Tangier Sound

“One two and three four and . . .”

When I was starting out on the banjo every player I had contact with told me to practice a quarter note and two eighth note pattern.

They said pretty much the same thing when I started out on the guitar.

Bump dit-ty, boom chuck-a, one two and – I can think of a dozen other variations. Everybody had their own way of vocalizing the rhythm but it always meant the same thing: a quarter note and two eighth notes.

“One two and three four and . . .”

When my father first showed me the basic frailing strum on the banjo I didn’t bother to ask him why we were playing a quarter note and two eighth note pattern. It was presented as something I needed to work on in order to get started so I did just that. I also didn’t question Peggy Seeger or Elizabeth Cotten when they told me to work on that same pattern.

“One two and three four and . . .”

Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of trash-talking about the basic frailing strum.  Some misguided people are trying to convince beginners that “bum diddy” is somehow limiting.

This is not a simple matter of new ideas replacing tradition. If the people in question did in fact have a new and improved teaching method I would embrace it wholeheartedly – but, sadly, that is not the case.

All I am hearing from these guys is a lot of grandiose bluster mixed up with some curious misconceptions about music theory. Their basic premise is that frailing is all eighth notes. In other words, instead of a quarter note and two eighth notes, the “new” version of frailing is an eighth note, an eighth note rest and two more eighth notes. They go on to make odd claims that playing a quarter note instead of an eighth note followed by an eighth note rest will make it impossible to play with a fiddler.

Ask them to clarify and you get an endless stream of gibberish full of bums and ditties without any musical sense behind it.

Is it just me, or is there is a disquieting sort of Lewis Carroll vibe to this whole mess?

What it boils down to is marketing. Most of the folks making these claims have either failed in the music business or are in the process of failing. By vilifying a successful  (and traditional) teaching method they hope to drum up a bogus sort of controversy and put their names and their products into the spotlight.

“One two and three four and . . .”

I teach the way I was taught. I teach because I love my craft. I teach because I want everybody to have the kind of adventures I did.

People ask me how I can sit with a student (or in front of the camera) reviewing the basics over and over again. I never quite have the words to tell them how sharing  takes me back to when I was a boy sitting on the front porch with my dad struggling through The White House Blues.

Some of the finest days of my life have been spent introducing folks to the craft and the music that my father taught me. In the way he taught me – with patience and love.

“One two and three four and . . .”

Marketing ploys come and go. Guerrilla marketing in web forums is a sad fact of life on the Internet. In a few months the guys trash-talking the work I do will give up and go into a field more suited to their musical abilities like cooking at a Waffle House or guessing weight at carnivals.

Teachers and ideas come and go, but a craft like frailing banjo will always endure. One hundred years from now there will still be folks sitting in the bright summer sun introducing people to the basic frailing strum.

“One two and three four and . . .”