Dix Bruce


Mandolin Magazine articles by and about Dix Bruce

A Student's Approach to a Duet

Music for this workshop

Lately I've been teaching a young mandolin student, Nate Schwartz.

Nate is fifteen years old and lives in Northern California, across the bay from San Francisco. He plays with his parents and siblings in a family bluegrass group, Oak Grove, with friends in a bluegrass band called OMGG and also plays trumpet in his high school band.

Obviously, he's a very musical kid but beyond that, maybe because of his school band experience, he's very open to and interested in all kinds of music. And, he's quite an accomplished player on the mandolin who's very comfortable trying just about anything from reading music to improvising on chord changes.

We started out working on techniques, a little bluegrass here, a few fiddle tunes there, and he pretty much inhaled everything I gave him.

So we moved on to some classical duets and lately have been having a ton of fun working with melodies, chord progressions and improvising on some jazz standards from my Gypsy Swing & Hot Club Rhythm book/CD sets. Again, Nate pretty much inhales everything we work on. He's an excellent student.

Lately Nate has started taking things much further and in different directions than we discuss at the lesson. This, of course, is a teacher's dream!

A few weeks ago we started working on Stumbling from Gypsy Swing & Hot Club Rhythm, Vol. 2. We began with the melody and chords and eventually worked up a duet arrangement that involved playing the melody in unison plus some solos and a section where we traded fours.

The following week we rehearsed the arrangement and as we played the unison melody a second time, I realized that Nate wasn't playing his part: he'd worked out a harmony part above the melody on his own. And it sounded good. Suddenly we had a richer arrangement that with unison melody, solos, trading fours and an out melody with the harmony.

I asked Nate how he approached writing the harmony part and he said, "I love adding harmony parts to melodies and Stumbling seemed like it would sound good with a harmony part."

Why did he choose a part above the melody? "I think that the most important harmony part to have is the tenor, the part a third above the melody. I used the chords as guidelines for accidentals and just followed the melody."

I also asked Nate how he learned to come up with harmony parts. He answered, "I learned how to sing parts in bluegrass vocal harmony and then began to find parts in my head while listening to music. Knowing what chord you're playing and where the melody is all you need to find a harmony part."

As you play through the duet arrangement shown below, start by learning the chords first. I've posted an MP3 recording of Nate and I playing Stumbling on my website so you can hear how it sounds.

Here it is.

After you're comfortable playing the chords, try the melody. When you've nailed the melody, give the harmony a try. Play along with the posted MP3s when you know the parts well enough.

Start by playing all of the parts slowly and gradually increase your speed. The small italic numbers under the standard notation are suggested fretting finger numbers. If they don't work for you, try something else.

I first heard Stumbling on Jethro Burns' self-titled record which also features Vassar Clements and Mike Dowling. The whole album is available from iTunes. Nate and I are having a lot of fun with Stumbling. We hope you do too.

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