Manual Formulaic Composition: Innovation in Bluegrass Banjo Styles — Journal of Country Music

Claims

1. enjambment-and-taste
   Improvising banjoists face two problems: joining one formula smoothly to the next, and combining them tastefully. Unspoken aesthetic rules apply; Courtney Johnson would play whole breaks in the blues-chromatic style while Jack Hicks used it only as punctuation. At Bean Blossom in 1973, Hicks briefly lost continuity while improvising a difficult variation on 'Dusty Miller', drawing laughter from the audience.

   "With a tremendous range of formulae to choose from, the skillful banjoist must put them together not only correctly, but also tastefully."

   Locator: page: 57, 64 (n. 6) · Quote language: en
2. formulaic-improvisation
   Adler proposed that bluegrass banjoists solve the problems of improvisation in a way closely analogous to the oral formulae described by Albert Lord: licks are built from smaller formulae, a banjoist may know hundreds of licks and thousands of formulae, and breaks may be improvised by combining them; even breaks that seem memorized are built from the same units.

   "A banjoist may know hundreds of licks and thousands of formulae; in fact, it seems that one of the main tasks of the beginner is the learning and internal systematizing of formulae and licks. By combining these licks, banjo breaks may be improvised."

   Locator: page: 56–58 · Quote language: en
3. oral-diffusion
   Adler argued the formulaic model explains the rapid spread of the banjo styles: transmission was largely one-to-one and oral, and because the underlying structure of bluegrass stayed the same, players could take up a new style by substituting its formulae. He proposed that amateurs adopt the formulae of prominent professionals as commonplaces, maintaining a traditional sound.

   "The explanation clearly rests on the idea that banjoists learned the new styles on a formulaic level, and since the basic structural nature of bluegrass has not changed, they can play a new style merely by substituting the appropriate formulae."

   Locator: page: 58–59 · Quote language: en
4. slots-and-variants
   Banjoists' licks are interchangeable to a degree within metrical and harmonic 'slots'; there is no single canonical form for a given slot, and each player develops personal variants, even the most idiosyncratic players using their own licks to fill formulaic slots.

   "For any given metrical and harmonic slot of a given length, there is no single canonized form; rather, each instrumentalist will employ his own variants of the many possible ways of playing."

   Locator: page: 57 · Quote language: en
5. three-styles
   Adler identified three major bluegrass banjo styles in 1974, distinguished by how they treat melody: Scruggs style breaks the melody into a syncopated skeletal pattern in which only every third or fourth note is a melody note; Keith style (or 'fiddle-picking') plays the exact melody by analogy with the fiddle; and a 'blues-chromatic' style emphasizes blue notes and slights the melody.

   "The result is that only every third or fourth note played is actually a note of the melody"

   Locator: page: 55 · Quote language: en