Jake Workman

[guitar music] You know, like that was kind of exaggerating it, but I, I'm so effectively muting the strings I'm not playing, whatever it is.

You know, so again, it's like Jake Workman doesn't have this problem, um, David Greer doesn't have this problem.

Like, it's not, this is not a fundamental issue, but it's definitely me coming up against, is this a, a, a long-term problem for me, uh, where I need to practice this this way until it's better, or is there this easier solution where I can do a little bit of both or something? I don't know.

Yeah.

And I had-

Mm-hmm

... kind of had this, you know, it was, uh, this Justin Moses "Temperance Reel" thing, uh, Jake Workman, "Big Sciota," and Sean Richardson playing, um, "Black Mountain Rag." There's this Instagram clip of him playing it, and it's got some wild stuff in there, and it's like, it's awesome.

[laughs]

The same kind of deal where he's got a job and a thing, and he's not a ton of subscribers on Instagram or anything, but you listen to him play, and it's just these really inventive, melodic arrangements of stuff.

He studied with Jake Workman and some people like that, so he's pedigreed.

Yeah, Jake

Workman, he's probably the best player alive, I would say.

When it comes to that.

But I think that there's, you know, if you ever go to a bluegrass festival or a jam session, there's a reason why you can get into a jam session with Kenny Smith, Jake Workman, you know, Luke Black.

Right? Like, all of it just works.

We talk about all these differences between generations, but there is this common thing that we all have.

And I think what we've actually figured out is like a generational commonality in that – At the kind of transition point of each generation, there's a lot of friction because the ones who had the kind of dominating cultural, you know, kind of like vibe start to see their waning relevance.

And they see that as like we were saying, like kind of a death of the style or a death of what they saw as good.

But I see it like you're saying, like I like the torch passing kind of analogy because I all the, you know, like I, I know we know all of these people on the scene, Kenny Smith, you know, um, Jake Workman, Cody Kilby.

Like I've, I've met a lot of these guys and they've been nothing but supportive and been like, you know, keep doing your thing, man, you know? And I, and I think that that's the thing, like in the lineage, in the actual music, the We love that.

Let's put it that way.

And I don't have the technique that those guys do like, like Brian and Jake Workman.

Jake was at this camp and it was really cool hearing him play with Julian Lage and people like that, you know, And I got to pick with him too, so.

But, you know, I was thinking too about Mandlin playing.

All my life, it always comes back to fiddle tunes.

So if we wanted to play Salt Creek, but you've got Jake Workman and he's going to play it.

He's going to burn it up.

If you play it slow, watch my hand slow.

Yeah, one of my students on my

Patreon, I'm not going to name names because I don't think that's tasteful, but he'll know who I'm talking about.

He was a Petrucci guy, and now he's doing a lot of Brian Sutton solos and transcribing a bunch of Jake Workman stuff.

He got really into bluegrass.

You know, instead of eighth notes like that, it usually sounds more something like...

You know, there's like a little more space to it because it's like my... your voice and your inner ear is always going to come up with something that you would rather sing than like hear on your... guitar i feel like um so i think that's that's like one big angle that i'm i'm pushing for and then the other one that i was kind of talking about would be this technical thing that i think you also get from transcription meaning you said that you were practicing that justin moses break because it was something that was at like a medium up tempo and you've realized that you kind of you know you're struggling in certain ways at that at that tempo i think um transcribing stuff from someone at that tempo is like an admirable thing and I think you're going to learn some like maybe right hand or left hand technical stuff that he's doing that allows him to play it at that tempo you know and then like what I've been doing recently after Jake Workman was kind of my guy for that thing you know and once I discovered my like speed right hand and stuff I was looking at a bunch of Jake breaks and just trying to analyze but now what I'm doing is actually okay, I've seen some stuff that Jake did in that break that allowed him to do this.

Now I'm going to put the metronome at 135. and just play Billy in the low ground and try to like access like pieces of that, you know, vocabulary that allowed him to kind of play some of the stuff that I liked at those tempos, you know? So if it's like a string crossing pattern, you know, we've talked about that, like pronated versus supinated thing.

I'll play maybe like a, I'll use a little bit of that ear thing that I was talking about a minute ago, play like a simple, uh, thing for 80% of the break.

And then when the time comes, I'll try and put that Jake Workman run in there to see if it can kind of work.

So I guess I'm a little more...

All that to say, I'm a little more away from the transcription game at this point.

But you notice, like, I said that I looked at Jake Workman's stuff.