Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My…

You know, there are some things in early bluegrass recordings that are impossible to beat. One of our favorites is on Flatt and Scruggs's early version of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, where the whole band (except for Earl) is playing the "wrong" chord. Let's review the chords in FMB: you start out with eight beats of…

A Visiting Mandolin

A friend of ours has left a mandolin with us, just for a visit. It's a very nice mandolin but he hasn't been playing it much, so he wanted me to "play it in" and bring it back to sounding its best. I play it most of the time for my daily practice, and its…

Banjo and Mandolin

How many instruments do you need to make a band? Not many. Lester Flatt once said that in the old days, "Somebody'd mention a band, and one of 'em would reach and get a fiddle, and the other a banjo, and they'd have it all ready to go." And a banjo goes not only with…

Two New DVDs Now Available

Folks, we're happy to announce that we have TWO great Murphy Method videos now available on DVD. The first one is "Great Banjo Tunes" (the old video was called "Advanced Banjo"), and it lives up to its name. These are the great lessons included on it: The Gold Rush Shenandoah Breakdown Bill Cheatham Dixie Breakdown…

Brilliant Exercise

One of my students has been having right hand trouble lately. At first she thought it was a right hand position problem, so for months she worked on changing her hand position to one that would enable her to play smoothly. As the problem continued, though, we gradually realized it was not a position problem…

Backup 2

Someone suggested to me, as I was getting ready to film the new Easy Songs DVD, that we do a video solely on backup. Of course, vamping is the first step in any banjo backup and we do have a video on that. There are some difficulties inherent in teaching more advanced backup. For one…

The Man Who Invented the Banjo

Now, I know what you're going to say: that the banjo was invented a long time ago by a person nobody knows now. But I'm not talking about just any banjo, I'm talking about the 5-string banjo, with four long strings and a short one at the top: a banjo like the ones we use…

Phone Conversation

Conversation I just had on the phone. I’d like to order the Beginning Banjo Volume 1. Would you like DVD or video? I guess he wants the DVD, he didn’t say. He must have gotten a banjo for Christmas. Yeah. I could have gotten him a gun or a banjo. I should have got the…

Kafuman Kamp, week 1

I write from the beautiful campus of Maryville College in Maryville, TN, where I've been for the past week and a half, teaching at Steve Kaufman's Acoustic Kamp. Last week we had bluegrass banjos, fingerstyle guitars, Dobros, fiddles, basses, and old-time banjos. This week is flatpicking guitars and mandolins. My Banjo 101 class last week…