A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to heptatonic scales, which have seven notes per octave.
The term blues scale refers to several different scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. A blues scale is often formed by the addition of an out-of-key "blue note" to an existing scale, notably the flat fifth addition to the minor pentatonic scale. However, the heptatonic blues scale can be considered a major scale with altered intervals.
In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice era of Classical music to the 21st century. Chord progressions are the foundation of popular music styles, traditional music, as well as genres such as blues and jazz. In these genres, chord progressions are the defining feature on which melody and rhythm are built.
A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. Original jam sessions, also called "free flow sessions," are often used by musicians to develop new material (music) and find suitable arrangements. Both styles can be used simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one participant, or may be wholly improvisational. Jam sessions can range from very loose gatherings of amateurs to evenings where a jam session coordinator or host acts as a "gatekeeper" so that appropriate-level performers take the stage to sophisticated improvised recording sessions by professionals which are intended to be broadcast live on radio or TV or edited and released to the public.
Jesse Lester McReynolds was an American bluegrass musician. He was best known for his innovative crosspicking and split-string styles of mandolin playing.
Vassar Carlton Clements was an American jazz, swing, and bluegrass fiddler. Clements has been dubbed the Father of Hillbilly Jazz, an improvisational style that blends and borrows from swing, hot jazz, and bluegrass along with roots also in country and other musical traditions. He was posthumously inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
Jesse Harris is an American singer-songwriter, producer, and guitarist. He has worked with Norah Jones, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux, and Lizz Wright.
Laurie Alexis Lewis is an American bluegrass singer, musician, and songwriter.
John Cowan is an American progressive bluegrass vocalist and bass guitar player. He was the lead vocalist and bass player for the New Grass Revival. Cowan became the band's bassist in 1972 after the departure of original bassist Ebo Walker and was noted as being the only member of New Grass Revival not to come from a bluegrass background. He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2020 as a member of New Grass Revival.
Franklin Delano Wakefield was an American mandolin player in the bluegrass music style. Wakefield was known for his collaborations with a number of well-known musical artists, including Red Allen, Jimmy Martin, Don Reno, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, The Stanley Brothers, and the Greenbriar Boys.
Jazz improvisation is the spontaneous invention of melodic solo lines or accompaniment parts in a performance of jazz music. It is one of the defining elements of jazz. Improvisation is composing on the spot, when a singer or instrumentalist invents melodies and lines over a chord progression played by rhythm section instruments and accompanied by drums. Although blues, rock, and other genres use improvisation, it is done over relatively simple chord progressions which often remain in one key.
The Great Dobro Sessions is a 1994 country music and bluegrass album featuring an all-star line-up of 10 American resonator guitar players, produced by dobro players Jerry Douglas and Tut Taylor.
Allen Shelton was an American five-string banjo player mostly known for being a member of the bluegrass band Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys since the 1960s. Shelton was born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, on July 2, 1936. Shelton started playing the banjo when he was fourteen. His father Troy Shelton was a guitar player mainly, but also played mandolin and banjo. A local musician named Junior Biggs showed him some three-finger style rolls.
Jesse Dayton is an American musician, actor and record producer from Austin, Texas best known for his guitar contributions to albums by country musicians including Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. He is also notable for his collaborations with horror film director Rob Zombie, who has commissioned Dayton on multiple occasions to record music to accompany his films.
Sandy Rothman is an American, San Francisco Bay Area bluegrass multi-instrumentalist and record producer. He plays mandolin, dobro and banjo, and he also sings. Rothman was a friend and colleague of Grateful Dead bandleader Jerry Garcia, and a member of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. He played bluegrass with Garcia and David Nelson as the Black Mountain Boys in 1964, and has played in 1964 with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, Earl Taylor, Red Allen, Jimmie Skinner, Larry Sparks, the Kentucky Colonels, Country Joe McDonald, Kathy Kallick and Clarence White, among other musicians. He has been described as "one of the chief biscuits when and where bluegrass music is discussed, scribed, or performed in northern California."
Bluegrass mandolin is a style of mandolin playing most commonly heard in bluegrass bands.
John Lewis Starling was an American musician. He is an International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee bluegrass musician and composer, founding member of the bluegrass group The Seldom Scene, an otolaryngological physician for communities in Alabama, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, and an amateur architect designing the field house at Virginia Military Institute, the house his parents retired in and the floor plans for the building he practiced medicine in.
Marshall Wilborn is an American bluegrass music bass player and composer best known for his work with the Johnson Mountain Boys, Longview, Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper, and the Lynn Morris Band.
Ron Stewart is an American multi-instrumentalist in the bluegrass tradition. He plays fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin, and has won the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) award for Fiddle Player of the Year in 2000 and Banjo Player of the Year in 2011.
Joe Mullins is an American banjo player, vocalist, band leader, and radio broadcaster. He plays bluegrass and gospel music.
