Bradbury Book 2

[Jody Stecher]

Having played through the entire first volume I now have turned my attention to volume 2. I found the first book to be excellent instructional material sequenced in such a way as to give the student a gentle prod to improve at the same time as building confidence in using what was learned on earlier pages. The downside was occasionally vague instructions and a few badly constructed sentences.  

Will volume 1 be similar?  I expect the music will get harder to play. 

The Norwegian Folk Dance and its preparatory exercise introduces new rhythms and fingerings. The piece is fun to play and  relentlessly jolly and therefore does not remind me of Norwegians. 

The second page of The Sailor's Refrain is  Darling Nellie Gray. Once again the title is a bad fit to the music. The musical arrangement is excellent and not as hard to play as it is to read. There are some tricky position changes. The arrangement and fingering instructions provide the means to play these changes with confidence.

[Jody Stecher]

Pages 30 and 31

Next is the key of G minor.  I had success with the exercises here. I have used slightly different fingering from what is prescribed here so in effect I undertook this as a beginner. In a short time, through dutiful repetition of the sequenced fingering  I went from "huh?" to "why?" to "this is awkward" to "oh, this kinda makes sense" to "I like this" to "this isn't so hard after all" to "oh, there's a pattern on each string" to "got it". 

Then comes a page and a half of Dance Morisco. I had a good laugh imaging English Morris Dancers prancing around to this wide-ranging exploration of the banjo fingerboard in G minor. It's a good review of chord positions and ways of sequencing them. 

At the bottom of the page Bradbury describes the movement between two chord formations as a "Picking Pattern".  It is not. It is a left hand pattern. Picking is done with the other hand.  Once again he has good advice to give but is limited in his ability to give the advice in words that accurately represent his intended meaning.

[Joel Hooks]

Dance Morisco is a total mystery to me.  Knowing what I know about the general obsession many historic banjoists had with race, I believe it is more likely related to "Moors" rather than English dancers with sticks, bells and ribbons (yes I am aware of the claims of "Morris Dancing" history and also the evidence that it is not so old as claimed-- I have no opinion on the matter only that I enjoy when they hit sticks together and leapfrog, also #swordstar).

Bradbury credits his teacher Fred Bacon for the piece, but I have scoured every piece of Bacon related music I can get my hands on and have not found it.  The late Eli Kaufman told me he had also tried to find it and could not. I hope that at some point some Bradbury manuscript turns up with it the original title or some clue to where it came from. 

It is a nice piece and when played at a brisk clip is a bit unnerving (so I like it). 

[Jody Stecher]

 I'm sure Bradbury did not have Morris dancers in mind. Because Morisco means Moorish and the other word in the title is "Dance" my mind connected the syllables with Morris Dance.  It was an amusing pun that briefly crossed my mind. The tune is supposed to sound Spanish. Does it? I dunno. It well might.  There is actually a lot of variety to Spanish folk music  

Joel Hooks said:

Dance Morisco is a total mystery to me.  Knowing what I know about the general obsession many historic banjoists had with race, I believe it is more likely related to "Moors" rather than English dancers with sticks, bells and ribbons (yes I am aware of the claims of "Morris Dancing" history and also the evidence that it is not so old as claimed-- I have no opinion on the matter only that I enjoy when they hit sticks together and leapfrog, also #swordstar).

Bradbury credits his teacher Fred Bacon for the piece, but I have scoured every piece of Bacon related music I can get my hands on and have not found it.  The late Eli Kaufman told me he had also tried to find it and could not. I hope that at some point some Bradbury manuscript turns up with it the original title or some clue to where it came from. 

It is a nice piece and when played at a brisk clip is a bit unnerving (so I like it). 

[Jody Stecher]

Pages 32 through 35

These next pages were fun and surprising. I also found some incomprehensible instructions, which by now is not surprising. 

At the top of page 32 is a section on producing harmonics followed by a waltz using harmonics as the downbeat. I found this to be a delightful device for providing context for harmonics. I've always used harmonics at end of phrases, never at the start. I don't know why. This old dog loves learning new tricks. 

Then comes the section on producing "artificial harmonics".   Not only is the description of how to do it hard to understand, the technique did not work. I can easily produce right hand harmonics but I contact the string with the thumb and pick with a digit, not the opposite, which is what seems to be prescribed here.  The instructions included "...picking the string back of the second finger".   I have never seen a string with a back and my second finger does not have string and if it did how would I tell the front from the back?  I think he might mean "behind" the second finger. I really don't know.

The poor description is followed by an exercise. One plays a G major scale entirely  in false harmonics. I found it a bit tedious since the technique did not work. I applied the technique that has worked for me for half a century but it was still tedious. I have been enjoying all the exercises until now so maybe I was just grumpy.

Page 33 begins with an exercise in ascending and descending arpeggios.  Beneath the heading is written "Position shifts on the inside strings".  I played the exercise and liked it. But I don't know what was meant by the subheading since some of the passages between the arpeggios included the first and fifth strings as well as the inside ones (presumably 2,3 and 4).

Further down the page is some chromatic scale practice using ingenious fingering. This was fun to play. Again the old dog learns some new tricks. 

The next  page introduces the keys of A major and F# minor. I'm now starting to catch on to Bradbury's left and right hand fingering logic. There is always a reason. I don't always see the reason at first but after playing each passage exactly as Bradbury indicates I soon understand the logic and appreciate it.  

And then on page 35 is a very banjo-like arrangement of the Marines' Hymn.  As a kid this was a close second to my favorite Home On The Range. Once again I was not disappointed by Bradbury's arrangement.  By the way in the book the title has no apostrophe and as a kid the title had no final s. All the kids on my block called it The Marine Hymn. We were wrong. 

[Joel Hooks]

From a Marine:

[Jody Stecher]

From St Johnsbury? I thought he was from Bethel. I've spent time in both places. Been snowed-in in St Johnsbury and flooded-out in Bethel. 

Joel Hooks said:

From a Marine: