Studies
"This instrument is second only to the fiddle in driving people away when you're learning to play." - Jerry Douglas (from Homespun Tape series)
"For me, music is thought and action.. mental and physical. The thought/mental component is made up of all the brain work that goes into playing music. The physical one is the muscle memory that inevitably becomes ingrained. We become better musicians by further developing either of these components. The mental component can be enhanced by learning music theory, refining our sensory perception of sound by listening to lots of music, and the combination of both: applying the theory we know. The physical component can be enhanced by the same faculties that we develop any physical skill, repetition in the form of exercises. Scales and rolls are the "blocking and tackling" of this instrument for me." - Brad Harper
"Everybody marvels at the best players, which is all well and good, but there is a “trick” to it: it’s balancing out your right hand." - Jimmy Heffernan
"When learning dobro from books or videos there's a tendency to skip Chapter 1, 2, and 3, and move right to the fancy licks, without ever learning how to practice tone, timing, or intonation. The first few chapters are usually gold! So a lot of my workshop time goes to revisiting the fundamentals." - Ivan Rosenberg
"I once asked Gatemouth Brown when you should start working on having your own style, and without batting an eye he said, “as soon as you’ve got the basics down.” Now, what it means to have “the basics down” is kind of open ended, and of course one really good way to learn is to figure out how the musicians you love are making the sounds you want to be able to make on the instrument. But how is only half of the equation; the other half is why. You can never own someone else’s why, you have to come up with your own. If you just learn to play like other people, you’ll always only have half the picture. What do you want to play? What do you think it should sound like? What’s your personality, and how is it going to come out on the instrument? Once you start to get a handle on that, you’ll have something all your own, and that’s the bedrock every musician ultimately needs to find." - David Hamburger
"I find discussions that revolve around "can you play swing/celtic/bulgarian/jazz/whatever music on the dobro" amusing because why would there be any limit on what you can play on an instrument that so closely recalls the human voice? Is there any kind of music that can't be sung if you take the time to learn the rhythmic and harmonic peculiarities of the form?" - Orville Johnson
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