Analysis+of+Foggy+Mountain+Breakdown

You can play Foggy Mountain Breakdown very well without reading this page, however, understanding all these things may help you take your performance to the next level.

Context of the tune: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foggy_Mountain_Breakdown

Earl Scruggs innovated a particular system of three finger picking which solidified the bluegrass sound of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. This style includes a range of rolls rather than just a forward role and it accommodates a wide range of tunes while retaining a characteristic banjo sound in terms of harmonic possibilities of an instrument that is tuned in an open chord. The so-called chromatic style allows a banjo to do the kind of tunes a fiddle would (based on scales, which the Scruggs tuning does not really accommodate), but this sound does not engage with the limits of the open chord tuning--it moves beyond them. In the case of Scruggs, less can be more.

The three finger style actually creates a [|hemiola], as the banjo has a pattern of three notes in most rolls while the rest of a bluegrass band is in 2 or 4. This creates a syncopated sound just as a matter of course, which enlivens the bluegrass sound and therefore moves it away from the swing band sound popular at the same time.

Tonal Analysis of Foggy Mountain Breakdown Bluegrass is a style of music strongly influenced by Appalachian musical traditions, which include a strong tendency to stray from the [|ionian] scale or mode (aka major scale on which so much classical music depends). Ralph Stanley's 3 finger style of banjo playing and his singing usually imply the [|mixolydian] mode: media type="youtube" key="W4Mc9vTGqhg" height="345" width="420"

While the F chord is not used in this tune, it is constantly used in the melody, the keynotes of which begin G F D F D B A G (as opposed to the F# that would be in ionian mode).

The Bill Monroe/Flatt and Scruggs style picking stayed away from mixolydian but used other non-ionian sounds. It's interesting to hear the Bluegrass Breakdown tune which does use the G to F chord progression of mixolydian: media type="youtube" key="k5bGe4fpLHs" height="345" width="420"

This use of mixolydian is very different from the melodic mixolydian of Stanley's Old Regular Baptist Church-influenced melodic use of the mode.