Ray Chatfield told me he thought that he won the Galax banjo contest by stringing together a bunch of tricks. Having been in a band with Ray, I don't believe that for a second, but stuffing a few tricks up your sleeve is fun and makes your arms look bigger.
First, break a quarter note into four, 16th notes. The rhythm is "lick-e-ty split" or "look-at-the-bear," but fast. Sing it with me:
Look-at-the-bear Doodle went to town, a-
Look-at-the-bear on a pony,
Look-at-the-bear feather in his cap and
Look-at-the-bear macaroni.
It's an ornament. To make the pick direction work, you need to end up going down, so the ornament needs to start with an up-pick. It should be up-down-up-down. So far, so good.
The starting note, is a G on the third string. The open, fourth, string, right underneath it, is a rhyming G, an octave below. If you play both strings on purpose, or just miss and hit the lower string by accident, you'll get more Gs.
You're going to do something different from that. If I use 'G' to mean the low, fourth string G, and 'g' for the higher one, you're going to play "Gggg." Start with a strong, down stroke, the way you'd normally kick off the verse, but on the G insead of the g in the melody. Next, continue right through in the same direction to the next string, 'g,' You're playing down-down-up-down. "Look at the bear."
It's easier fast than slow. The right hand feels like it's playing a triplet but with the first note held a little longer.
Paradoxically, the on-beat, starting G is an octave below the melody, but there are so many g's that you still hear the clump as being the note you actually meant, instead.
This ornament is fast, strong, and works well either as a way to emphasize the first or last note of the set of four. It's a good way to kick off a part or to end a tune -- the very first "Yan-," beat of Yankee Doodle or the very last. ...with the girls be haaan- Look-at-the-bear.
You need to start a "look-at-the-bear" on one string and play the rest on the next string up, but that happens often enough to make it worth trying.
The first and last notes of a tune routinely name the key, and there's usually a handy, open A, D, or G to recruit for either the lower or the upper string of the ornament.
You can even have the two strings be the exact same note. For example, run your ring finger up to the seventh fret of the bottom, G, string, so it's a D in unison with the D on the next string. Now play the ornament on these two strings, and you'll hear four notes in two textures. It's a very different sound from playing all four notes on the same string.
The first and last notes of a tune routinely name the key, and there's usually a handy, open A, D, or G to recruit for either the lower or the upper string of the ornament.
You can even have the two strings be the exact same note. For example, run your ring finger up to the seventh fret of the bottom, G, string, so it's a D in unison with the D on the next string. Now play the ornament on these two strings, and you'll hear four notes in two textures. It's a very different sound from playing all four notes on the same string.
I'll ring a trio of other changes, then let you go off and try it out.
Firstly, you can make bear important instead of look by starting the ornament before the note it's ornamenting. For example, "... and called it mac-a-ro-(look-at-the-)NY. This little, lead-in filip announces "the note I'm about to play is important."
Second, you can make every note different. With the same hand motion, but another slight change in timing, let me walk you through an example:
Stuck a fea- g-a-b-
C his cap and
Called it mac-a-
Ro-ni.
Here, instead of a repeated note, you're playing a scale to climb from one chord to the note you want in the second. You can tell your guitar player "It's a treble run."
Third is a half-step, chromatic variant of the same thing, which climbs from the first to the third of the chord:
Stuck G-a-b-flat-B -ther
In his cap and
Called it mac-a-
Ro-ni.What's interesting here is in the left hand, because the index finger needs to reach down for the b-flat and then slide up to the final b. If you play it fast, you'll see it's easier than I'm making it sound. This is a good ornament in D, too: d-e-f-f#.
For this last example, I've modified the melody slightly to accommodate the ornament. Sue me. (If Hollywood and the recording industry keep getting Congress to expand the DMCA, someone probably will. I had to pay royalties to record Cielito Lindo. As nearly as I can tell, the melody may have been traditional. Quirino Mendoza y Cortés copyrighted lyrics in the 1880's. Two centuries later, I'm paying someone royalties. Trini Lopez, Mantovani, and me.)
