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When I first started on the banjo, back in 1997, I was living in Tampa, Florida. I studied with Jeff Jones at the legendary Bluegrass Parlor store. (http://www.bluegrassparlor.com/history). At the time, Jeff was a senior in high school, but was a well-respected state champion on the banjo and mandolin and a core member of the “Bluegrass Parlor Band.”

Tom Henderson (former proprietor of the Bluegrass Parlor) and Jeff were great friends to me, and pretty much gave me my foundation of bluegrass knowledge. Even today, I still listen to old cassette tape recordings of Tom’s national syndicated radio show “This Is Bluegrass” which airs weekly in many radio stations throughout the Southeast.

It is strange to think back to those days before the Internet and music/file sharing exploded. Back then, a primary source for discovering new music was the good old fashioned radio. And most of the good stuff could be found in the college and public radio frequencies to the extreme left of your dial.

Anyway, a few months back, during an nostalgic and unhealthy obsession with the bluegrass banjo, I created some .mp3 loops using The Amazing Slow Downer from Roni Music. (note: I REALLY wish I had this tool in my formative years, but it didn’t exist back then).

So, I basically took some of my favorite numbers by Ralph Stanley, J.D. Crow and Earl and slowed down an instrumental verse/segment for learning. I’d sit down with my banjo and listen to the loops over-and-over until I got them burned into memory.

You can listen and or download the MP3’s here

If you are a student of the banjo, I hope you find the loops useful for learning. Another thing I’d like to share is a short list of the most valuable things I learned from two years of banjo lessons from Jeff Jones at the Bluegrass Parlor:

1) Don’t use tab to learn songs, use your ears
2) Make your rolls automatic through slavish practice with a metronome
3) Play with other people as much as possible – bluegrass is about playing nice with others!

Note: Jeff has some instructional videos up on YouTube as well.

Tags: Banjo, Bluegrass music, Jeff Jones, mp3

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Learning, fun bluegrass swing music, interesting events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.