Worried Man Blues Lesson

So now let's learn our next song. This is called the Worried Man Blues.

Basic Melody

The basic melody goes like this:

There it is.

You notice that as I'm playing the melody, sometimes I hit repeated notes. That happened also in Biolib Cabbage down at the ending.

When we add our rhythm in, we don't necessarily need to hit all of those repeated notes.

Melody Variations

Remember, in song, there may be different numbers of words in a given line from one verse to the next. When we play it on the banjo, we're going to approximate the melody. If we change the number of syllables on a given note, that's okay.

As we go along, though, we do want to think about the melody.

Chorus Arrangement

I'm trying to put this chorus together so that you hear the melody as well as the arrangement it goes with.

So we'll try this. We'll try Weird Man Blues now with the rhythm also. I'll use a little bit of the Boom Chick Boom as well as the Boom Chicka Boom.

You can try playing it both ways separately:

• Play it all the way through with the Boom Chick Boom
• Play it all the way through with the Boom Chicka Boom
• Then mix it up.

Adding Rolls

Now we're going to try playing our song with some rolls in it. The first line goes like this with just the melody.

So here's the Worried Man Blues all the way through with some rolls and gallops.

All right, now we'll try putting everything in there. You notice there will be a pickup on this one, too, leading into the beginning of the song.

So now we'll try it just a little slower.

C Chord Technique

Now something happened coming out of the C chord in there. I want to talk about where I lift up my ring finger right before the end of the C chord to lead into the next measure.

You notice I lift up only my ring finger and then lift up the rest of the other fingers to get a nice solid connection.

Connection Between Measures

Don't stop between the measures.

Don't stop here and then play; it's got to connect, but you lift up the one.

It's a little bit tricky practicing lifting that one finger out of the chord and then the rest. But it's something you'll end up doing so often that it's worth spending the time to practice.

Rhythm Practice

Now we're just going to play the rhythm, just a basic rhythm with pinches to this chord.

So you know how to play backup to the song.

There you have it. It's a good idea to learn how to play just the rhythm and chords to a song.