On the other hand, a country guitar player at a bluegrass jam makes the bluegrassers wish he hadn’t shown up…. Jest sayin’

Glad you had fun, Steve

The country guitar players I know have no trouble sitting in with a bluegrass band,Chuck.
They have excellent rhythm and timing.

Steve was your guitar man Kenny Brooks of Katahdin Valley Boys? I met him 50 years ago when he lived in the Calais area.

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Originally posted by steve davis

The country guitar players I know have no trouble sitting in with a bluegrass band,Chuck.
They have excellent rhythm and timing.

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Most I've met don't play BG timing,, they lag a bit

Is there such a thing as bluegrass timing? I thought it was all just timing. There is such a thing as rushing or dragging but that’s not specific to a genre.

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Originally posted by The Old Timer

Steve was your guitar man Kenny Brooks of Katahdin Valley Boys? I met him 50 years ago when he lived in the Calais area.

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It was Kip Yattaw,Dick.Kip plays a fine D-35 and builds fiddles.I've known him most of my life.He lives in Port Clyde.

Brian Mason and Erlin Morse have visited and played into the evening at Kip's house.I felt pretty lucky to be there.

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Is there such a thing as bluegrass timing? I thought it was all just timing. There is such a thing as rushing or dragging but that’s not specific to a genre.

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A good ear plays what sounds right.

I consider bluegrass timing playing at the front of the beat. Even AkUS keeps that groove on medium tempo tunes. The lag I’m referring to for country players is not faulty playing, it’s just a more laid back groove as opposed to the incessant forward push of most bluegrass music, imho.

Tongue-sorta-in-cheek, is a laid back groove sumpthin' like the pre-war sound .... you'll know it when you hear it?  

 [Asks the guy who wouldn't recognize forward push if he was drowning in it.  ]

Don't mind me ... this too shall pass.  

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Originally posted by Owen

Tongue-sorta-in-cheek, is a laid back groove sumpthin' like the pre-war sound .... you'll know it when you hear it?  

 [Asks the guy who wouldn't recognize forward push if he was drowning in it.  ]

Don't mind me ... this too shall pass.  

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No drowning, Mr. O..... tap a beat on the table with your hand - bluegrass hits the notes right when your palm smacks the table; country players hit the notes after that , as your hand is rising off the table to load up for the next beat. Attending a country jam followed immediately by joining a bluegrass jam will get you realizin' that "you've known it now that you've heard it!"

I play in a band with two acoustic guitar player,electric bass and my banjo. Mostly old country songs.
Doc Nelson,bass,was a guitar player in Nashville for many years,even played with David Allen Coe for the longest year of his life(his words). ??
He had a left hand accident do can only play bass now but he’s very solid and knows just about all the old country stuff.
I play a lot of chord melodies,usually trying to keep the melody on the first string.
Seems to work for me.
I call the band “Running with scissors”,gets a lot of smiles. I always warn folks that we don’t recommend that you try this at home!

Yeah, that country player Vince Gill couldn't hold time in a bucket 

The bluegrass guys that went country for while ,, Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill, Rhonda Vincent, etc,, likely changed their groove to fit the bill, although I think Skaggs kept more BG rhythm than the crooner Gill.

When I play bluegrass I don't always play with an incessant drive ahead of the beat.
Rocky Top goes that way,but Love Letters in the Sand doesn't.Love Letters goes like a Country song.
The song asks for the instruments to fit it.
I find bluegrass and country to be cut from the same cloth,structurally.Same roots.
Folks with guitars,fiddles and banjos writing and singing about life where they grew up.
The Country players I grew up with also sang I Wonder How the Old Folks Are At Home and Bluegrass bands do Fraulein and I Overlooked an Orchid.

Everybody does Long Black Veil.

My wife and I are part of a band here in the Panhandle of Florida. We do Vince Gill's " Look At Us". We've been married 64 years. Country songs? Always a good mix. Banjobob36

I don't use much drive when playing All of Me or Alley Cat.

I'm in complete agreement with Chuck. The Country rhythm players I've had an opportunity to play with play "behind the beat". That's not the way Bluegrass is supposed to be played, but it is with Country.

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Is there such a thing as bluegrass timing? I thought it was all just timing. There is such a thing as rushing or dragging but that’s not specific to a genre.

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There definitely is. If this were not the case then every normal country guitarist  could jump right in in a bluegrass jam with zero struggle... most can't find the right way to get into the timing... and it seems most I've seen end up watching and listening. But, perhaps we should refer to this type of guitarist as one who only has experience with mostly modern country music and has never been exposed to bluegrass.

Now of course, such is not the case with every guitarist... many have experience in both styles of music. But it's obvious from the many experiences that I've witnessed on this subject that it is not something that is simply made up or really doesn't exist.

I for one remember when I starting trying to play guitar on country songs (I started out with bluegrass) that the rhythmic and timing sense was so foreign to me that I struggled to grasp it for a very long time. Such is the opposite of this discussion here though. But to me it is also proof that it's a different feel for timing... even though at the end of the day something is either in time or it's not... the phenomenon of the change in perspective of the timing and how it works within the structure of the song is definitely there.

Re. "... at the end of the day something is either in time or it's not,"  isn't playing before/after the beat, even by a minute amount of time, the essence of of being out of time?

Chuck, I don't have the opportunity to experience jams like you suggest ^^, but I will listen to some recordings [maybe not " 'til my ears bleed, but a fair (?) bit] to see if I can detect the difference.  Fwiw, we're looking forward to the MOBS fall campout on the upcoming long weekend  ....  it's in Holland, so we might have to head out before long.    

When the beat is being "pushed," is it by all players, or is the bass player maintaining the beat while the others are are a tiny bit ahead?  .. or do the others  take turns being that tiny bit ahead of the beat?  Would that tiny amount of time ahead of the beat be measured in hundredths of a second? ... or thousandths of a second? ... or?

In my opinion, the salient point is that in either style of music, the rhythm players and the lead player get to the beat at a different time. In properly played Bluegrass music, the rhythm players get to the beat before the lead player; it's often referred to as "drive". In Country music, the rhythm players get to the beat after the lead player.

Well not exactly exactly Owen... lol. But I’ll ask another question… Do you think Willie Nelson sings out of time? When you hear him sing do you hear the same sense of timing and emphasis within the timing structure of the song as you do with old recordings of Lester Flatt? I for one do not…

Timing is very interesting… lol.

I don't have [or haven't developed?] the ability to assess/detect such ^^ things.   To me they both sound "okay."

Wayne, from an academic (?) standpoint, I understand what you're saying, but gotta admit that it sounds screwy to me in practical terms. [Maybe that's why you can do what you do on the banjo and I can 3,2,4,1/3,2,4,1/3,2,4,1/3,2,4,1/etc.  ].    I sometimes hear people describe a band's playing [mostly rock] as "tight."  Does that mean that everybody's "on" the beat?

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Originally posted by Owen

...  To me they both sound "okay."

 

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And that is the takeaway! Two singers with different styles of phrasing... yet it all works out in the end!

I wasn’t suggesting “ahead of the beat” tune rather at the front of the beat, as in my hand tapping the table example. I haven’t analyzed any tunes with a scope or whatever but my layman’s assessment is that the bass player sets the tempo and the other instruments hit down on the front edge ,, ie, Ron Block. I'm also not talking about doing country songs in a BG band and changing them to BG rhythm, as in Love Letters in the Sand, although some bands will do that.

Seems a very limiting way to think of other musicians.
Some players go seemlessly from bluegrass to country to jazz to Canadian or Irish fiddletunes because they have an understanding of the differences between those genres.

Playing one type of music for the most part doesn't automatically lock out the others,no more than learning a tune from tablature locks one into only being able to play it that one way.