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Enough with the Lessons — Time to Hear Some Music!

Vassar Clements, talented bluegrass fiddle player.

You're going to work your way up to a full bluegrass band by listening to two duets by bluegrass musicians. In these pieces, you can hear what the instruments are doing more clearly, since there are only two of them playing. For these, you'll go to the Acoustic Disc Web site.

Accessing the Acoustic Disc Web site is fun and easy. The guidelines below should be helpful.


Acoustic Disc

  1. Open your browser and go to Acoustic Disc . (You may hear music as soon as you connect to the site.)
  2. At the top of the page, click on the link that says "Click here to enter the HTML site."
  3. Find the link in the left-hand column that says "Dawg Tracks" and click on it.
  4. All the tunes we will listen to are listed on this page. To read about the album a particular song is on, click on the album name. When you're done reading about it, click your browser's Back button to return to the listening page.
  5. To listen to a song, click the song title. A new window will open, and the song will play. When you're done listening, close the window.

The first song to listen to is "Muleskinner Blues," from ACD 38 – Dawg Duos. It features fiddler Vassar ClementsFamous fiddle player with expertise in bluegrass, jazz, swing, and country. At a young age, he played with Bill Monroe, the "father of bluegrass," and went on to perform with celebrity musicians like the Grateful Dead, Linda Ronstadt, and Paul McCartney. and mandolinist David GrismanExpert bluegrass and jazz mandolin player with widespread influence in several genres over several decades. Producer of more than 50 records and owner of Acoustic Disc record label.. You can hear the mandolin "chopping" the chords on the back beats. Notice, when Grisman does this, that you can't really tell what chords he's playing. The sound might as well have come from a snare drum. Notice also the fiddle's scratchy tone, so different from what a classical player might play.

The second duet is from ACD 25 – Doc & Dawg, featuring Grisman and guitarist Doc WatsonLegendary acoustic guitar player who profoundly influenced the role of the guitar in folk, country, and bluegrass music today. He lived from 1923 – 2005.. Listen to "In My Dear Old Southern Home." Here's a bluegrass song without the bluegrass band. Again, you can hear the mandolin "chopping" chords with no harmonic content. When he's not driving the song with chords, Grisman plays an improvised bit of melody, called a "fillA musical embellishment that gets played in between vocal phrases, to fill in the gap between lines.," at the ends of the vocal lines, to fill in the time before the next line. He also takes improvised solos in between verses.

The guitar parts, when Watson is singing, are typical for bluegrass. These examples are nice because you can hear the guitar part well. If a whole band was playing, they wouldn't be as easy to hear.