Category: Banjo

Got some great shows coming up in the Bard area! Come check it out if you’re around.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday – Still Seeing the Beautiful Light, Alex Thompson’s Senior Show
8pm, Old Gym
Yours truly is conducting.

Sunday – Conservatory Orchestra Concert, including the Gershwin suite Catfish Row
3pm, Sosnoff
I’ll be playing banjo!

Met David Grier at Bard! He’s inspired me to go do what the hell I want to do. Everybody says it, a lot of people do it, but he’s one of the best solo performers playing the kind of music I like playing. Role model. (He does have some dirty jokes though.)

I am currently working to adapt Perpetuum Mobile for banjo.
I was listening to classical radio recently and heard this wonderful new piece by Simon Jeffes. While I enjoyed it for its simplicity and beauty, the name struck me for its relevance to Moto Perpetuo, a viola piece by Paganini which was adapted for banjo a few years ago by Bela Fleck on his classical album. The title of this album was Perpetual Motion, which in Italian is moto perpetuo, and in Latin is perpetuum mobile.
The theme of motion, perpetual or cyclical motion in particular, really fits with 3-finger, Scruggs- or melodic-style banjo in an important way, I think, and each piece, when played on the banjo, approaches that theme in a different way. Moto Perpetuo introduces a motif in rapidly jumping and diving sixteenth notes, then takes that motif through lightning quick changes and modulations. Very classical. As a stark counterpoint, Perpetuum Mobile is almost totally minimalist, with the lead instrument, originally piano, playing one bar of fifteen eighth-notes and repeating it, only transposing the line near the end of the piece. The change or motion that occurs is eventually in the orchestra, with long, deep, open-voiced diatonic chords changing once per bar. This happens infrequently as most of the piece stays on a C major chord.
In comparison, I am reminded of the old joke about how many soloists it takes to screw in a lightbulb. It only takes one; she holds the lightbulb in place while the world revolves around her. Similarly, Perpetuum Mobile uses a cyclical theme against a moving backdrop, while Moto Perpetuo actually screws in the lightbulb, moving a motif through different chords and keys.
I’m looking forward to performing Perpetuum Mobile. I’ll need a small orchestra though. Might be time to call an accomplished keyboard player.

While the banjo player for the Punch Bros, perhaps the most successful young(ish) group to be playing anything remotely relevant to bluegrass, is rightly regarded as a technical virtuoso and a truly experimental artist with a mastery of the five-string banjo fretboard and a skill for single-string improvisation…
*deep breath* he’s got his licks, just like everyone else.
The trick, though, is in the right hand. Boy, his left hand knows what it’s doing, but a closer examination of Noam Pikelny’s right hand at a recent show revealed a startling surprise, an insight into why his runs and fills are so ear-catching and unusual.
He’s playing upside-down.
No, not physically. When Earl Scruggs pioneered this new sound of 3-finger playing – that is, thumb, index, and middle – he led, not always but predominantly, with the thumb. A major identifiable Scruggs roll is thumb-index-thumb-middle, or T I T M, where the thumb moves to different strings. A similar sounding roll would start off with T I M I, and another with T I M T.
But Noam? He will play that T I M I roll, over and over, on the chord, like everyone else, except he plays it inverted, as M I T I. This creates a sound that is less root-heavy and more about beats 2 and 4. It’s unfamiliar, it’s clarifying, and people like it.