Topic: Miller's Breakdown

[Old Man Ned]

Just like to follow-up the thanks above from Pan and Prof Scratchy for such a detailed explanation.  But a question...how do you get to hear these tunes in such detail?  I'm usually in the right ball park with playing position, tuning and roughly in the vicinity of where the fingers are on the strings (usually!), but how do you get to hear fine detail and subtleties. Is it just perseverance and dogged determination and when it's right, you know it's right?  if you know what I mean.

ps  Scrapper Blackwell played piano? I never knew that.  Are there recordings?

[Bunker Hill]

ps  Scrapper Blackwell played piano? I never knew that.  Are there recordings?

He did play piano an example of which was recorded by Duncan P. Schiedt of his performing How Long Blues.

http://www.wirz.de/music/blackfrm.htm

In Stefan's discography scroll down to item 18 (1960)

[Johnm]

Hi Old Man Ned,
With regard to your query, hearing detail in listening to these recordings is a matter of dogged determination in a way, and trying to make that a habit.  When I first started trying to figure out this music, decades ago, I was very impatient and as a result missed a lot of detail, especially what was happening in the bass.  The treble was just a lot easier to hear.  When I went back in recent years and listened to John Hurt and Bo Carter and really listened to what they were playing, especially in the bass, I was struck by how much I had missed on the first go-round. A couple of things I have found helpful in listening:
   * If you can develop the ability to listen to individual parts of what is happening rather than the whole thing at once, it is really helpful.  As an example, listening to Blind Blake and just saying, "What is hitting with his thumb?", figuring that out and then figuring out the treble.  Or on some of these passages of Scrapper's where he is muting an interior string, trying to hear what he would be playing if he fingered a conventional shape without muting, and figuring out where the void is, what part of the chord is missing.
   * I try (and sometimes forget) not to take anything for granted when listening.  Even when someone is playing what at first sounds like a commonly played sort of lick, so often they'll have their own very slightly different way of doing it.  If you stay focused and don't assume they're just doing the "normal" way, you may be able to figure out what it is that is different about how the person is playing the lick. 

A lot of the close listening depends on just taking the time to do it carefully and maintaining focus while doing it.  It is a nice head space to be in, while you're engaged with it.  I hope this helps.

All best,
Johnm

[Old Man Ned]

Thanks John, that helps a lot.  Much appreciated.  All the best.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I have a new puzzler for you.  The song is "Blues Knocking At My Door", as played by Carolina Slim (Ed Harris).  He was an East Coast player who died very young in the early-mid 1950s.  Here is the song:



Early this mornin', baby, blues was knockin' at my door
Early this mornin', baby, blues was knockin' at my door
Well I had so much of trouble, I didn't know where to go

Well, if I could only read, read my little baby's mind
Lord, if I could only read, read my little baby's mind
Well, I wouldn't be worried and bothered all the time

SOLO

Baby, you know you don't love me, please stop jivin' me
You know you don't love me, why don't you stop jivin' me
Well, you know it's better to be without you and to live on in misery

Blues, go away and don't ever return no more
Blues, go away, don't ever return no more
You bring me the worst old feeling I ever had in my life before


The questions are:
   * What playing position/tuning did Carolina Slim use to play "Blues Knocking At My Door"?
   * Where does he fret that passage that he plays from :20--:24?
   * Where does he fret the descending fill from 1:06--1:08?
   * Where is fretting the opening portion of his solo, from 1:22--1:30?
   * Where does he fret the two chords that sound from 2:13--2:15?

Please use only your ears and your instrument to come up with your answers, and please don't post any answers until Wednesday morning, December 17.  Thanks for your participation.

All best,
Johnm

[jtbrown]

OK, here goes -- this is actually my second attempt to post this, as I tried to edit to correct a mistake and accidentally deleted the whole post:

1) I think he's playing out of E position, in standard tuning but with the guitar tuned one and a half steps low, so that the actual key is C#.

2) I think he's fretting this at the fifth fret, x05657 (so a IV9 chord, I guess?).  First he brushes up on the top strings, alternating between the first and second string as the highest note, then he plays a little four-note run in the bass that goes fifth string seventh fret, fifth string fifth fret, fifth string seventh fret, fourth string fifth fret.

3) I think he starts with an open note on the highest string just before the beat, then slides into the second string, eighth fret to begin a one-bar run in triplets that goes something like this: second string eighth fret, second string fifth fret, third string seventh fret, third string fourth fret, third string third fret, third string second fret, fourth string fifth fret, fourth string second fret, quick slide from fifth string sixth to seventh fret, back to fourth string second fret.  Those last three are all the same note (the tonic), and the final note of this run is accompanied by the open sixth string as a bass note.  (I'm pretty unsure about this whole run; I suspect I may be playing it in the wrong place, and possibly making other mistakes as well.)

4)  I think he starts up around the twelfth fret by sliding into a I or I7 chord of some sort and playing triplets for about three beats.  Maybe he's playing the seventh on the first string at the tenth fret, the fifth on the second string at the twelfth fret, and the third on the third string at the thirteenth fret?  Anyway, he plays triplets on that for about three beats, then does something that I can't hear/remember well enough to make it out; it's kind of dissonant in places, and he goes down a bit, then back up, then back down, then down further.  (How's that for a vague description?)  In this part, the second string seems to be the most prominent, and I seem to hear him playing it at the twelfth fret, then moving down to the tenth, then back to the twelfth, then back to the tenth, then the eighth, and finally the fifth fret. 

5) Fifth string, seventh fret as a bass note, then xxx787, then xx7565?

Thanks for giving us these puzzlers and your detailed analysis of them, John.  Although this is my first time posting to this thread, I've tried to work out some of the previous ones on my own, with mixed success.  I won't be at all surprised if it turns out that I've gotten everything wrong on this one, starting with the tuning, but even so it was fun to try to figure it out.  I also appreciate your highlighting this great song, which I was previously unfamiliar with.

Todd Brown

[Old Man Ned]

This ones been messing with my head.  I'm going for D in dropped D tuning as I'm hearing a low note at about 3 secs that's pushing me towards this. I think he's tuned about a half step low.  Also thought it may be A in dropped D but discarded that.

Where does he fret that passage that he plays from :20--:24?
--5--
--3--
--2-- on the top 3 strings
 then open 4th, 5th str/3rd fret, open 4th, 4th str/3rd fret with a slight bend

Where does he fret the descending fill from 1:06--1:08?
--2--
-----3---1
------------2--1-----0
------------------3-----3-----0
---------------------------3
--------------------------------
or thereabouts..

Where is fretting the opening portion of his solo, from 1:22--1:30?
Moving between 1st str/5th fret and 2nd str/6th fret to a D chord at 2nd & 3rd frets, then I think he's keeping the D on the 2nd str and hitting the open E but that's as much as I've got.

Drew a blank on the 2 chords, ran out of time to spend on them.

Look forward to the solution.  All the best.

[jtbrown]

Oh, that makes so much more sense!  One thing that seemed off to me in my version was that at the end of the run in 3), I thought I heard the penultimate note of the run still ringing when the final note was sounded.  That isn't possible with the tuning I used, but it works beautifully in dropped D (or dropped C#), since that final note is played on the open fourth string rather than at the second fret.  I should have tried harder to resolve this discrepancy, rather than convincing myself I was mishearing the recording.

So I did in fact get everything wrong, starting with the tuning.  No surprise there, but I'm curious to see how much (if any) of what I guessed for the top five strings is "correct," apart from being tuned a step low and playing two frets too high to compensate. 

Todd

[banjochris]

   * What playing position/tuning did Carolina Slim use to play "Blues Knocking At My Door"?

drop D, tuned down some

   * Where does he fret that passage that he plays from :20--:24?

As Old Man Ned said but I think the chord is 5-X-X-4-3-5


   * Where does he fret the descending fill from 1:06--1:08?

Borrowing some of Ned's tab, I think closer to

----1-0
--3-----3-1
------------2-1-0
------------------3--0--
-------------------------3>5--
--------------------------------

he almost always slides up to catch that unison D note on the 5th string 5th fret.


* Where is fretting the opening portion of his solo, from 1:22--1:30?
 8th fret, 1st string and 10th fret, 2nd string

* Where does he fret the two chords that sound from 2:13--2:15?
I can?t quite tell if it?s a 7th or a diminished 7th shape, but I think it?s either
x-x-4-5-4-5 or x-x-4-5-3-5 and then the whole thing slid down two frets. I?d lean toward the x-x-4-5-3-5 if I had to pick one.

Interesting hearing someone really copying Lightning Hopkins but not sounding much like him vocally. Nice performance.

[Prof Scratchy]

Another klaxon of failure for  me on this one! Seduced by the Lightnin' Hopkins sound,  I had E standard.

[jtbrown]

Prof Scratchy, I'm glad I wasn't the only one -- the strong resemblance of several licks to Lightnin' Hopkins's playing in E is exactly what made me jump to the conclusion that this song must be in a variation on standard tuning. I might have done better if I had listened more closely to the whole thing, with a guitar in hand, before focusing on the specific passages John asked about; as roig mentions the voicing of the V7 chord makes it very obvious that he's playing an A7-type chord, not a typical B7 shape. (At least, now that I know what to listen for!)

Todd

[Prof Scratchy]

Mmmnnn... They're not called puzzlers for nothing...

[blueshome]

I'm hopeless at this usually, but I did figure dropped D (down a bit) from the 1st low note. Very similar to early Lightnin though, he seems to have been very popular with Piedmont players of the period as there are quite a few recordings in his style from there.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
It has been great to see more folks participating in the Carolina Slim puzzler, and especially good to see folks discussing the tune and everything pertaining to it.  Carolina Slim was pretty darn good, wasn't he?  It's neat to hear someone who I'm sure would have admitted to being strongly influenced by Lightnin' Hopkins nonetheless express himself so strongly and convincingly in that style--and no matter how much someone's guitar playing is influenced by Lightnin', Lightnin's vocals are pretty much inimitable, just because Lightnin's voice was one-of-a-kind.
Here are the answers to the questions on "Blues Knocking At My Door":
   * Carolina Slim did play the song out of Dropped-D tuning (tuned a bit low) working out of D position there, as Old Man Ned and Chris and Roi and Phil had it.
   * For the passage at :20--:24, where Slim comes to his first IV chord, what I hear sounding is very close to Chris's suggested position of 5-X-X-4-3-5.  I hear the same chord, but minus the 4th fret of the third string, 5-X-X-X-3-5.  The sound with the 4th fret of the third string in there comes right out of Lonnie Johnson, and was also used a lot by Bo Carter when he played Johnson-influenced tunes in dropped-D.  I think Carolina Slim is getting a dronier, more open sound by leaving that sweet 4th fret of the third string, (the third of the G chord) out of there, so he's just hitting the low G note root at the fifth fret of the sixth string, the V note of the chord, D, at the third fret of the second string, and an add 9, A, at the fifth fret of the first string.
   * The descending run Carolina Slim played from 1:06--1:08 sits as follows:  He hits a pick-up note on the + of beat one at the third fret of the second string.  On beat two, he plays a triplet going from first fret of the first string to third fret of the second string to first fret of the second string.  On beat three he plays a triplet descending chromatically on the third string from the second fret to the first fret to the open string.  On beat four he plays a triplet going from the third fret of the fourth string to the open fourth string and then sliding up into the fifth fret of the fifth string, as Chris had it.  On the downbeat of the next bar he resolves the run with a thumb brush of the open sixth and fifth strings.  Todd had this run pretty much spot on for the position he initially suggested for the song.
   * For the opening of his solo, from 1:22--1:30, Carolina Slim is moving around a little two-string double stop on the first two strings.  He starts the passage fretting the 10th fret of the second string and the 8th fret of the first string, voicing the bVII of his D chord on the first string and the V of his D chord on the second string.  He moves the position down three frets, to 7-5 on the first two strings (V on the first string and III on the second string), back up three frets and back down three frets.  Thus far, he is working territory very heavily mined by Buddy Moss.  Slim then moves the position down two frets, to 5-3 on the second and first strings respectively, (sus 4 on the first string and 9 on the second string), worries the position a bit coming on and off the fifth fret of the first string down to the third fret and back, and then resolves the position down two frets more, to 3-1 on the second and first strings (Root on the second string and bIII on the first string).  It's really kind of remarkable how much of a bang he gets out of that position in the first four bars of that solo, and I can't think of another recording I've heard where a player gets so much out of that position.  And the really cool thing is that it is not difficult to execute--you're just moving that position intact, up and down the neck and very occasionally fretting the first string as well at the same fret you're fretting the second string.  Brilliant!
   * For the passage from 2:13--2:15, Carolina Slim is hitting a position and then moving it intact down to frets.  What I'm hearing in the treble on the top four strings is  4-5-X-5 resolving to 2-3-X-3.  I think one of the reasons it is tough to discern whether he's playing a diminished seventh chord on those top four strings or just the top four notes of a seventh chord is that he is not sounding anything on his second string which is where the distinction between the diminished seventh, 4-5-4-5 and the dominant seventh, 4-5-3-5, would be made.  There is a natural way to fret these two positions, leaving the second string open that would utilize a commonly-played shape.  If you imagine a B7 chord fingered
X-2-1-2-0-2, and then just take the fretted portion of that shape on the fourth, third and first strings up three frets, you end up with 4-5-X-5, and then down two frets, 2-3-X-3.  In terms of the hearing of the move, even without the second string in there, I agree with Chris that it sounds like a D7 going to a C7.
Thanks to all of you who posted answers to the puzzler and took part in the discussion.  The discussion makes the whole thing richer for everyone, I think.  I will try to find another puzzler to post soon.
All best,
Johnm
     

[jtbrown]

Thanks, again, John.  As usual, your analysis is both instructive and fascinating; having a clearer idea of what these musicians are doing never fails to deepen my appreciation of the music. 

Todd