Bluegrass Dobro

Last week, a little voice inside of me told me to get back to practicing the Dobro. Last month when I was working the SEMBMA Petting Zoo at the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival, I was with a kid that was having a good time on one. Lately, I have been slacking off practicing any instrument due to longer hours at my job and having to take care of my brother’s house while he is on vacation.

My banjo had been leaning against the couch for a few weeks without moving, and I finally put it back in the gig bag. I had not touched the Dobro (a Regal RD-40) since I moved into my parents’ house, and I found it buried under a bunch of clothes in the basement. Surprisingly, it was still in tune when I strapped it on.

I put on a Dobro instructional DVD and found that I still knew one or two tunes. Unfortunately, my slight arthritis is not allowing for fast picking rolls. I have no problems with rhythm chops, but I do want to work on some simple leads. The DVD basically shows simple tunes, and a Jerry Douglas DVD I have is not in my plans right now (if ever). I have been watching a few YouTube beginner Dobro videos to pick up some ideas.

My hope is to hit the Cirrus Guitar jam session in the next month or two and bring the Dobro. There are too many guitars there and maybe a banjo or mandolin, so a different instrument there would be a blessing. I also want to be able to throw in a different instrument besides guitar and bass on my songwriting demos and not have it sound pathetic.

While the picking fingers are the same as the Scruggs-style playing of banjo, I find that I am more comfortable picking the Dobro strings. With both, I am having some coordination concerns doing string pinching, but that is just one of my things to work on. Both instruments are tuned to an open G major chord, so trying to slide into a minor chord is a challenge without knowing some theory.

Right now, I am trying to commit myself to at least 15 minutes practice every day after work, no matter how tired I am. Yes, the Dobro is now leaning against the couch, staring at me when I walk into my living room. I also need to look for Dobro instruction books that I know that I kept but packed away during the house move.

I should be finishing up on the green Telecaster guitar body by the end of next week, and will be working on the neck and electronics next, finishing up the guitar by mid-August. Before it gets cold outside, I do want to do build another guitar, a bass that will include some routing needed to install a second pickup. I would have a lot more time if there were not outside influences. However, I cannot use any excuses, and need to plan my time far enough in advance and keep to the schedule so that I can get more things done that I want to be done.

I leave you with one of the coolest Dobro tunes Jerry Douglas has ever written.

Chew on it and comment.

First off, I hope that everyone here in the US had a good and safe Thanksgiving!

So because I do a lot of web searching for both musical instruments and bluegrass-related material, I get a lot of pop-ups on items for sale that (by a long shot) have some connection to these two areas due to my algorithms. I usually just delete them and move on, but recently I got one that piqued my curiosity.

It stated that a bluegrass resonator guitar was on sale for $159.00. Now reso guitars, better known with the bluegrass crowd as a dobro (one of the original manufacturers was a company called Dobro, formed by the Dopyera brothers), are not as “affordable” as beginner acoustic guitars. Even low-end dobros are rarely under $300.00, and many of them are used models. So I clicked on the ad.

Acoustic Electric Guitar, Rich Sound, Built-in Preamp, Deep Cherry Finish

It turned out to be what I expected. This was round-neck reso guitar set up for guitar players. Some blues and folk guitarists like to play a reso guitar to get a swampy sound from it, courtesy of the metal cone that replaces where the soundhole would be on a regular acoustic guitar. They have a brighter, more metallic tone, but can be louder than a normal acoustic. Players like to use a bottleneck-style slide on them to get that bluesy slide sound. The brand name is Pyle, better known for high-fidelity and guitar amplifier speakers, so I am sure it is just contracted with them. I am also certain that these are probably made in some Asian country with very cheap labor. The funny thing is, the actual item is listed as an acoustic-electric guitar with built-in preamp.

The dobro models that are used by bluegrass players almost always have a square neck. This is for stability, but also serves as a better anchor for a dobro capo. This type of capo, rather than clamping down on the fretboard, rests solely on the strings. The string height on a dobro is much higher than a regular guitar so that the slide will move freely along the strings and not come in contact with the frets (which only serve as a note marker). While it is easily possible to play a round neck by raising the strings at the nut with a special nut (available from sources like Elderly Instruments, Guitar Center or Sweetwater for under $20.00), you are still limited if you want to play upon strings in a different key than the standard G tuning on a Dobro.

Another aspect of a bluegrass dobro player is that they almost always use fingerpicks and a thumbpick, similar to a banjo player. Tut Taylor was one of the few dobro players that used a flatpick, but he is an exception. The finger/thumb combination allows for rolls on the strings like a banjo player, but with the different G tuning than a banjo, the rolls sound much different.

I have seen a few bluegrass dobro players use a round-neck model, but again, they were usually having to stick to playing barred strings when in different keys. Now I am not saying that a round-neck reso guitar would be a good starter model for the beginner, especially if one of those raised nuts is installed over the regular nut. Most beginner dobro lesson books and videos are going to instruct the basics in the key of G anyways.

When I was working at the musical instrument petting zoo at the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival last June, one young girl was very interested in trying out and playing the dobro. I explained to her parents that while the cost of a good dobro may be high, there are many low-cost alternatives for beginners, including converting a regular acoustic guitar with the nut-raiser and playing it sideways like a dobro. In such a case, if the student takes a true interest in playing the dobro, money can be saved up for a regular square-neck model.

I was fortunate years ago to get my hands on a Regal dobro for a very good price. I still have it, and althoughj I don’t play it as much as I would like, it is a great sounding dobro that I use to embellish some demos of mine. If I ever got the time, I definitely would like to work more on it.

The dobro is often thought of as a minor instrument in the bluegrass field. Josh Graves and a very few others were the purveyors, and the greatest dobro player out there today, Jerry Douglas, has helped to promote it in the bluegrass and country music fields more than anyone. It has a unique sound that does change the overall composition of a bluegrass band, whether you like that sound or not. However, it does make a great bluegrass instrument for beginners to consider if not interested in the sometimes complex fretting of a banjo or mandolin, or the coordination of a fiddle. I would encourage parents to offer the dobro up as a possible instrument to play to their children interested in bluegrass.

Chew on it and comment.