Getting Started in Bluegrass Music

No matter how you came to it, bluegrass welcomes you. For me, it started with an older brother's New Christy Minstrel's album. It wasn't bluegrass, but it had a banjo on it. The next thing I knew I was straining to hear any thing like it on WLS Barn Dance, a Saturday night country radio show out of Chicago. I bought my first banjo for 50 dollars in a pawn shop, and haven't stopped since.

Bluegrass is a truly native American music form. Born of country and mountain music found in the rural South, the term was coined when legendary Bill Monroe began playing a unique style of music, and called his band The Bluegrass Boys. It blends influences ranging from Irish and English fiddles tunes played by settlers of the Southern mountain states to modern jazz and blues.

Bluegrass is unique in one way: It is, to my knowledge, the only music form where most people who are fans of the music also play the music. If you go to a jazz festival, you will see jazz bands on stage, and people in lawn chairs listening to them. If you go to a bluegrass festival, you will see bluegrass bands on stage, people sitting in lawn chairs listening to them, but you will also see what is usually a park or campground literally filled with small clutches of pickers in informal groups trading "licks" sometimes far into the night.

What is Bluegrass?

If you ever want to start a fight amongst music fans or musicians, ask this question. Everyone knows what it is, but no one can define it. That is because it is a growing, evolving music form, even as it draws on its ancient roots.

If you are new to bluegrass, you are probably wanting to know something about the instrument that you have chosen to play. Following is some information to get you started:

The 5 String Banjo

The banjo has an ancient history, having come over in a primitive form from Africa with black slaves. Today, it is unique in that it has a 5th string that spans only a little over half the length of the instrument. It consists of what is essentially a drum with a neck and strings stretched across it. The "pot" portion of a 5 string banjo resembles a snare drum, and operates on a similar set of physics.

Typically tuned to an open G chord, it is perhaps the most distinctive element of the bluegrass band, although many newer bands don't include one. It is picked with the use of two metal finger picks worn on the index and middle finger of the picking hand, and a thumb pick, usually of a hard plastic material. The index and middle fingers pick upwards, while the thumb picks downwards against the strings.

The Guitar

If the banjo is the most unique instrument in the bluegrass band, the guitar is certainly the core. Although many guitar styles can be found in bluegrass, the dreadnought body style is prevalent, with metal strings. The guitar plays the roles of rhythm, backup, and lead instrument.

The Mandolin

Once so popular, entire mandolin orchestras were formed, the mandolin today is most usually found in bluegrass music. It is usually found in two forms: an A body style, and a more elaborate F body style. Tuned like a fiddle, it is strung in couplets of strings, tuned to G, D, A, and E, eight strings in all.

The Fiddle

"What's the difference between a fiddle and violin?" answer: "What's being played on it". If the answer is "bluegrass", it's a fiddle, although I have heard none less than Ishtak Perlman refer to his priceless violin as a "fiddle".

The fiddle, or violin, it tuned G, D, A, and E, like the mandolin, but has only four strings. The fiddle can be daunting to learn at first, as it doesn't have frets and is bowed instead of plucked or strummed, but the result is what contributes some of the most haunting qualities to bluegrass.

The Bass

Sometimes called the "doghouse bass", the more appropriate term is "double bass". It's a giant fiddle stood up on end and plucked. It's role is to fill in the base line of the song, as well as keep the time.  It is essential to the bluegrass sound.