In the first 10 minutes he threw a grenade into how lots of us think about attack, volume, and timing lol

What a great episode! Thanks for all your work over the years - the info is really invaluable

Trying to find the words to explain this stuff is nothing less than wallowing in semantic quicksand. I thought he did a pretty good job. His enthusiasm for what he does just oozes out of that podcast.

As hard as it is to describe music with words, Ron does a fine job getting his points across. Very well spoken.

I'm still mystified about playing Head Over Heels with no open 2nd string though...

Terrific episode. Thank you!

An old friend who plays both fiddle and banjo auditioned once on the fiddle for Bill Monroe. Bill didn't hire him, but he did offer some advice on his fiddle playing. Bill said, "You've got to mash down". That was the first time I had ever heard the word "mash" used in a musical context. I can’t say that I understand "mash" as discussed in the podcast.

Picky Fingers is an absolute gold mine. It's sort of the modern day version of Masters of the 5 String banjo, and anyone who picked in 80's or 90's was addicted to that book.

I heard Monroe do a mandolin workshop at a festival (Peaceful Valley, NY) where he got a question about how hard he played. Paraphrasing his answer "Well I don't hold the pick too tight, but you can't let it get away from your grip. Uh, but sometimes I like to mash down on it." Mike Compton described Monroe's grip in a podcast as "floppy" between his thumb pad and the first finger knuckle firmly pinched down on the second finger between first and second knuckle so the pick could "flop" on the up & down strokes. Compton said Earl Scruggs told him (!!!!) when he was a Blue Grass Boy, Bill held the flat pick between the thumb pad and side of first fingertip, both of which made a single unit free from the other fingers which wagged in the air stuck straight out. Compton figured he wore out his first finger joint and had to learn to brace it against his second finger joint. Now just imagine Earl being observant enough to remember Monroe's pick grip to tell to Compton, probably in the 1980s or 90s.

I remember when "mash" started indicating a certain type of bluegrass band style around E. Nashville, like The Mashville Brigade, etc. in the 1990s. To me it meant "almost thrash, but not quite". That was just me...

I’d say Benny Martin and Byron Berline played with lotsa “mash”. Earl, Allen Shelton, Doug Dillard, Alan Munde are a few mash-heavy banjo pickers, imho

Bill Monroe Blue Night (trad). Ricky Skaggs Blue Night (mash).

Here is an entire mash playlist if you're still having trouble deciphering. I didn’t make this playlist, I just typed “mash bluegrass” into YouTube and it came up. Skipping through it though, it sounds pretty much like my understanding of mash aka Brograss.