass player is speeding up and/or the guitar player is slowing down, and you're just trying to stay in time. Everybody has to be on the same page to pull off good timing. I've been in jams where timing on the banjo was everything but timing. But I've also been in bands where you couldn't help but play in perfect time.
As far as accent, I do this subconciously on slow/medium tempo tunes. Same with drive. Bounce? I think if I know what we're talking about it's something that gets done for a period of time just to change it up. And sycopation and accent to me are very similar.
But keep in mind these should be secondary and subconcious things you throw in. The main thing that is important is timing. And this is largely due to the perfect breathing done by a guitar, bass, and mandolin. That's where the rythym timing starts, and if you like to play in time, you will fit perfectly in this breathing pattern.
Doug,
I listened to some of your audio-clips, and you obviously understand what Earl is all about. You certainly play with good timing, accentuation, and drive—so anything I say here that might differ a bit from what you said is probably just a matter of semantics.
You are absolutely correct—I never thought much about these concepts either until a year ago when I joined the BHO—I just played. However I saw a lot of new players getting confused by some of the overly complicated and convoluted explanations of how to play, many written by posters who suspiciously refuse to post clips of their own playing. So I went back to the Masters of Five String Banjo and Earl Scruggs book to make sure that I was using the commonly-accepted definitions.
TIMING: I agree with everything you have said about timing. As the saying goes, “Timing is everything”, and especially so in bluegrass. Bluegrass timing is far more complex than most standard country music.
I agree with your point about the band needing good timing too. After all, bluegrass music from it’s inception has always been band music. All members of a classic bluegrass band have a role to play with the timing. The bass keeps the downbeat, the mandolin the upbeat, the guitar both the downbeat and the upbeat.
It’s like a car engine. To me, the banjo is like the spark plug making the whole thing go—defining the downbeat a few degrees before Top Dead Center, and defining the upbeat the same way-- to give it Drive.
However, I found this Youtube clip of Earl playing with his neighbor very striking:
Earl Scruggs playing banjo at Dr Nat Winston's house youtube.com/watch?v=xDxHws7r6qs
Here Earl is playing not with professional musicians, just good amateur musicians with only a guitar and a bass, yet Earl clearly sets the timing for the whole group. I suspect that the Winston family could have all played kazoos, and Earl would have made it sound like bluegrass.
[How nice that SW Cooper just joined in—she is Nat Winston’s daughter and is in the YouTube clip, sitting on the floor directly in front of Earl. SW, I am so jealous of your childhood living next door to Earl Scruggs!]
The point is that if the banjo player learns to play as close as possible to Earl’s Timing, Accentuation, and Drive—he or she can set the groove for the whole band.
THE THREE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: As Earl advises in his book, after one learns to play the rolls with perfectly even spacing between the notes (Timing), one needs to learn to Accentuate the melody notes (what Earl calls “emphasis” in his book), to make the melody or musical phrase stand out above the rhythm notes. Then one needs to anticipate the metronomic downbeat slightly to give it the Drive that Earl always does so well. Timing, accentuation, and drive are the Three Essential Elements of picking like Earl. You do all of this quite well on your audio-clips, so I know you know what I’m talking about. :-)
SYNCOPATION: I maintain that there is an important difference between “accentuation” of the melody notes and syncopation. The Big Three Essential Elements come first, then one learns to use syncopation to spice up the music.
Syncopation is not mere “accentuation”, it is a flavoring on top of the Big Three. Syncopation is the displacement or shifting of the melody notes from where they are expected to be—either stretched out or compressed together the way Willie Nelson does on the Youtube clip I suggested above where he squeezes two measures into one. Many jazz musicians and vocalists often syncopate extremely as did fiddlers like Scotty Stoneman and Vassar Clements. Bill Monroe would often syncopate his phrases quite a bit too. Earl didn’t syncopate as much-- I can’t recall Earl shifting the melody by more than an eighth-note or two. (Although I’m sure that someone will be quick to point out where he displaced by more.)
BOUNCE: I agree with you about using "bounce" judiciously. I do not try to play with bounce unless I am playing Jim & Jesse material, and even then the rest of the band must be very solid or else the tempo will speed up.
- Dave
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Privacy Consent (EU/GDPR Only)
Copyright 2026 Banjo Hangout. All Rights Reserved.
