Porter Claxton - Posted - 12/08/2013:  22:39:47

One of my biggest complaints about many new bluegrass bands, and hot musicians specifically, is their lack of "bounce" when they play. Many are great musicians and play lots of notes at a high velocity, but seem to miss one of the most defining elements of bluegrass. Jams (and concerts) often turn into speed demonstartions and hot lick contests and cause many who were raised in the tradition to turn away in disgust. Why? Because all the emotion and rythm of bluegrass are missing. Yes! Bluegrass has its own rythms as do Raggae and Swing. Take away the rythm in a blues band and what have you got? You have the notes, you have the words - but it aint "blues". Same with bluegrass. Many seem to think that bluegrass is just all about banjos and fiddles. Those are necessary items, true, but it takes more than that to play THE MUSIC. Want to know what I'm talking about?

Listen to early recordings of Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, Lester Flatt or Red Allen singing. Listen to their backup musicians and the feeling they are putting into the music. It has bounce - it has backbeat! Listen to which notes they accentuate. Listen to  Earl Scruggs, JD Crowe, Bill Runkle or Alan Shelton on banjo / Red Taylor, Bobby Hicks on fiddle / Bill Monroe or Earl taylor on Mandolin. Bounce!

Specifically listen to these cuts:

Jim and Jesse with Alan Shelton on "She left me Standing on the Mtn"

Bill Monroe on "Cry Cry Darling"

Jimmy Martin on "20/20 Vision"

Whitley and Skaggs on "All I Ever Loved Was You"

Gillis Brothers on "God's Highway"

Ralph Stanley on "Clinch Mountain Backstep"

Tony Rice - The Bluegrass Albums I and II

Have fun out there!

:-)

MOUNTAIN GOAT - Posted - 12/08/2013:  23:19:01

I agree. That is why lots of people say just about all bluegrass sounds the same. Got to have the bounce syncopation or what ever ya want to call it. Got to have it. And many of these tunes sound better slowed down too. Speed with bounce is impressive, but not always the best way to play it. All just my opinion, and everyone has one of thems.

collegiate - Posted - 12/09/2013:  01:37:57

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quote

:Totally agree.Even some of the hallowed Janet Davies tracks on her 'You can teach yourself banjo' CD sound like a a machine gun and difficult to hear the tune behind the rattle. I will now retire to the bunker.

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Originally posted by Porter Claxton

 

One of my biggest complaints about many new bluegrass bands, and hot musicians specifically, is their lack of "bounce" when they play. Many are great musicians and play lots of notes at a high velocity, but seem to miss one of the most defining elements of bluegrass. Jams (and concerts) often turn into speed demonstartions and hot lick contests and cause many who were raised in the tradition to turn away in disgust. Why? Because all the emotion and rythm of bluegrass are missing. Yes! Bluegrass has its own rythms as do Raggae and Swing. Take away the rythm in a blues band and what have you got? You have the notes, you have the words - but it aint "blues". Same with bluegrass. Many seem to think that bluegrass is just all about banjos and fiddles. Those are necessary items, true, but it takes more than that to play THE MUSIC. Want to know what I'm talking about?

Listen to early recordings of Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, Lester Flatt or Red Allen singing. Listen to their backup musicians and the feeling they are putting into the music. It has bounce - it has backbeat! Listen to which notes they accentuate. Listen to  Earl Scruggs, JD Crowe, Bill Runkle or Alan Shelton on banjo / Red Taylor, Bobby Hicks on fiddle / Bill Monroe or Earl taylor on Mandolin. Bounce!

Specifically listen to these cuts:

Jim and Jesse with Alan Shelton on "She left me Standing on the Mtn"

Bill Monroe on "Cry Cry Darling"

Jimmy Martin on "20/20 Vision"

Whitley and Skaggs on "All I Ever Loved Was You"

Gillis Brothers on "God's Highway"

Ralph Stanley on "Clinch Mountain Backstep"

Tony Rice - The Bluegrass Albums I and II

 

Have fun out there!

:-)

---

Bob E - Posted - 12/09/2013:  04:10:51

quote:Are any downloads available that just have the beat to practice to?  Thanks

Edited by - Bob E on 12/09/2013 04:13:07

mpope1178 - Posted - 12/09/2013:  05:47:33

Excellent post, the bounce makes the listener sit up and take notice. Another Ralph Stanley tune that has a lot of bounce to it is "Old Richmond Prison", I think the banjo on that tune is superb.

maxmax - Posted - 12/09/2013:  06:05:36

Totally agree, lightning fast, monotonous music does nothing for me. But here's the real question though: Do you get this "bounce" by having slightly different spaces between the notes, or keep a steady spacing but make arrangements that accentuate certain notes?

I've always had different spacing between the notes, but diving more into Scruggs style recently, I've found it quite interesting to notice how very even spacing Earl had. On some songs he has a bit of bounce, but quite often he was basically completely even, but a master at arranging his banjo for the music though! 

eagleisland - Posted - 12/09/2013:  07:08:14

quote:

Originally posted by maxmax

Totally agree, lightning fast, monotonous music does nothing for me. But here's the real question though: Do you get this "bounce" by having slightly different spaces between the notes, or keep a steady spacing but make arrangements that accentuate certain notes?

I've always had different spacing between the notes, but diving more into Scruggs style recently, I've found it quite interesting to notice how very even spacing Earl had. On some songs he has a bit of bounce, but quite often he was basically completely even, but a master at arranging his banjo for the music though! 

Earl played a lot of it straighter than more modern players did (though his book does often denote "slight shuffle feel" on a fair number of songs - shuffle being the swing/note duration thing).. He got a lot of his drive from accenting certain notes and, as Dave Magram is fond of pointing out, he often played ever-so-slightly ahead of the beat.

But Earl could also swing with the best of 'em - Foggy Mountain Special being a good example of that.

Others can correct me on this point, but it does seem that while other first-generation players used swing or bounce periodically, the band/player that really seemed to institutionalize it was Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys. Would be very interested to learn if someone else was using it as aggressively as Martin was before him.

Doconc - Posted - 12/09/2013:  07:20:42

Is it possible they're playing with less bounce to sound less like typical country music? I believe classic C&W has always had a lot more swing to it than bluegrass. In fact when I first started playing banjo I naturally put excessive bounce into my rolls. When I finally got a teacher he really worked with me to tone that down. I think playing straight and playing with bounce both have their place, it's just that swinging doesn't seem to be in vogue right now.

Old Hickory - Posted - 12/09/2013:  07:26:05

quote:

Originally posted by Porter Claxton

One of my biggest complaints about many new bluegrass bands, and hot musicians specifically, is their lack of "bounce" when they play. Many are great musicians and play lots of notes at a high velocity, but seem to miss one of the most defining elements of bluegrass. Jams (and concerts) often turn into speed demonstartions and hot lick contests...

Speed isn't the only thing they get wrong.  Some also pound the beat to death.

Good bluegrass rhythm reflects a balance of fast and light.

Even though most of it is played with just three chords and some basic progressions, bluegrass is not as simple as it sounds.

sunburst - Posted - 12/09/2013:  08:02:18

To me, Bluegrass bounce is demonstrated extremely well on "The Country Gentlemen, Live in Japan". Listen to Fox on the Run (I know, but listen to it anyway!). When they sing the chorus, all the instruments drop out except the bass and guitar, then after they finish singing the chorus, Bill Emerson kicks it back in with the most bounce I think I've ever heard.

mpope1178 - Posted - 12/09/2013:  08:24:00

I happened to be thinking this morning about note spacing. If you have a song in 4/4 you have 4 beats per measure but you can also think about that measure as a single continuous beat. By playing slightly before the actual beat (e.g., doing a hammer on slightly faster or slower) you change the feel of the beat without actually being out of time. I think you must also slightly alter other aspects of how the other notes in that measure are played to compensate such that you are in the end still on time. I also think how you strike individual notes makes a big difference. To me, underlying all of this is the feeling that the performer brings to the song and instrument. For me, the folks that are the most pleasing to listen to play with a lot of emotion and feeling.

Rick McKeon - Posted - 12/09/2013:  09:57:57

Jens Kruger in his "The Banjo Techniques of Jens Kruger" DVD mentions that as he plays faster he has less bounce. I think that's probably true for all good players. I also agree that making a speed contest out of it is not the point of making music.

Rick

swamplunker - Posted - 12/09/2013:  10:50:45

I remember reading somewhere that the bouncier players were the ones coming out of the New England area, and that Southern banjo players tended toward more straight runs of 16th notes, whether this is true historically, t's clearly a matter of style. Some songs sound better without any bounce, I would never want any in Cumberland Gap, for instance, it could sound really corny in a lot of songs that are done straight, when I envision a bounce in Gold Rush, images of Lawrence Welk come to mind, and they're not pleasant. I agree that some songs do sound better with it, it can also come down to a matter of degree, like how much vibrato should be used in singing, highly subjective and awkward to legislate. Learn both styles and then do whatever the heck you want.

arnie fleischer - Posted - 12/09/2013:  12:18:50

While I agree with your basic point, I think you're really talking about drive, not bounce.  Bounce and backbeat are not the same thing.  Lots of bands, including Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, have played with a driving backbeat that constantly pushes the music forward, but with no (or very little) bounce for the most part.  And when you think about it, the list of banjo players known for their bounce is pretty short.    

A band can have a banjo player with "machine gun" timing and still maintain a driving backbeat.  A prime example is the Johnson Mountain Boys with Tom Adams.  He and his predecessor, Richard Underwood, were such different players, yet no matter who was on banjo the JMB always pushed the beat with relentless drive and urgency which came, I think, from the combination of Dudley Connell's powerhouse rhythm guitar on the downbeat and David McLaughlin's equally strong and insistent backbeat chop on the mandolin.

That backbeat mandolin chop is what's lacking if not missing altogether in a number of modern bluegrass bands, having been replaced by what the great  guitarist Beppe Gambetta calls "the dreaded folk music strum."     

steve davis - Posted - 12/09/2013:  19:58:21

I'd also call it drive.
Practice your drive.The whole band has to have it.

swamplunker - Posted - 12/09/2013:  20:35:05

I love a good backbeat too, Arnie, which to me specifically means accenting the 2nd and 4th beat in a 4/4 piece, I'm not gonna touch "drive", it's too general. I figured bounce would end up requiring definition, so to me, it's a staggering of the beat so that the first and third notes are extra long and the second and fourth, again referring to a 4/4 piece, are extra short. These are sometimes called dotted rhythms, but that's a bit of an extreme because if it's a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth, the first and third become three times as long as the 2nd and 4th and I can't recall hearing that exaggerated a stagger going on by anyone (but maybe someone did!). It's usually a little bit of a lilt, there's another slang term for ya. These two patterns were available in Irish music too, hundreds of years before Bluegrass came along. I just reread mpopes' thing above and he's clearly talking about playing "ahead" of the beat (or behind it, alternatively), a different animal altogether. Clarence White has an interview where he talks about playing behind the beat on purpose, that's not what I consider bounce. I guess like any thread, we've got several subjects going now. Subjectively, a bounce as I'm thinking of it, such as Casey Henry puts in her version of Blackberry Blossom, adds a sense of humor to the piece, whereas the straight, as you say, machine-gun, approach implies more of a seriousness of mood.

chief3 - Posted - 12/10/2013:  02:17:09

I began noticing that one of the main factors that contributes to the issue could be the singer who influences how the backup is played. If the singer sings with a " 1 - 2 3 4 " beat that emphasizes the "1" downbeat only instead of a "1-2-3-4" beat that emphasizes the "1" and "3" beat then the backup follows along with the singer and it sounds like folk or country but not what I think bluegrass should sound like. If the lead singer has the affliction, they play rhythm guitar (with "the dreaded folk music strum") to match how they are singing which sets the tone for the whole band. After that, even instrumentals are infected and the music sounds rushed with zero drive. Hard for me to explain but I recognize it when I hear it.

overhere - Posted - 12/10/2013:  03:11:13

Ladys and Gentlemen sit back now and enjoy the Master of Bounce....mr. Eddie Adcock....

youtube.com/watch?v=5KbPOKAkygY

steve davis - Posted - 12/10/2013:  05:49:57

The banjo alone doesn't set these kinds of things...it's a team effort.
Nobody thinks when they are playing,"I've got to accentuate the 1 and 3 for this to sound right."
We think ,"How is what I'm doing helping the band's sound.

arnie fleischer - Posted - 12/10/2013:  08:07:47

At a jam last June, Roger Sprung talked with me at length about why he likes bounce (because it makes listeners smile and want to tap their feet) and how it took him six years to figure out how to play with it.  

I'm sure Roger was trying to get me to put more bounce in my playing.  While I like to play with syncopation, and also like to push the beat (although I tend not to do that in jams unless I know that the other pickers feel the groove the same way I do), I rarely play with bounce.  

Anyhow, according to Roger, bounce comes from emphasizing the downbeat (beats one and three), not the backbeat (beats two and four).  He demonstrates that by using the example, Chat-A-Noo-Ga, Chat-A-Noo-Ga, Chat-A-Noo-Ga.  

chief3 - Posted - 12/10/2013:  09:57:47

I notice that the older bluegrass from the 50's -90's mostly emphasize the downbeat (1 and 3) equally but it is becoming more popular for some bands to emphasis 3 downbeat a little more than the 1 to give a more bluesy or rock sound and with it, more syncopation in the banjo playing. The Lonesome River Band and the Steeldrivers are good examples of what I am hearing. To my ear, sounds good, but not a traditional driving bluegrass sound in the likes of Monroe, F&S, Osbornes, JD Crowe. For me, things get off the bluegrass track when a "gallop" starts to be hear in the music.

Mopick - Posted - 12/10/2013:  12:19:18

quote:

---

Originally posted by overhere

 

Ladys and Gentlemen sit back now and enjoy the Master of Bounce....mr. Eddie Adcock....



youtube.com/watch?v=5KbPOKAkygY

---

youtube.com/watch?v=5KbPOKAkygY

MOUNTAIN GOAT - Posted - 12/10/2013:  16:10:34

ALright Never heard of Eddie Adcock. He has the bounce. Now who is gunna steal it from him? I like it

Dave Magram - Posted - 12/10/2013:  21:19:45

Porter, I noticed on your homepage that you’ve been playing banjo for over 35 years. So have I. I agree with you that some of the newer groups don’t have that powerful rhythm going the way the great early bands like Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, and the Osborne Brothers did. As you probably know, that powerful driving rhythm was called “bluegrass time” starting many years ago, and Bill Monroe even titled one of his record albums Bluegrass Time.  

To all-- “drive” and “bounce” are specific terms that have been used by bluegrass banjo players for more than 50 years, and they refer to two very different things…

“Drive”: I have long believed that the key to achieving good “bluegrass time” is the ability of at least part of the band to consistently play ahead of the beat—especially the banjo player.  Playing ahead of the beat is called “drive” in bluegrass music, and guys like Earl, Don Reno, Ralph Stanley, JD Crowe, Sonny Osborne, Allen Shelton, etc. were all regarded as having lots of “drive” in their playing.

 If you have a copy of Masters of the Five-String Banjo (Trischka & Wernick), you may have noticed that most of the 18 master banjo players interviewed discuss “drive” and “bluegrass time” as related to timing and accentuation on the banjo; these essential musical elements are things that all of the great players were very conscious of.

The most thorough analysis of “drive” on the banjo is provided by Sonny Osborne, who discusses “drive” and anticipating the beat for nearly two pages in his interview in the MOTFSB book!  Butch Robins puts it rather succinctly: “…where Monroe and Scruggs played, and a bunch of those other people played, and that’s in front of the beat. You hit, the beat hits, you hit, the beat hits.” [MOTFSB, pg. 300]

It is common for beginning players and bands to play with little or no drive, and I have even heard a few better-known players who, while technically quite accomplished, to my ear play with little or no drive. It is difficult for even a driving banjo player to punch up the entire band sound-- it really helps to have a mandolin and/or a guitar player who is also playing on the front edge (ahead) of the beat.

It is not easy to learn to play the banjo with “drive”; the difference between “drive” and “no-drive” at 120 bpm is probably only 2 hundredths of a second!  Since a fast eye-blink takes 30 hundredths of a second, I do not believe it possible for a human to actually hear a 2 hundredths of a second difference; it can be viewed on a sound editor. However it is possible to sense it. I notice a lack of drive when a band sounds kind of lackluster rhythmically-- not exciting like the great bluegrass bands were (and are).

“Bounce”:   I learned to play bluegrass banjo by listening mostly to recordings of Scruggs, Stanley, and Reno. Then someone suggested I listen to Allen Shelton with Jim & Jesse. Wow! Afterwards I recall asking a more experienced player, “What a great player Allen Shelton is! Lots of drive—and something else that’s kind of different. What is that called?”.  Which is when I learned that Allen’s unique approach was commonly called “bounce” and that it was referred to by many players as the “Allen Shelton Bounce”. (BTW, Allen Shelton's solo on J&J's "Standing on a Mountain" that you mentioned is one of my favorite banjo solos of all time-- and an excellent example of "bounce".)

There are many references to Allen Shelton’s “bounce” in the MOTFSB book, because Trischka and Wernick asked most interviewees if they played with “straight bluegrass time” or “bounce”. Most of the responses mentioned Allen Shelton as the prime example of “bounce”.  As Alan Munde put it, “Allen Shelton to me is in a whole different world because of the way he accents those same things [the notes in a roll] entirely differently. And to me it’s very attractive, but it’s much different from Earl Scruggs and the JD Crowe, Sonny Osborne school. ” [MOTFSB, pg. 262] . In other words, he (and others) are saying that Scruggs, Crowe, and Osborne do not play with “bounce”. Lots of drive, but no bounce.

Later in the MOTFSB book, Larry McNeeley and Alan Munde analyze the “Shelton Bounce”, both agreeing that it is achieved by accentuating certain notes in a banjo roll that are normally unaccented-- because they occur on the off-beat . In other words, Shelton would often accentuate the normally un-accentuated first string when the (accented) melody note is on a different string.

As to “backbeat, since “backbeat” is defined as “a syncopated accentuation on the ‘off’ beat.” (Wikipedia), I suppose one could say that the famous Shelton Bounce was operating at a “micro backbeat” level.

Bottom line: Every serious bluegrass banjo player needs to learn to play with “drive”. I believe that the best way to do that is to follow what I call the “Study on Earl” plan, described on the blog on my BHO home-page.

-Dave

Edited by - Dave Magram on 12/10/2013 21:29:54

Dave Magram - Posted - 12/10/2013:  21:28:32

Duplicate post- deleted.

Edited by - Dave Magram on 12/10/2013 21:44:02

overhere - Posted - 12/11/2013:  02:46:08

Thanks Mopick....works better