Feature with Noam Pikelny

NOAM PIKELNY: BANJO NEWSLETTER MARCH 2008

There is something jaw-dropping about Noam Pikelny’s banjo laying. His mastery and agility—his ability to play lines and scalar sections with fluidity, tone, drive and conviction—are all astounding. We all love the earthy, visceral sound of the banjo, but a musician that can play with the utmost technical prowess and yet retain that visceral vibe is truly special. Since Noam graced the cover of BNL in July 2004, his musical journey (via the John Cowan Band, Crooked Still, and Tony Trischka’s Double Banjo Spectacular) has led him to the upper echelons of stringband musicians. Mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile of the now defunct Nickel Creek brought together a new crop of young string masters, as he put it, “to put his stamp on the traditional bluegrass band.”

Named the Punch Brothers after a Mark Twain short story, the group includes Noam on banjo, Thile on mandolin, Chris “Critter” Eldridge (of the Infamous Stringdusters and the Seldom Scene) on guitar, Gabe Witcher (of the Jerry Douglas Band) on fiddle, and Greg Garrison (of Leftover Salmon and Ron Miles) on bass. Their new album, “Punch,” released on Nonesuch, marks the beginning of a thrilling new chapter in stringband music. The album’s centerpiece is a 40 minute composition by Thile entitled The Blind Leaving the Blind. Fusing stringband instrumentation with high art, it displays virtuosic performance and cutting-edge modern composition, while retaining the presentation style of a bluegrass band. Written into the piece are sections suggesting traditional bluegrass—harmony vocals, tune-like sections, and improvisational segments. But it also features counterpoint sections, dissonant themes, and complex melodic development. It was premiered to a sold out crowd at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in New York City in March 2007, performed without charts or music stands. Chris Thile, now 27, began playing mandolin at age five. He was home-schooled and essentially raised in the parking lots and stages of bluegrass festivals. He recorded his first of five solo records at age 13. Nickel Creek, which disbanded in 2007, sold over two million records and won a Grammy. Thile was awarded “Folk Musician of the Year” by the BBC in 2007; he collaborates and tours with bassist Edgar Meyer, and has an upcoming project with classical violinist Hilary Hahn. He brought the Punch Brothers together in 2006 to record “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground,” a progressive bluegrass record. Regarding Noam, Chris Thile says, “I get this feeling about Noam that ultimately there is really nothing he can’t do. Even if he can’t do it right now, he’ll be able to eventually. There is a diligence that I find utterly remarkable about Noam’s musicianship. A lot of times, people work that hard because they have to, but Noam is one of those rare musicians who just is that diligent, in addition to being ludicrously talented.”

For this project, Noam plays a lot of material originally written for other instruments, and he worked hard to develop techniques for playing it on the 5-string banjo. This interview contains language and discussion that might be more apropos to a classical musician— counterpoint, playing specific parts, and concepts like metric modulation. Noam’s process of learning challenging music on the 5-string is hopefully something readers can gain inspiration and ideas from. —JS

Jake Schepps: Could you describe The Blind Leaving the Blind?

Noam Pikelny: It’s a four-movement work composed for mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, bass and voices. A lot of the themes are firmly rooted in folk, bluegrass and new-acoustic music. For example, the first movement starts with very intricate counterpoint with all the instruments playing a theme that may not, at first, sound like a fiddle tune, but is a sneak-peak at the first big theme—which I would consider a fiddle tune-type melody. Chris is such a skilled composer that he can take a simple idea and develop it quite extensively. He’s got a toolbox where the smallest idea seems to have infinite possibilities. At times the melodies are fast moving and written out note-for-note. Other times what’s written resembles something more like a vocal melody. In those sections, Chris will write out the melody but it’s up to us to figure out a more idiomatic way to play it on our instruments. Those sections may say, “Slow moving melodies with rolling patterns,” while other parts might just have chord charts, saying “back-up with rolling style or chop.” I approach those sections as I would kicking off or backing up a classic bluegrass vocal number. So there’s a lot of freedom, and the end result is that there are a lot of individual contributions from us. I’d think the movements that are based on the folk-ier and more bluegrass-like themes will be most accessible at first. But even those parts explore more harmonic and rhythmic territory than listeners familiar with bluegrass and folk are typically accustomed to hearing in one piece of continuous music.

Lyrically, Chris is telling a story. He is coming to terms with the recent events in his life; getting married and divorced, moving around the country, and getting older. The last movement of the piece is pretty crazy and very fast. It’s traumatic, and the musical turmoil mirrors the words. The lyrics are about trying to come to terms with his belief in God, how his religious views have changed after his divorce, and getting out in the world and meeting people that have very different religious backgrounds and views. He sings about trying to accept that he can be of faith, but his faith can evolve. It’s deep, and it’s important for me to not just play my parts as a technician—instead, playing, knowing its intent. We’ve been working on it behind closed doors for about two years. The things that seemed really impossible at first are starting to feel more natural and we’re approaching it as music rather than a mammoth technical task. That’s our challenge as an ensemble, to play this as music and not let the technical hurdles (the length, having to memorize it, the difficult parts) get in the way of the big picture.

I find new things in this music every time I listen to it. Because we are playing this live, I still have to think about my parts more than everyone else’s. I have to focus on others to know when to come in, or get certain cues for how my parts align; lots of technical stuff. When I listen to it on a stereo I can listen in a different way. If I just focus on the fiddle for a movement, I pick upon things I hadn’t heard before. Chris has put so much thought and time into his composition. The result is music with many layers you can peel back. I think one of his biggest triumphs are his transitions. You can be in a fiddle tune idea, and 40 seconds later you’re in some kind of metric modulation or counterpoint, but the transition isn’t jarring. There are sections where you end up in a different feel, different key, or a different pulse, and it’s surprisingly natural.

BNL: The fourth movement is very fast and intense. Has that started to feel musical when playing it?

NP: Definitely. Once you get past worrying whether you remember your parts or you can execute them, then you’re able to shape it more with dynamics and phrasing. And you can work on pushing or pulling the lines. It’s really interesting because on paper the fourth movement looks the hardest. It has the most range, and is the fastest, and alternates between time signatures of 7 and 8. I’m going from the second fret to the seventeenth at a fast tempo, with not always much in between. So on paper, it’s the most challenging. I had to practice getting that up to speed and playing it clean. But it has become one of the easier parts for me. The hardest part is the tempo, but that has been easier to conquer, over time, than some of the other challenges in the piece. The slow second movement requires incredible sensitivity to the rest of band in regards to phrasing and dynamics. Those things take time to establish. Not that the fourth movement is easy or unimpressive, but I would have never guessed the slow movement would require more care and attention than the ultra fast parts in odd time signatures.

BNL: Did you work from notation or use tab?

NP: I tabbed out everything that Chris gave me. He would e-mail the main score in the software program Finale, and I would extract my part and paste it into a banjo tab staff, and then revise my fingerings. When practicing it, any time I would revise a fingering, I would go back into the software and change it. The biggest asset of the tab is being able to visualize the right hand pattern. Musicians that are reading standard notation are seeing the contour of the musical line, whether it is ascending or descending. But with tab, the numbers on each string create a contour that is directly related to your right hand picking pattern. That’s as valuable to me as the left hand string and fret indication. Early on I thought I would just use tab as an aid for small sections, but for stuff like this I honestly don’t think I would learn it as well. It would have been an incredible effort to learn my parts in standard notation. The other guys just worked from standard notation. I tried my best to arrange my parts as a banjo player, using techniques tied to the tradition whenever possible. And the right hand patterns are such a big part of that. And I’m not shy to tab it out; it definitely helped me learn the music.

BNL: Working on the fourth movement and getting your parts up to speed—has that improved your single-string abilities?

NP: Before this project, I could maybe have played Follow the Leader at that same tempo, but it definitely would have pushed me. When I first started working on the piece, I went through tons of revisions of how I was going to play it. I would tab it out as I was going, and kept revising when I decided to change fingerings. I started to come up with little theories of how to best deal with string crossings. I found myself using my middle finger in single string lines, depending on context. Especially on the fourth movement, the tempo and range forced me to reinvestigate my right hand. This has had a huge influence on my technique with bluegrass and fiddle tunes now. It’s been surprisingly natural to apply the right hand ideas to other things.

I started to experiment with single-string by using the middle in place of the thumb or index, and found that I was often using the middle finger instead of the thumb on downbeats. A lot of these passages blur the lines between single-string and melodic. Much of it is in a closed position with no open strings, but I wouldn’t really call it “single-string” because of all the string crossings and shifting. The right-hand patterns are all over the place. So the challenge became to play any kind of inside roll or single-string connected to an inside roll, and do it comfortably and in time. It took a while to get that up and running. I’d try to figure out every way to arrange a line, and would find the shape that worked best for both the left hand shifting and right hand picking. Once again, the tab was so valuable for that process. In these passages, I didn’t want to revert to playing the whole thing single-string. Combining single-string with just a snippet of one of the standard rolls sounded more authentic to me. It’s funny but one of my guiding forces in arranging my parts was a fear that I’d sound like a guitar player playing complicated music on a 5-string. Sometimes that led to more work, but I wanted it to be as banjoistic as possible

For example, the opening theme (of the fourth movement) gets restated by the banjo in different keys throughout the movement, but I play it differently each time. I could have used the same closed position fingering, shifting and right hand pattern, but I treated each passage individually, hoping to find the most convincing way of playing it on a banjo. At certain points it became a source of controversy in the band. Someone would say, “Why are you playing it like that? You shouldn’t be using an open string for that.” But this was part of a great ongoing exchange between the band members as to how we should play our parts. I had a lot to learn from the other guys, especially in left hand technique. At one point we had some practice time in New York for a couple days, and Gabe and I were working in the same building. I would have an idea about how to navigate a string crossing and ask Gabe, “How would you play this if you had to play this on these two strings on your fiddle?” Gabe and Thile were a fantastic source for arranging this music on banjo.

BNL: Did you bounce any ideas off other banjo payers?

NP: I bounced a couple things off of Béla Fleck, and he was very helpful. We got together a few times over the last few years and I always got good feedback and helpful criticism. Béla loves playing around with fingerings and is always trying to refine techniques and come up with new methods. The majority of the passages in the piece can be played in many different ways. Bela’s playing is so elegant and masterful that I trusted his input would be valuable, even if we disagreed on a fingering or a technique. There were certain sections that I was struggling with, and he turned me on to some fingerings that were obvious to him, that I had never even considered. I would show him some of the stuff I was working on, and he would come up with another way to do it that he thought was more economical. But I couldn’t play it as quick. And then he would try to play some of my fingerings, and he couldn’t play them as easily. He definitely made me aware that what comes easiest and most naturally at first may not always be the most musical or effective—and therefore investigating all the options is really important. I was so excited to play this music for him, as this music and ensemble wouldn’t exist if not for Béla Fleck. He is one of the main inspirations for all of us in the band, and the most central figure in my musical upbringing. For those reasons, it was very meaningful but also kind of surreal to be able to go to him with this new music.

BNL: How did you memorize the entire 40 minutes of music?

NP: That was one of the most stressful things. When I started getting back into relearning the piece [they recorded a demo several months prior to the premier at Carnegie Hall], I was really concerned about memorizing it as a whole. We recorded almost all of it without music in front of us. But we would memorize it in chunks—working on a 10-minute section for hours, and then recording it. But we always assumed we would go on stage and play it without music. Personally, playing it with music in front of me would be a lot harder. I would have the visual cues, but then I’d have to worry about turning pages, keeping track of everything, and my attention would be all over the place. So I started at the beginning, with the music in front of me, and worked on 2-3 minute sections at a time. Then I’d turn the page over to see if I could get through it by memory. I wouldn’t move on until I could play that section without the music. There are certain sections that were a lot easier to memorize, but what was especially tricky was the backup parts, and the counterpoint. All of those parts are highly syncopated, weaving in and out of the melody. It’s often not as singable or memorable as the main line. The little details like that were the hardest part. The process of memorizing felt natural, it just took time.

BNL: What were rehearsals like? What have you learned from rehearsing with this band?

NP: The first time we got together to rehearse this music was a real eye-opener. Everyone had started learning their own parts individually. We all came in with this confidence that we could play it, that the pieces of the puzzle would fit together easily. We had all been practicing it with metronomes, and with the Finale sound files. But when we got to New York and jumped in, it was a completely different animal. To our surprise we barely could keep it together for a minute without it collapsing. Everyone had gotten used to cueing off the metronome and the Finale sequencer from their individual practice time. Both were lifeless, but rock solid and the same every time. But this music is so responsive to one another. Playing each part requires total precision in how the part connects to what came previously, and an understanding of how other people will cue off of your line for something coming up. It’s so dependent on everyone knowing and trusting each other musically. We all became immediately aware that there is only so much work that we could do away from the group. This required a lot of ensemble rehearsal, much more than any of us had anticipated. So we got to know each other very quickly. We’d wake up and play all day until we went to sleep. When we were done playing, we’d all spread out in Chris’s apartment, on sofas and air-mattresses, trying to sleep. But we’d stay up late discussing the day’s work and what still needed to be done. This ensemble approach is one that we are still learning—what’s the most effective way to do our homework. We kind of revise our approach depending on how the group rehearsals go.

BNL: How fast can you learn new material? Like with O Santo de Polvora or other tunes on “How to Grow a Woman From the Ground?” Does it depend on the tune?

NP: I feel like I’m the slowest learner in the band. Not that it takes me any longer than the other guys to memorize the music, but it usually takes me longer to adapt a melody or part to banjo than it does for the other guys. With O Santo, Chris made a tape of it, and I spent an afternoon working with it to get all the intricacies and ornamentation. But with a tune like that, Chris could play it for Gabe a couple times, and Gabe would be able to play it back right at him. There are so many variables that can make it easy or challenging: what key it’s in can make a huge difference in how quickly I can learn it, which position I am playing in, the tempo, etc. O Santo, which is pretty intricate, now feels really comfortable since we’ve played it so much. I feel that one of my real strengths is my ability to arrange this music effectively on the banjo, but it would be nice to speed up the process and do more of it on the fly. I do feel that all the technical work that went into playing The Blind Leaving the Blind is gradually assimilating itself into my overall musicianship and expanding my toolbox. I think that if I keep up with it, eventually material like O Santo will become easier to arrange, possibly even in real-time. Then I’d be able to improvise with much more freedom. I think a lot of the challenge has to do with the nature of the instrument—the tuning and scale. It seems to not be as friendly as the other bluegrass instruments for arranging non-idiomatic parts. But I do believe that these limitations and barriers can be reduced. Every time I work through challenging arrangements, I find shortcuts and recognize patterns that seem to apply almost universally to other parts and styles. It’s been surprising to me how much of the right hand technique I worked on for playing The Blind Leaving the Blind applies to learning new bluegrass or fiddle tunes. I’ve noticed that some of the stuff that used to take a long time is now happening with more ease, but I’m not sure there will ever be a way to put something down on banjo as easily as it can be done on violin or mandolin.

JS: What is it like working with Chris Thile?

NP: He is such an intense person and musician; my experience so far has been equally inspiring and challenging. Challenging, both as a technician playing difficult music, but also as a musician trying to make an artistic contribution. Most people would think that the technical demands of playing with Chris would’ve had the biggest impact on me, but what is most notable is being around someone with such a musical vision. The challenge and pressure of collaborating with someone of such strong conviction can outweigh the technical hurdles of the music. When I approach these Punch Brothers recordings or shows, I feel I have a responsibility to this music and these musicians that far exceeds the pressure of the technical aspects of playing. I feel like all of a sudden I’ve been thrown into a project that’s really important and has far reaching implications. This is the first time I’ve been part of something that’s truly a collaborative band situation. Chris is the de facto leader, and is the one who composed The Blind Leaving the Blind, but one of his main goals in writing it was to create music that would allow for the expression of our individual musicalities and personalities.

Recording the “How to Grow a Woman from the Ground” album was a good opportunity for all of us to establish ourselves [as a band] in a format that was more comfortable. Now we’ve jumped into this situation where the music is highly arranged, as Chris has composed a string quintet with pages and pages of parts. I have to remind myself that this needs to be played as music, and not as unfriendly banjo parts. That’s my personal challenge, and I feel that I’m succeeding in playing the stuff on a technical level. But all of us in the band are still trying to get to a point where we’ll play something this complex as authentically and effectively as we could play a bluegrass or fiddle tune. Chris wanted to write music that we could each put our own stamp on. He didn’t want us to be “string musicians” just reading the charts and following directions. There’s a folk and bluegrass sensibility to a lot of the composition.

One example is the section towards the beginning of the third movement that reminds me of a certain back-up passage in Béla Fleck’s Ode to Earl. If a classical musician without any experience to stringband music played this part it would probably sound ridiculous, as it’s really a bluegrass-y idea. The piece goes back and forth between highly arranged instrumental sections, “songs,’ individual and even full band improvisation. Usually, variety like that would happen only on different gigs. With this piece Chris has given us a vehicle to bring it all together. This is his vision, a marriage of the folk and the formal. So that’s the big picture of playing with him, and it has put me in a really interesting spot. Very challenging. Very inspiring.

When I first met Chris I was already a huge fan of his music—I’d learned it and transcribed it. I thought early on that there was some magic behind his music, and being around him would maybe rub off. After playing with him for a couple years, it’s clear that he has an immense natural talent. But as far as I can tell, the real reason he’s the player he is is because he has worked harder than anybody. A big part of his musicianship is tied to his incredible virtuosic mandolin technique. My technique is very meager in comparison, so when things get over my head I’ll try to extract what I can just through observation of his approach or intent.

BNL: I would disagree with that about technique. Chris is a different person, and also the two instruments are very different.

NP: They are different, but Chris plays from a zone where he can play any idea, with seemingly no barrier between what’s in his head and what he executes with his hands. That’s a very enviable spot to be in. I think there are very few acoustic musicians that can do what he does. When I think of others in that class, they are mostly jazz musicians and horn players. They’ll go play a show or recording session with virtually no mistakes. Chris would disagree—he thinks he makes mistakes all the time—but those are different kind of mistakes. In his view a mistake may be that the shape of his solo wasn’t as effective as it could have been, based on what had come before it and what is coming up after.

BNL: Has it affected your playing in other ways?

NP: I feel like I’ve gotten access to a goldmine of musical information and ideas on the banjo through The Blind Leaving the Blind, and this band. I kind of see this record as my weird banjo degree of some sort. I feel that I’m a different and hopefully better musician for the work that went into learning and recording it. But that’s kind of an extension of how I’ve approached the banjo over time, which has been transcribing solos for banjo of melodies from guitar, mandolin and fiddle. For years I felt that I was unlocking areas of the instrument that I may not have stumbled upon if I was only approaching the instrument from a classical or traditional approach of scales, arpeggios, theory etc. So this is an opportunity where I have to learn music as challenging as a Bach solo violin work. But the difference here is that I’m performing and recording this new stuff. Everything before, such as transcribing Chris Thile’s music, or Scott Nygaard’s, or Bach partitas—that was all homework and would come out in other ways. Arranging, performing and recording this new music has required a deep personal investigation into the banjo. This experience has been invaluable, but honestly some nights it feels like I am just hanging on.

BNL: What is your current banjo?

NP: It’s a 1941 Gibson PB-7 top tension. Charlie Cushman had just started working at Gruhn Guitars setting up banjos and this was the first great banjo he got to work on there. I went to Gruhn’s with David Grier and played the banjo. I really liked it, though I couldn’t imagine taking the plunge, given the prices of pre-war flatheads. Fast-forward three months later: Gruhn still had the banjo and I had been checking the website every couple of days to see if it was still there. I went back and played it again for a whole day. Charlie said to me, “That is your banjo; you need to do whatever you can to buy it.” When Charlie said that, it stuck with me. He believes there is the right instrument for the right musician, and it’s really important to recognize that. I thought it was the best flathead I had played that was available for sale. It seemed to fit my style and attack from the first time I tried it. I had a new neck built by Robin Smith. It’s unusual for a top-tension because it is mahogany, but has the traditional top-tension inlays and headstock. It has 24 frets. I wanted a mahogany neck with 24 frets, but I worried that centering the bridge on the head would change the sound too much. Robin built the neck with the fretboard overhanging the banjo head. This particular neck has made the banjo come even more alive. The C# and D (the extra two notes) sound very natural, like they’re supposed to be there. I’d say it sounds even better now than when I bought it. It’s really a remarkable instrument.

BNL: What’s next for you and the Punch Brothers?

NP: We start touring in January and we’ll play about 120 shows in 2008. We’ll play The Blind Leaving the Blind as much as we can. We’re hoping that we can get the other songs and tunes we play into classical arts series via this piece, and people will be attracted to our other music as well. In those rooms, maybe some people will get to hear contemporary bluegrass and new acoustic music for the first time. And on the other hand, taking the piece into a bluegrass festival is an exciting prospect. This is a new band; it is not just one record or just one piece. This is the first of hopefully many years of touring and recording. There are four pieces on “Punch” aside from The Blind Leaving the Blind, and they are co-written by the five of us. While not long-form composition, some do have composed parts. But nothing was written down. It was just the five of us sitting down and trying to write music together during a four-day retreat at Greg’s house in Bailey, Colorado. We’re all excited about keeping that type of thing going, either with shorter tunes or even a larger scale band co-write. Chris will always be writing things for us, and he’s starting to get commissions to write for other musicians. [He was commissioned to write a mandolin concerto to be premiered in the fall of 2009.] Everything that we’ve done so far has been with Nickel Creek still touring, Critter playing with the Stringdusters, Greg playing with the Drew Emmitt Band, Gabe playing with Jerry Douglas and doing his session work, and myself playing with John Cowan, Tony Trischka and others. We’re now dedicating ourselves full-time to this band, so I’m incredibly excited to see what will happen.