{"id":84,"date":"2015-10-23T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T15:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/?p=84"},"modified":"2015-11-03T14:46:32","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T14:46:32","slug":"the-dreaded-bum-diddy-whats-up-with-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/2015\/10\/23\/the-dreaded-bum-diddy-whats-up-with-that\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dreaded Bum-Diddy–What\u2019s Up With That?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his seminal, 1948 publication (the first edition was mimeographed!) of\u00a0How to Play the 5-String Banjo,<\/em> the late Pete Seeger created the first book aimed at teaching \u201cfolk\u201d style banjo. \u00a0I.e., his book was not about classical style for the parlor and not about the minstrel style taught in the late 19th Century; it was about how everyday folks in the mountains and on the farms and in the mines played their traditional and homespun music.<\/span><\/p>\n

Happily, the book is still<\/em> in publication (<\/span>http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/5-String-Banjo-Music-Sales-America\/dp\/1597731641<\/span><\/a>) and covers many aspects of playing the instrument. \u00a0It\u2019s well worth having and makes for some very interesting reading.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the book, Seeger presented a right-hand technique that he referred to as \u201ca basic strum.\u201d \u00a0He used this style frequently as accompaniment to his voice, and many of us old “folkies” learned it from his book back in the \u201850s and \u201860s. \u00a0The style is now often called \u201cup-picking\u201d or \u201cSeeger-style.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"bum-ditty\"It\u2019s quite a simple approach: \u00a0One picks upward<\/em> <\/strong>on a single string, then a beat later brushes a chord down<\/em><\/strong> across several strings using the back of one\u2019s ring (or other) finger, which is in turn \u00a0followed a half beat later by the sounding of the 5th string downward<\/em> <\/strong>with the thumb.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For those who read music, this repeated quarter-note-followed-by-two-eighth-notes is an easy pattern of \u201cone two and three four and\u201d, but many banjo players and would-be banjo players cannot read music. \u00a0So, to explain this rhythmic pattern, Seeger called it the \u201cbum-titty bum-titty\u201d pattern. \u00a0There are many verbal things that suffice to demonstrate this oh-so-common rhythm; one of my favorites is \u201ccheese hotdog cheese hotdog.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Give a listen:<\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/bum-titty.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Unfortunately, Seeger’s being the only book available until ca. 1970, many of us learned this pattern and then taught it to others. Furthermore, in his introduction to clawhammer (which he called \u201cfrailing\u201d), he applied the same rhythm with the only difference between his up-picked \u201cbasic strum\u201d and down-picked \u201cfrailing\u201d being whether the single notes picked on the first and third beats were picked upward or downward.<\/p>\n

So, I and lots of other people–including many authors of the subsequent method books over the next few decades–learned clawhammer using the \u201cbum-diddy\u201d rhythm, ensuring its place in the banjo lexicon (note that the term has been \u201ccleaned up,\u201d lest someone take offense at the term \u201ctitty\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

Fast forward a few decades to Dan Levenson who astutely observed that clawhammer players of old-time music don\u2019t actually play \u201cbum-diddy bum-diddy\u201d all that often. Instead, they tend to play what is sometimes referred to a \u201cbump-a-diddy\u201d or sim\"bump-a-diddy\"ply \u201cdiddy diddy diddy diddy,\u201d i.e. a stream of eighth notes (occasionally interrupted by leaving out an eighth note for emphasis).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what this sounds like:<\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/bump-a-diddy.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Dan started preaching his \u201cAin\u2019t No Bum-Diddy\u201d observation, and it has really helped people to learn clawhammer far more easily. \u00a0So, you\u2019ll find that many modern pedagogical clawhammer approaches don\u2019t even teach bum-diddy, and you\u2019ll also find many who started with the bum-diddy bemoan that fact and the difficulties that it caused in moving forward, especially regarding the incorporation of a technique called “drop thumb.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Even Pete Seeger himself said he would not have started with that pattern were he able to do it all over! \u00a0So if you’re just starting out and want to learn to play old-time banjo, do yourself a favor: find a teacher or method that isn’t based on bum-diddy, and teaches you how to get right into clawhammer as it’s most often played.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With his seminal, 1948 publication (the first edition was mimeographed!) of\u00a0How to Play the 5-String Banjo, the late Pete Seeger created the first book aimed at teaching \u201cfolk\u201d style banjo. \u00a0I.e., his book was not about classical style for the parlor and not about the minstrel style taught in the late 19th Century; it was … Continue reading The Dreaded Bum-Diddy–What\u2019s Up With That?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132,"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeppmusic.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}