Topic: Tappin' That Thing: Blues Mandolin by Key

[uncle bud]

Dang! Rich doesn't quite answer our question, tho'.

I was always under the same impression as BC about him being around G with Sleepy John in the early recordings, Broken Hearted, Divin' Duck, and going to E tuning later, when he got with Sonny Boy. Checking B&GR, his pre war recordings with Sleepy John were all before '31. He did a bunch of sessions with Dan Smith in '34 and then didn't record until '38 and then '41 with Sonny Boy. So he had plenty of time to change in between sessions. Rich's example, Shotgun Blues, was recorded with Sonny Boy in '41.

I couldn't possibly suss his playing position, but I listened to the two tracks with Noah Lewis ('30)(don't have the SJE box yet) and, would you believe, they seem to be pitched around F (Ticket Agent) and Bb (New Minglewood)?!?!

Yes, it was that article, and its later (earlier?) incarnation in Rich's book, that had me partly confused I guess - it doesn't address the Sleepy John material. BTW, Rich has a tab arrangement on that page of New Minglewood Blues but does it in A.

That original Noah Lewis recording of New Minglewood Blues is just greasy as hell, truly wonderful.

[MuddyBuddy]

I have played along to a lot of Yank's recordings and later ones were often in E and A, while earlier stuff with Sleepy John were in G and C. Sorry I don't have specific titles right now, but I will look into it when I have time.

Cheers
BERT

[Adam Franklin]

I hope no one minds me dragging up a very old, though very interesting thread!

The mandolin player (sorry, can't pull his name out of my head) with the Birmingham Jug Band is tuned down a step on 'German Blues', playing out of G in the key of F. You can hear a low F note about half way through the tune. I teach that in F though, as most of the licks are a little easier out of F, good to get away from G too.

Not sure if it's on the list, my favourite mandolin player, Charlie McCoy's 'Times Ain't Like They Used To Be' and 'Vicksburg Stomp' are in E. I'll be teaching these at Bluesweek, perfect examples of Frankie's point earlier in this thread.

[frankie]

Not sure if it's on the list, my favourite mandolin player, Charlie McCoy's 'Times Ain't Like They Used To Be' and 'Vicksburg Stomp' are in E. I'll be teaching these at Bluesweek, perfect examples of Frankie's point earlier in this thread.

Times Ain't Like They Used To Be is played out of F, and all the licks sit nicely in that key.

Vicksburg Stomp is in E-flat and as counter-intuitive as that might appear, it is very approachable in that key.

Additionally, the guitar accompaniment is pretty clearly played out of the same position for both - no capo.

I understand if you like playing them in E (everyone has their thing...) but that doesn't appear to be how they were played on the original recordings at all.

[Adam Franklin]

Not sure if it's on the list, my favourite mandolin player, Charlie McCoy's 'Times Ain't Like They Used To Be' and 'Vicksburg Stomp' are in E. I'll be teaching these at Bluesweek, perfect examples of Frankie's point earlier in this thread.

Times Ain't Like They Used To Be is played out of F, and all the licks sit nicely in that key.

Vicksburg Stomp is in E-flat and as counter-intuitive as that might appear, it is very approachable in that key.

Additionally, the guitar accompaniment is pretty clearly played out of the same position for both - no capo.

All the releases I have are in E on both, maybe they're all playing at the wrong speed.

[frankie]

All the releases I have are in E on both, maybe they're all playing at the wrong speed.

It's a common misconception that pitch and playing position have a 1:1 correspondence in recordings. Of course, there are LOTS of reason pitch can be different than a playing position - recording speed, playback speed, tuning choices made by performers, capos.... If you look at Miller's Breakdown, (look left and CLICK), you'll see a running discussion on the ways to identify playing position in a recorded performance. It's very interesting, actually, and you're bound to learn something...

If you pay close attention  to that discussion, you'll also note that the participants who base their evaluation of a playing position purely on the pitch of a recordings are almost invariably WRONG in the end. In my experience (and I have said it over and over again), pitch is the LEAST reliable piece of information you can use to determine how something is being played.

If you are going to teach these songs on mandolin, I do hope you will take the time to get sufficiently inside them to understand how the original performer executed them. If you do like to perform them in another way and prefer to teach that way (totally understandable), you might want to do your participants a favor and make them aware of your choice.

Good luck with it!

[Stuart]

It's been mentioned before, but some re-issued cuts were "pitch corrected." Obviously it's a matter of specifics, but it's something to bear in mind.

There can be uncertainty in the line of transmission--individual steps in the process--from the original 78 recording to whatever we're listening to at the moment.

However, whether this is relevant to the two specific cuts presently under discussion is something yet to be determined.

[Lastfirstface]

Charlie McCoy's flat key mandolin playing makes a lot of sense once you start to mess around with it. Vickburg Stomp is for sure in E-flat to my ear, and Jackson stomp is out of B-flat. If you check out some of the footage of Sam Chatmon, you can get some idea for how the Sheiks approached guitar accompaniment in flat keys; just look for the footage of Fishing Blues (Evil Jackson.)

Edit:
Here's the clip I was talking about (1h14m in.) A song or two before he also does Sales Tax in B-flat:

https://youtu.be/2uD1DJd43Mw?t=1h14m15s

[One-Eyed Ross]

I know that, for me, once I started playing the E flat and B flat keys (on the fiddle first) with the Sheiks music, I found it really wasn't that hard...especially if you go to Jazzmando.com and work on the FFCP (four finger closed position) exercises.  Those help out a lot in training the fingers to work on closed positioning, and it really becomes VERY easy to change keys afterwards.

[Papa Hawkins]

Hi everybody,

I'm a new member here though I've been visiting this site for years, learning and enjoying much of what is discussed here.  This site is an invaluable resource for Country Blues playing and it's all thanks to your content and discussions.  Thank you!

I'm jumping in on this thread because I'm a blues mandolin player and I wanted to discuss the tunes of the Birmingham Jug Band.  At the start of this thread, (over 9 years ago!) their tunes are listed as being played in F position.  I wonder if anyone here has much experience playing these tunes in that key/position.  If so, please relate or share recordings, if you're so inclined.

I've been playing around with these tunes and I think that they might have been done in G position.  Now, believe me, I'm no stranger to playing blues mandolin in F position: Charlie McCoy, Dallas String Band, Memphis Jug Band and the Three Tobacco Tags all play in that position quite well.  I just wonder about a few things regarding these specific recordings:

1. Most blues mandolin tunes in F seem to have a major-ish tonality to them. They're sophisticated, they often employ VI - II - V changes in them and the melodies reflect that as well.  These songs do not use those kind of changes, they are straight I - IV - V blues that are bashed out with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.  The melodic strengths of playing in F position are not at all in use here.

2. The guitar player is clearly banging out G position open chords behind the mandolin on many of these tracks.  You can hear both distinctive bass patterns and bass runs in G position.  Now, in no way does this necessitate that the mandolin must be playing in G position as well, but it certainly doesn't help advance the F position argument; if anything, it helps the G position argument.

3. One BJB track not listed here is the "Cane Brake Blues" which sounds at Bb, but plays so easily in C position that I'd wager that anyone skilled in this style of play would have to conclude that it is a C position, not Bb position, tune.  That being the case, we'd have to choose between believing that this band played in G and C positions, with tuning and/or record speed variables bringing it all down a whole step; or that the band played in F and C positions, with tuning and/or record speed variables only affecting the one track brought down a whole step.  The latter is not out of the realm of possibility, but the former seems more likely to me.

Now, this is all just argument, whereas the evidence is in the recordings themselves.  I'm looking for certain indisputable sounds that would indicate one position over another: a low root note, for example, which Adam Franklin claims to hear in German Blues (I can't say that I heard it), would only be available in G position.  Open low 6th and middle 3rd would say F position; open 5th, middle 2nd high 6th would say G position.  If we can determine if octave strings are in use on the low courses, then that might solve it.  There's a riff used over the IV chord in many of their songs where they play the root, 2nd, flat 3rd, 2nd, root of the I chord (or 5th, 6th, flat 7th, 6th, 5th of the IV chord!) If those 2nd and flat 3rd notes are octaved, then case closed, it's played on the 3rd course in F position, if only the first note is octaved, then it's in G postion. But for the life of me I can't hear it definitively one way or the other!

Well I guess that's a lot to put out there for my first post, but I really want to see what people have to say on the subject. Since I'm making the argument, the onus of proof is on me, so I'll upload some short samples of my attempts to play a few lines in each position and maybe you all can tell me which sounds better.  I welcome any input on this question.  Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and good luck with your playing everyone.

[Lastfirstface]

I've played the BJB tunes out of F and G and they sort of work well out of either to my ear. I can't say I hear that low G note on any of the recordings, including German Blues.

[waxwing]

Funny seeing posts I made from 6 years ago.

I understand now how important the playing key is for guitar in the old blues, at least for me. It really gives the song a certain character. Well, maybe a range of character, because players find a lot of different ways to use what the forms give you. But, to a guitar player, C sounds a whole lot different than E.

About a year or so ago the jug band I play mostly jug in brought in a jazz guitar player and now the character seems to have gone out of a lot of the music. I just think of it as the Key of Jazz. So, maybe the pitch is different, but the feel is pretty much all the same. Never an open string. But heck, key certainly doesn't matter to a jug player, except it's nice when the key is harmonically related to the wolf tone.

Looking back at the old posts I guess that's kinda similar to a mandolin: with only four strings and the ability to pretty much play from closed positions, and especially since the instrument is used far more as a single note lead or harmony instrument, even in the old styles, playing key imparts far less character to the sound. So even worrying about what key someone else played the song in begins to get pretty esoteric, eh? Maybe I'm overstating it?

Not pretending to be a mandolin player, but thinking about how to approach playing with one, I guess.

Wax

[Stuart]

...It really gives the song a certain character...

You hit the nail right on the head, Wax. While I would never deny a musician artistic license to interpret a song his or her own way, some songs just don't sound right unless they're played a particular way. There's just something lost in translation, IMHO. Call me fussy, if you want (but not punctilious! .)

As for the "key of jazz," accomplished players can transpose on the fly to match a singer's and/or other instruments' preferred key(s), but that skill can also produce a certain "sameness" when playing the old stuff. This is not to take away from a person's talents, it's just that it sometimes sounds like a "mismatch"  to the experienced ear, as you point out.

[Lastfirstface]

While I agree that closed-position playing will make the specific key less important on mandolin, there's plenty of blues and jugband mandolin playing that uses a lot of open strings, so there still can be a specific "flavor" to playing in different keys. I've tried some of the BJB tunes in F and G, and they have a different character in each, but the playing is so raucous and loose on those original recordings that I find it hard to make a firm determination of the fingering the mandolin player was using. Maybe Uncle Bud will chime in since he made the original determination, but I'm still leaning towards his choice of F.

[Suzy T]

I've been listening to, and playing, Vicksburg Stomp and I think that it may actually be in E, not E flat.  The reason is that very first chord - if you play it in E flat, your low note is an open G, and I don't hear an open string there - there's no open string "ring".  I hesitate to disagree with such experts as Frankie, but that's what I'm hearing when I listen to the original.....