Jim Wing's Page

Hey Jim, Thanks for the comments about the band. I wished that was me taking the guitar breaks but that is our other guitar player Evan Scott. I have dabbled in it a little and just started taking lessons from Josh Williams so maybe before long I can get the hang of it. LOL. I will try to keep you updated. Nothing coming up locally that I know of. Hardly any venues around close that are willing to pay though. Take care, Chris

Sounds good!

Hi Jim, I don't know if you are interested at this point, but, here are the first two rounds of Jerusalem Ridge from the 'definitive source' (thanks Kathy) the album 'Kenny Baker plays Bill Monroe' (1978), in which -kinda funny- Monroe showed up for the studio sessions and contributed to almost all the tracks (so it really should be 'Kenny Baker and Bill Monroe play Bill Monroe'). Anyway, this version of JR is the only one I know of in which Monroe plays a full mandolin break (second round), so I included it. For ear training purposes, I've slowed to 96 bpm, karyoke'd, and filtered to emphasize the fiddle.

Hope it is useful to you, and that it doesn't cause too much destructive interference with your TAB learned version.

Cheers, ganon

JR-KBaker-40%25-R1%262%20filtered.mp3

Jim, the Flatpicking Essentials exercises were great for developing the ear, and finding your way around the fretboard, but obviously nothing for speed. Don't get me wrong, and assume that learning by ear reduces the need for lots of repetitions (brute force), you still have to build up lots of myelin insulation (white matter) on your choosen neural pathway whether learned by ear or from TAB. But I do think that the ultimate speed that you can reach by ear is greater, because the starting structure when learned by ear is much more efficient (no built in control points for visual feedback - I think vestiges of those control points remain long after you stop using the TAB, and slow things down).  Right now I experimenting with 'relearning' by ear, tunes that I had previously learned from TAB. For example, Temperance Reel (which if I remember correctly, you like much when you were exposed to it):  I had previously learned it with TAB from both Brad Davis and Wayne Henderson (with varying degrees of success), but now I have relearned it by ear from Tony Rice's album 'Tony Rice' (1977).  Within a couple of days, I was playing @ 120 (recording of same on the play on my page), and after a week or so I am now hitting 180 - 200 without too much problem (Tony plays it @ 270). The TAB learned versions always started to get pretty sketchy around 160, no matter how much practice. The other thing, and most important to me, is the things learned by ear always feel like music. The TAB things don't always, often they feel like rushing to keep up with a sequence of rote learned mechanical actions with zero emotional content.

 

Anyway, hope you catch up with you jam buddies, by whichever route you choose to follow.

 

 

Thanks, Jim!

Looks like a good resource. I've obviously recognized the importance for some time, but never found anything that seemed to work very well. Looks like that are many useful ideas and approaches here.