Ole Slew Foot - Alan Shelton: Kickoff

This is a transcription of Alan Shelton's playing from the Jim and Jesse record, "Y'all Come!". They "put the scald on this one" and played it at around 147 BPM! Alan's unique banjo style uses a lot of swing feel, but maintains the drive necessary for a bluegrass band, and even has a bit of old-time flavor. Playing with this feel was eventually named the "Shelton Bounce". To simulate this, engage the "swing" feature in Tunefox. Remember to disengage that feature when working on another tune. With most bluegrass songs we want to use straight timing.

The band doesn't come in until measure 3 in the kickoff, but we're starting to play the melody with Scruggs style in measure 2. Try and look at the melody tablature and Scruggs style version and compare them to this one. What connections or similarities of you notice? Remember, measure 1 in this tune is a pickup measure. There are no pickup measures in the melody tab or the Scruggs style version of this tune. The kickoff is also half as long as the breaks.

All the licks here are the same as the Scruggs style version, so if you've learned some of those, you'll be able to make some good connections and see how you can reuse and blend Scruggs style vocabulary.