Andy Volk
From:
Boston, MA
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Posted 22 Dec 2014 5:10 am |
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I found this on my computer and don't know where I got it. I don't think I've even read it before but man, is it indeed a master class in what it really takes to play well! It reminds us just how hard the greats worked to reach the level they reached.
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MASTER CLASS with TOM BRUMLEY 

What I always use to determine a player is whether he paid attention to everything, every single thing. You’re not just playing the line, but you got to phrase it right, you got to this technique, this tone, every string’s got to sound. You know, so many guys just pass along, but you can’t do that. Your attack on the strings, your use of your foot control, being perfectly in tune with your vibrato, everything. And it’s got to be used every time on every note, with or without pedals. Use that vibrato to make every note sound as good as possible. 
Vibrato is so important to what you’re trying to play. It can say so much about what you’re playing. You can overstate it, or you can understate it. I’d rather have it understated than overstated. It’s used for phrasing, to me. It’s not something that’s constant. My vibrato doesn’t change. You don’t want to change the speed of your vibrato. Remember, make your vibrato shorter when you’re up high.
On fast songs keep the vibrato down to almost non-existent. You don’t have time in the first place; and if you try to put it in there it will sound out of place. 
There’s a combination of things that make you play. One of them is being perfectly in tune, one of them is having your chops together. The tone, being perfectly in tune, the combination of all these things, makes you play things you sometimes never knew you could play. And knowledge of the guitar; knowing your positions. And most of all, a feel thing will come on. All that combination of things is what makes you just fair, mediocre, or step up there with the rest of the boys.
A combination of all those things. Every little note is important to you, every single note: the tone, the pitch, how you sustain it, everything. 
See, you can get too much foot control, or not enough. Or you can get too much vibrato, or not enough. You can let it die on you between those places, you can pick your bar up, you can mute when you shouldn’t be muting. There’s really no shortcut. Get rid of all your bad habits. 
Once you start getting the touch and the tone, you’ll start getting turned on and you’ll play and then, I tell you what, your wife can’t find you. Start getting that touch and that feel and everything, and it’s fun.
What’ll happen when you start doing that, you’ll start finding those things and nobody’ll even have to show you. 
The key to making those things sustain and flow is knowing when to hit the strings, just like knowing when to breathe when you’re singing. I mean, the secret to making it smooth is knowing when to hit the strings, and when not to hit the strings, so you can know how long you can go without you got to hit it again.
See, if you hit it at the wrong place, you lose the flow. So that’s why you got to learn to hit the string in the right places; to make it sustain to get to where you want it to, and then you won’t have to hit it hard. You won’t be so low that you got to hit it hard to get it back up to volume. You got to know just when to hit it where the minimum pick effect is noticed. The only thing that stops those strings from ringing is when your picks touch it the next time. 
I advocate tuning by ear instead of a strobe, because it trains your ear. It’s easy to tune to strobe. I mean you can tune to a strobe, but it’s not training your ear. Every guy that comes to me, I make them tune that sucker by ear before we start playing.
And they say, “Well, I got a strobe.†And I say, “I know you got a strobe, and that’s fine, but you’re learning to play, and you’re going to be learning to play by your ear. Your pitch is going to be by your ear, not by that strobe.†You have to train your ear, ‘cause that’s what you’re playing by. 
What I’m trying to do is improve your technique where everything just sounds like you can do it with ease. It’s easy to hear you, it’s relaxed to hear you. Or you can do driving, whichever one you want to do. See I usually play pretty driving, even though I’m playing smooth. 

You got to pick firm. You got to have it under control. You got to have everything under control. I always get a little below the volume before I hit the strings, and then I play; gradually come up to it. I’ve never blown a speaker. I just play loud enough, that if they haven’t got me, I’m still going to be heard out there. I got to have a certain amount of drive on stage to turn me on. How are you going to sit there beside a drummer if you don’t have volume control? You know, bangety-bangety-bang! 
Keep those knuckles still. There’s no way you can move that hand as fast as those fingers. You need left hand control, too. Stop on every fret. As you get to know your positions, just play it a little faster. Now just push it a little bit. Don’t go past that, so you can play them all clear.
Keep pushing it, ‘til you can get a little faster. That comes with knowledge of your positions also, not just your left hand strength. And that’s good to know those positions; get every tone that you can in between, too. Put something in there that will make you think a little bit.
Don’t start off playing faster than you can play. You got to block. 
When I was learning how to play, I’d go over a run, like a Jerry Byrd run with a little shake in there and it might take me eight hours. I’d go over that run five hundred times. And my dad, he’d never say anything about how long I played. He’d just say, “Son, do you think you could play something else for a while?†You don’t quit until you got that lick mastered. Not just part of it, but every bit of it. 
Don’t stop. Do it ‘til your fingers get so sore you don’t think you can hit it another time, then do it a few more times.
Do it ‘til your fingers start aching. Then do it a few more times after they ache. When you think you can’t do it any more, do it a few more times. It’s going to get easier and easier and easier. You’ll find that you can do more and more, longer and longer. And really, you’re going to be able to take a line like that on that “Big Mamou†and you’re going to play that whole thing, thirty-two bars. You don’t care; one note after the other. And something else; after that, your mind’s keyed up to playing that fast. |
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Steel Guitar Books! Website: www.volkmediabooks.com |
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