The Fiddle And The Mandolin
Bluegrass music has a rich history and well-defined structure. It also has plenty of space to make it your own. My wife, four kids, and I walked into an unassuming brick building that was surrounded by trendy restaurants, sleek office buildings, and a Google fiber retail activation. Oddly enough, it was the modern pieces of the puzzle that seemed out of place. It was a rainy Sunday night in Nashville, and Station Inn was filling up with a mix of people shaking off the raindrops and musicians tuning their instruments. The one-room hall was cozy and dimly lit by a few neon lights. The smell of popcorn floated through the air and pulled me toward the bar in the corner. I grabbed a beer for myself and popcorn, two Moon Pies and three Goo-Goo clusters to keep the kids entertained. We settled into a population of tourists and locals co-mingled in a welcoming tone and the spirit of bluegrass music.
The kick drum-like backbone of the double bass, the supporting 2 and 4 chop of the mandolin, the gritty carving of the fiddle bow to the strings, the texture and glue of the acoustic guitar, the racing and majestic swells of the Dobro, the jangling motor of the banjo and the intentionally stacked community of voices all carried stories that are hundreds of years old and serve as the soundtrack of an era. Most bluegrass music is performed acoustically or around one or two microphones, so dynamic awareness, control, listening, and empathy are as important as the musical form. Unlike rock music, you can’t just step on an overdrive or boost pedal to elevate above the noise floor of the band. With bluegrass music, the band controls their own volume acting responsibly to balance the sounds of the collective train while dipping down to let a mandolin or Dobro rip out a few runs. Good empathetic ears make great musicians. Watching a bluegrass ensemble perform is a masterclass in the art of listening.
Bluegrass music has a form and structure that could be interpreted as limiting factors to creative expression, but they could also serve as the scaffolding that lifts the painter to the ceiling of a chapel. It frames a common language to communicate and explore during the performance. Like learning to write letters, form words, sentences, and narratives, it all begins with mastering the letters of the alphabet. The structure can actually feed creativity. Constraints are a puzzle to solve and not a bottleneck. True creative minds are problem seekers. It’s not about inventing new paperclips, it’s about finding 100 new ways to use a single paper clip. Bluegrass music, and many other genres, use the Nashville Numbering System, which is musical shorthand developed by session musicians to communicate across multiple instruments and tunings. If the song is a 1 – 4 – 5 in the Key of A, the chord structure would be A – D – E. If the banjo player suddenly called out a 1 – 4 – 1 – 5 in F, the chord structure would be F – Bb – F – C. This system is the paper clip, and during a jam, the musicians improvise to find its 100 uses. Bluegrass music is a confirmation that structure is not an impediment to creativity. In fact, an intimate understanding of structure can actually enable creative expression.
Whether it’s bluegrass music or a simple conversation, without a little structure and empathetic listening, the results are usually disasterous.
Put yourself in the middle of a bluegrass jam. You are a mandolin player surrounded by eight to ten smiling and nodding musicians on a beautifully chaotic runaway train of pure musical bliss. The guitar player signals to you that it’s your window to improvise. With a deep breath, you quickly compile your musical knowledge, dexterity, and creativity to launch into an eight-bar solo. Two-bars in, the fiddle player jumps over the top of your notes squashing them down to a cantankerous cacophony indigestible to anyone in the group or the audience. The fiddle player may not have known the structure or maybe is a terrible listener. Either way, it was a full stop to your creative expression. While this lack of listening and empathy is not commonplace in bluegrass jams, it happens every day in meetings, presentations, phone calls, and other interactions. The lessons that we need are all around us. We don’t have to be in a classroom, lecture hall, or conference to find them. I found two on a rainy night in Nashville. Don’t let structure or constraints be the reason you don’t make something, and don’t be the fiddle that drowns out the mandolin.
