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Banjo Lessons for the Adult Beginner

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    • The Clawhammer TOP 10 tunes
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Clawhammer Song and Tab of the Week: “Tom Cat Blues”

Click on the button below to get the PDF download for this tab delivered to you, and get 2 new tunes and tabs sent to you every week!

Click Here To Get The Tab


This week’s song is loads of fun.

Written by Cliff Carlisle, a country singer who gained considerable fame in the 1930s with suggestive, animal-themed ditties, Tom Cat Blues tells of the escapades of a promiscuous feline.

I first heard it via the New Lost City Ramblers, who performed a version impressively faithful to the original, as they were known to do.

Played here out of double C tuning, and consisting of just one repeating melodic unit, I think you’ll find it not to hard to pick up.

You may find it hard not to crack a smile whilst playing it, however.


(NOTE: For those considering acquiring a Brainjo banjo, the banjo played in this video is a “Hobart” model. Click here if you’d like to learn more, or claim one in the next batch.)


Tom Cat Blues

gCGCD tuning, Brainjo level 3

Notes on the Tab

In this arrangement, I’ve tabbed out the part I play in the banjo “solo,” as well as the vocal backup I play on the banjo while singing.

Notes in parentheses are “skip” notes – to learn more about skips and syncopated skips, check out my video lesson on the subject.

For more on reading tabs in general, check out this complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

PRIOR SONG OF THE WEEK EPISODES

  • Episode 1: “Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow”
  • Episode 2: “Gumtree Canoe”
  • Episode 3: “Crawdad Hole”
  • Episode 4: “Oh Susanna”
  • Episode 5: “Freight Train”
  • Episode 6: “Grandfather’s Clock”
  • Episode 7: “Hop High Lulu”
  • Episode 8: “Been All Around This World”
  • Episode 9: “I’ll Fly Away”
  • Episode 10: “Leaving Home”
  • Episode 11: “Poor Orphan Child”
  • Episode 12: “Mr. Tambourine Man”
  • Episode 13: “Swanee River”
  • Episode 14: “Big Sciota”
  • Episode 15: “Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms”
  • Episode 16: “Darling Corey”
  • Episode 17: “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
  • Episode 18: “America the Beautiful”
  • Episode 19: “Bury Me Beneath the Willow”
  • Episode 20: “Way Out There”
  • Episode 21: “New Slang”
  • Episode 22: “I Saw the Light”
  • Episode 23: “Amazing Grace”
  • Episode 24: “Blowin’ in the Wind”
  • Episode 25: “Yankee Doodle”
  • Episode 26: “Budapest”
  • Episode 27: “Wildwood Flower”
  • Episode 28: “Paradise”
  • Episode 29: “Mountain Dew”
  • Episode 30: “Blue Tail Fly”
  • Episode 31: “Otto Wood”
  • Episode 32: “Down on the Corner”
  • Episode 33: “City of New Orleans”
  • Episode 34: “Big Rock Candy Mountains”
  • Episode 35: “Come to the Bower”
  • Episode 36: “Old Kentucky Home”
  • Episode 37: “Long Journey Home”
  • Episode 38: “Dixie”
  • Episode 39: “Hard Times”
  • Episode 40: “Corrina Corrina”
  • Episode 41: “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain”
  • Episode 42: “Johnson Boys”
  • Episode 43: “Bad Moon Rising”
  • Episode 44: “Reuben’s Train”
  • Episode 45: “Let the Mermaid’s Flirt With Me”
  • Episode 46: “Rocky Top”
  • Episode 47: “Groundhog”
  • Episode 48: “Lazy John”
  • Episode 49: “The Gambler”
  • Episode 50: “8 More Miles To Louisville”
  • Episode 51: “Who’ll Stop the Rain”
  • Episode 52: “Pretty Polly”
  • Episode 53: “You Are My Sunshine”
  • Episode 54: “Old Molly Hare”
  • Episode 55: “The Miller’s Will”
  • Episode 56: “Walking Cane”
  • Episode 57: “Feast Here Tonight”
  • Episode 58 “Let Me Fall”
  • Episode 59: “Little Birdie”
  • Episode 60: “Train on the Island”
  • Episode 61: “Handsome Molly”
  • Episode 62: “Willie Moore”

Level 2 arrangements and video demos for the Tune (and Song!) of the Week tunes are now available as part of the Breakthrough Banjo course.

Click here for a current list of all the clawhammer songs and tunes currently available inside of The Vault

Learn More About Breakthrough Banjo

 

About the Author
Josh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions
 

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

brainjo larger musical mind

Clawhammer Tune of the Week: “Jawbone”

Click on the button below to get the PDF download for this tab delivered to you, and get 2 new tunes and tabs sent to you every week!

Click Here To Get The Tab


Announcing the Brainjo Virtual Classroom and the “Clawhammer Backup Made Easy” Workshop

Before we get to this week’s tune, I wanted to first announce a new feature from Brainjo – the Virtual Classroom.

The classroom will have regular live workshops (once a month or more) on essential topics in clawhammer, banjo with special focus on topics that are common sources of frustration, or that are underrepresented in traditional instruction.

During these workshops, attendees will be able to ask questions before and during the session.

These workshops are included as part of the Breakthrough Banjo membership (along with access to recordings and supplemental materials from all prior workshops), however, non-members can also register to attend single sessions (click here to sign up for Breakthrough Banjo).

Our first workshop is “Clawhammer Backup Made Easy“.

It’s a topic many of you have asked to learn more about, and it’s one where there’s not a lot of instructional material on, particularly for the clawhammer player (which is strange because clawhammer is so perfectly suited for playing backup!).

Click below to learn more about what’s covered in the workshop and to register.

Learn more about the Workshop

 


Now, on to this week’s tune, “Jawbone”!

So….why is there an old time tune about the mandible???

Folk musicians are known for being resourceful and thrifty, and that includes the creation of music making implements from whatever materials are available.

Bones make for great percussion, with certain bones – like the jawbone of a horse, donkey, or cow – being especially well suited for the task.

Hence the affinity for jawbones amongst the forebears of the old time tradition, and the inspiration for this week’s tune – one that incidentally began as a minstrel song.

I think you’ll find that this one easy to pick up, with a melody that sticks quickly and lays out nicely on the banjo.


(NOTE: For those considering acquiring a Brainjo banjo, the banjo played in this video is a “Hobart” model. Click here if you’d like to learn more, or claim one in the next batch.)


 “Jawbone”

aEAC#E tuning, Brainjo level 3

 

Notes on the Tab

Notes in parentheses are “skip” notes. To learn more about these, check out my video lesson on the subject.

For more on reading tabs in general, check out this complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

[RELATED: Level 2 arrangements and video demos for the Tune (and Song!) of the Week tunes are now available as part of the Breakthrough Banjo course. Learn more about it here.

Click here for a current list of all the clawhammer songs and tunes currently available inside of The Vault

 

Learn More About Breakthrough Banjo

 

About the Author
Josh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions
 

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

Episode 33: How To Know If You’re Getting Better


by Josh Turknett, MD

About the Laws of Brainjo Series

Written in partnership with the Banjo Hangout, the “Immutable Laws of Brainjo” is a monthly series on how to apply the science of learning and neuroplasticity to practice banjo more effectively – these are also the principles that serve as the foundation for the Brainjo Method for music instruction.

(RELATED: The Brainjo Method forms the basis for the Breakthrough Banjo course. Click here to learn more about the course.)

What’s the single most frustrating thing when learning to play an instrument?

Not making progress. Or, at least, feeling as if you aren’t.

As mentioned in prior episodes, progress is the single greatest motivator when it comes to learning anything. Improvement is the reward we get for our efforts.

And it’s that reward that keeps us coming back.

It’s why I talk a lot about how to make progress (and it’s why ensuring continued progress, no matter how small, is a crucial element of the Brainjo Method).

Not getting better, or at least feeling like you’re not, is the reason almost everyone quits. You hit the wall, and you don’t know how to get over it.

It’s a problem that’s been amplified further by the double edged sword of the internet age – access to information on WHAT to play is more abundant than ever, leading many to jump aimlessly from one thing to the next without any guiding framework for the right things to work on and when, or HOW to learn it. The perfect recipe for stagnation.

One of the great challenges here is simply being able to tell if you’re still getting better. Change is hard to appreciate when you’re the one doing the changing.

Remember when you were a kid and people kept marveling at how much you’d grown, while you couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about?

So that’s part of the problem.

But even if you could observe yourself in the 3rd person at discrete intervals, what would you be looking for as signs of improvement? Sure, we can tell the difference between a beginner and a professional when we hear it. But there are a gajillion intermediate steps along that path – what do those steps look like?

In the early stages of learning, measuring progress isn’t too hard. When you go from never playing the banjo before to playing your first song, for example, it’s abundantly clear that you’ve made major progress.

But as your skills improve, knowing what the next step in your progression is, or where you should be putting your time an energy, becomes less and less obvious. Because if you can’t clearly define where it is you want to go, how on earth are you going to know how to get there?

In the last episode, I introduced the following graphic that summarizes this predicament – which is that oftentimes the scope of things we don’t know that we don’t know is greater than the scope of things we know that we don’t know.

Answering this question, and providing this sort of learning roadmap, is top priority for anyone involved in teaching music. So providing that roadmap is key to the Brainjo Method, and in this article I’ll be sharing the framework I use to help identify all of the obvious and not-so-obvious parts of playing the banjo.

Figuring that out has a lot to do with knowing the difference between the “hard” and the “soft” skills of banjo playing.

9 Ways to Practice Smarter – free book and video

The “9 Ways to Practice Smarter” is a collection of 9 essential ways to get more out of your banjo practice. Click the button below to download the book, along with access to the full video.

Download the book

THE “HARD” SKILLS

Every learned complex behavior we perform is composed of scores of various sub-skills, each with a dedicated neural subroutine that mediates their operation. And the entire reason we practice is to create those subroutines. 

In his book, The Talent Code, author Daniel Coyle refers to two major types of these sub-skills: “Hard Skills” and “Soft Skills.”

The hard and soft skills each have their unique set of key, non-overlapping attributes, and understanding these differing attributes is indispensable in helping us diagnose the primary issue when stagnation does occur.

Hard Skills are those that that we want to perform as correctly and consistently as possible, every time (note that the word “hard” here does not refer to their level of difficulty).

Hard skills are ones you could imagine being performed by a machine, where repeatable precision is the desired objective. Hard skills are comparatively easy to measure.

In the brain, most of the networks that mediate the hard skills will be distributed across the motor system (specifically, primary motor cortex, pre-motor and supplementary motor cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia).

Applied to the banjo, the hard skills are what many of us think of as the technical elements of banjo playing. Much of our practice time in the early to intermediate stages of expertise is directed towards learning the hard skills.

In the pie of banjo knowledge, hard skills are usually things “we know that we know,” or that “we know that we don’t know.”

For the most part, the hard skills also give us tangible sign of progress and growth.

When we go from one day not being able to fret a full D chord to fingering it with ease, we know we’ve accomplished something. And we know we’ve moved up a rung on the ladder of mastery.

As long as we have hard skills to learn and check of the to do list, we have progress that we can identify. This is one reason the early stages of learning are so gratifying.

Preventing stagnation in the acquisition of the hard skills is a matter of paying careful attention to the quality and sequence of practice – a topic we’ve covered in depth in several prior episodes. Hard skills are learned sequentially, and increase in complexity over time.

The motor networks in the brain that support the hard skills are built from scratch, based on the inputs we provide when we practice. Once those networks are built, they are quite literally a part of you.

Perform the same bad golf swing 3,490 times over the course of 5 years and it’ll be almost as much a part of you, and as unchangeable, as the color of your eyes. Which is why it’s best to take the time and care needed to learn it right the first go round.

When confined to the motor system, these learned neural subroutines may be referred to in common language as “muscle memory.” More broadly, we often refer to them as “habits.”

And habits are the ultimate double edged sword: a collection of good habits allows us to exploit the exponential gains of compound interest, while the accumulation of bad habits progressively constrains our future potential.

Ensuring that we form good habits is precisely why HOW we practice (the focus of this Laws of Brainjo series) matters as much or more than WHAT we practice (despite the fact that the WHAT gets the lion’s share of attention).

HOW THE HARD SKILLS GET YOU STUCK:

With the hard skills in particular, careful attention to the sequence of learning, and the nuances of effective practice is essential to continuing progress. Mistakes in learning the hard skills that lead to stagnation include:

  • learning multiple hard skills simultaneously
  • progressing from one to the next before automaticity has been achieved, or
  • learning them out of sequence

Any of the above leads to the formation of bad habits that are hard to unlearn.

Usually, these kinds of mistakes stem from trying to learn material that’s too technically advanced, too soon (for more on the importance of learning material appropriate to your level of development, click here to read about the Brainjo level system).

HOW TO GET UNSTUCK:

The adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” certainly applies here.  Pay careful attention to the sequence and structure of practice to avoid forming bad habits.

If a bad habit is identified, re-learn a better one immediately (do not continue to reinforce it, or press on in hopes that it will magically fix itself).

THE “SOFT” SKILLS

As mentioned, the other kind of sub-skills we can refer to as the “soft” skills.

As Coyle defines them, they are skills that “have many paths to a good result, not just one. These skills aren’t about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being agile and interactive; about instantly recognizing patterns as they unfold and making smart, timely choices.”

A tennis player’s backhand volley is a hard skill. A tennis player’s understanding of doubles strategy, along with when, where, and how to deploy the backhand volley, is a soft skill.

The distinction matters because, in many cases, we may not be aware that certain soft skills exist.

In the pie of possible banjo knowledge, soft skills are things “we know that we don’t know,” along with the things that “we don’t know that we know!”

And the distinction also matters because HOW we go about learning those soft skills is a different process.

In fact, many of the soft skills are not acquired through formal practice. Instead, they’re acquired through the operation of pattern recognition systems that run beneath our conscious awareness.

To learn them, our job then is to understand what inputs those systems need to create those skills, and seek them out.

Soft skills, like hard skills, are still embedded in neural substrates. And those substrates are still created through the learning process.

But, the soft skills of banjo are like advisors to our motor system. They help to formulate the plans for what we want to play in the first place, and provide that advice to the parts of the brain involved with controlling the movements of our limbs.

For example, a seasoned banjo player in a jam is drawing on all manner of learned soft skills, each one contributing to what we can appreciate as expert playing, even if we can’t articulate why.

Soft skills, by their nature, are harder to precisely define. Not surprisingly, they are often incompletely addressed, or neglected entirely, in musical instruction.

Yet, both the hard and soft skills are needed for mastery. And it’s the soft skills that usually separate the good from the great. 

HOW THE SOFT SKILLS GET YOU STUCK:

There are two primary ways in which the soft skills can pose an impediment.

The first is through ignorance, or simply not knowing that the specific skills that are needed (the “not knowing what you don’t know” part of the knowledge pie). When a soft skill stands in your way, you know you’ve hit a wall, but you don’t really know why. You know there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be, but you don’t really know how to describe what that gap consists of, much less what you need to do to cross it.

The second is knowing what those skills are, but not knowing how to acquire them. A common problem, since most instruction is heavily focused on the hard skills.

HOW TO GET UNSTUCK:

The first step here is to cultivate an awareness that soft skills exist, and understand what they are. From there, it’s a matter of seeking out the kinds of inputs and information needed to develop them.

And so, in part 2, we’ll dig deeper into each of these to more precisely define the “hard” and “soft” skills of banjo playing. See you then!

— Click here to read Part 2 —


To learn more about the Breakthrough Banjo courses for clawhammer and fingerstyle banjo, click the relevant link below:

— Breakthrough Banjo for CLAWHAMMER Banjo —

— Breakthrough Banjo for FINGERSTYLE Banjo —


— The Laws of Brainjo Table of Contents —

About the Author
Josh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions
 

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

brainjo 1

 

Clawhammer Song and Tab of the Week: “Willie Moore”

Click on the button below to get the PDF download for this tab delivered to you, and get 2 new tunes and tabs sent to you every week!

Click Here To Get The Tab


Another classic murder ballad is on the docket for the latest installment of the Song of the Week.

Our protagonist this time is Willie Moore. Sweet Annie is his beloved, whose hand Willie has asked for in marriage.

Alas, Annie’s parents do not approve of Willie. What happens next?

Watch the video to find out!

Since Burnett and Rutherford first recorded in 1927 by Burnett and Rutherford, many a folk musician has fallen for Willie.

Amongst banjoists, the song seems to have become loosely affiliated with old time fingerpicking, perhaps on account of the fact that the aforementioned first recorded version featured some delightful plickety-plackety up-picked goodness from blind Dick Burnett.

(RELATED: To learn those great plickety-plackety old time fingerpicked sounds, click here to learn more about the Breakthrough Banjo course for fingerstyle banjo).

Take note of the tuning here – gDGAD, sometimes referred to as “Willie Moore” tuning.

And don’t let the tuning scare you – it’s an easy tune to pick up (Brainjo level 2), and a good one for those starting with playing and singing. There are no chords to learn, and a minimum of fretting to do.


(NOTE: For those considering acquiring a Brainjo banjo, the banjo played in this video is a “Hobart” model. Click here if you’d like to learn more, or claim one in the next batch.)


Willie Moore

gDGAD tuning, Brainjo level 2

Notes on the Tab

In this arrangement, I’ve tabbed out the part I play in the banjo “solo,” as well as the vocal backup I play on the banjo while singing.

Notes in parentheses are “skip” notes – to learn more about skips and syncopated skips, check out my video lesson on the subject.

For more on reading tabs in general, check out this complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

PRIOR SONG OF THE WEEK EPISODES

  • Episode 1: “Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow”
  • Episode 2: “Gumtree Canoe”
  • Episode 3: “Crawdad Hole”
  • Episode 4: “Oh Susanna”
  • Episode 5: “Freight Train”
  • Episode 6: “Grandfather’s Clock”
  • Episode 7: “Hop High Lulu”
  • Episode 8: “Been All Around This World”
  • Episode 9: “I’ll Fly Away”
  • Episode 10: “Leaving Home”
  • Episode 11: “Poor Orphan Child”
  • Episode 12: “Mr. Tambourine Man”
  • Episode 13: “Swanee River”
  • Episode 14: “Big Sciota”
  • Episode 15: “Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms”
  • Episode 16: “Darling Corey”
  • Episode 17: “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
  • Episode 18: “America the Beautiful”
  • Episode 19: “Bury Me Beneath the Willow”
  • Episode 20: “Way Out There”
  • Episode 21: “New Slang”
  • Episode 22: “I Saw the Light”
  • Episode 23: “Amazing Grace”
  • Episode 24: “Blowin’ in the Wind”
  • Episode 25: “Yankee Doodle”
  • Episode 26: “Budapest”
  • Episode 27: “Wildwood Flower”
  • Episode 28: “Paradise”
  • Episode 29: “Mountain Dew”
  • Episode 30: “Blue Tail Fly”
  • Episode 31: “Otto Wood”
  • Episode 32: “Down on the Corner”
  • Episode 33: “City of New Orleans”
  • Episode 34: “Big Rock Candy Mountains”
  • Episode 35: “Come to the Bower”
  • Episode 36: “Old Kentucky Home”
  • Episode 37: “Long Journey Home”
  • Episode 38: “Dixie”
  • Episode 39: “Hard Times”
  • Episode 40: “Corrina Corrina”
  • Episode 41: “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain”
  • Episode 42: “Johnson Boys”
  • Episode 43: “Bad Moon Rising”
  • Episode 44: “Reuben’s Train”
  • Episode 45: “Let the Mermaid’s Flirt With Me”
  • Episode 46: “Rocky Top”
  • Episode 47: “Groundhog”
  • Episode 48: “Lazy John”
  • Episode 49: “The Gambler”
  • Episode 50: “8 More Miles To Louisville”
  • Episode 51: “Who’ll Stop the Rain”
  • Episode 52: “Pretty Polly”
  • Episode 53: “You Are My Sunshine”
  • Episode 54: “Old Molly Hare”
  • Episode 55: “The Miller’s Will”
  • Episode 56: “Walking Cane”
  • Episode 57: “Feast Here Tonight”
  • Episode 58 “Let Me Fall”
  • Episode 59: “Little Birdie”
  • Episode 60: “Train on the Island”
  • Episode 61: “Handsome Molly”

Level 2 arrangements and video demos for the Tune (and Song!) of the Week tunes are now available as part of the Breakthrough Banjo course.

Click here for a current list of all the clawhammer songs and tunes currently available inside of The Vault

Learn More About Breakthrough Banjo

 

About the Author
Josh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions
 

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

brainjo larger musical mind

Solving the Fiddle Tune Challenge (Core Repertoire Series)

Banjo Core Repertoire Series, Essential Fiddle Tunes Edition

 

Ready for a new edition of the Banjo Core Repertoire Series? Of course you are!

This time around, we’ll be tackling some of the best music ever to emerge from the rubbing of gut to horsehair. In other words…fiddle tunes!

Here’s a video preview of what’s to come (you can also grab the tabs by clicking below the vid):

 

Click Here To Get The CLAWHAMMER Tab

Click Here To Get The FINGERSTYLE Tab

As you might surmise after watching it, each episode this season will include an arrangement for both fingerstyle and clawhammer banjoists, along with a demonstration of both arrangements together to maximize your banjo bliss quotient!

Clawhammer banjoists, especially those steeped in the old time tradition, also tend to play way more fiddle tunes, since those are the most common musical form in old time jams.

Which means we get to draw from the entirety of the traditional fiddle tune catalog in this series, rather than restricting our material to the narrow set of fiddle tunes that are part of the common bluegrass repertoire. For the fingerpickers out there, that means getting to learn some fantastic material you may have never heard before.

Those of you who’ve been following along with the Core Repertoire series, or are familiar with the Brainjo method, know that our objective here will not only be to teach you some great tunes on the banjo, but more importantly to teach you the process behind how we figure out what to play on the banjo.

And while we’ve covered this process before, as you’ll discover this season, the process of adapting a fiddle tune for the banjo represents a special circumstance – and is a process different than the one we might use for other types of material (and one we’ve covered in prior installments), especially if our goal is to capture all of the notes that the fiddle might play.

Fiddle Tunes on the Banjo: what’s the big deal?

The banjo and fiddle are one of the great musical duos in all of music. In the days before commercial music, it was this combination that captured the trademark sound of dance music in the southern US and beyond.

Naturally, then, fiddle tunes remain a central part of the traditional banjo repertoire.

In the classic fiddle-banjo combo, more often than not the banjo plays a mix of rhythm, melody, and drone, playing to its strengths, while the fiddle carries the melodic line.

But, in recent years, more players have enjoyed the challenge of trying to play all the notes of the fiddle on the banjo, an especially useful thing to do when one is playing a fiddle tune solo, or taking the lead role.

Newcomers to the banjo may not fully appreciate why doing this sort of thing represents a special challenge, so let’s set the stage.

You see, the historical African antecedents of the banjo began more as instruments of percussion and droning than melody.

Modifications over the years to both the form and style of the banjo included adding strings, and the creation of new ways of playing it – modifications made in part to allow for the symbiotic blend of rhythm, drone, and melody that gives the 5-string banjo the sound we now all know and love.

The unique form of the 5-string banjo, and the styles commonly used to play it – whether clawhammer or fingerstyle – serve to fully capitalize on this unique strength.

But with any strength comes weakness. And we come square up against that weakness when trying to play fiddle tunes on the banjo.

There are two primary reasons why this is so:

REASON 1: The creation of particular rhythms on the banjo, in both clawhammer and fingerstyle, is made possible by the use of particular patterns of picking. These patterns are what give the banjo its pulse and drive. So, when we don’t maintain those patterns, we lose that pulse and drive.

REASON 2: The short 5th string on a 5-string banjo is what makes it a drone instrument in principle. Making it a drone instrument in reality requires that we pick that 5th string often.

 

Both of these elements are essential to the iconic sound of the 5-string banjo, and dropping either of them invariably compromises some of the banjo’s special magic.

The busier a tune, or the more melody notes there are in each measure, the more challenging it becomes to include these patterns, drones, and melody notes. Something has to give.

Sudoku for the Banjo Enthusiast

There are a few strategies that have been used over the years when it comes to the playing of fiddle tunes on the banjo:

The Scruggs style approach. With the “Scruggs” strategy, you don’t worry about playing all the notes. Instead, the idea is to “suggest” enough of the melody by playing some of the most essential notes. This was the approach typically taken by Earl Scruggs (with a few exceptions), and it’s one that works perfectly well – and is probably ideal – in a band setting, when there are other instruments around to carry the melody.

Single string approach. With the “single string” strategy, you don’t worry about preserving the rhythm and drone, and focus mainly on playing the melody notes. Oftentimes, multiple melody notes are played on a single string, hence this is sometimes referred to as “single string” style.

The drawback of this approach, as you can surmise, is that much of the special banjo magic is lost, as we’re abandoning those rhythmic patterns upon which our melody is typically laid atop. As a result, the sound is indistinguishable from what one might hear on a flatpicked 6-string banjo (which lead some to ask why restrict yourself to the limitations of the 5-string), and much of the drive and pulse of the banjo is sacrificed.

The single string approach works best if you’re playing in a band setting and if your goal is mainly to play music with a banjo tone, with other instruments providing the rhythmic support that the banjo now lacks.

“Melodic” style. The 3rd strategy, for those who dare, is to try have your cake and eat it too. In other words, to try to include all of the melody notes, without sacrificing our two essential elements of special banjo magic above. To retain our beloved blend of rhythm, drone, and melody even whilst the odds are stacked against us.

 

In this series, we will be attempting the 3rd strategy. We will attempt to have our cake and eat it, too.

As you will discover, meeting this challenge is like solving a puzzle. Fans of Sudoku and other puzzles will especially enjoy the process.

And while this strategy is perhaps the hardest to pull off well, requiring both considerable forethought in the arranging and successful execution of said arrangement, the rewards of pulling it off are also great.

What you’ll also find is that simply changing the way a particular series of notes is fingered and fretted can radically alter the level of difficult. In some ways, there are no easy or hard tunes, just easy or hard arrangements of those tunes. And what’s great for us is that the easier we can make our arrangement, the better things will end up sounding.

Both the clawhammer and fingerstyle arrangements of Boatman you hear in the video above were created using the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach to fiddle tunes on the banjo. In the next installment, we’ll work our way through the process of solving the puzzle to create those two arrangements.

For those of you eager to learn the tune, you can grab the tab by clicking on the relevant link below:

Click Here To Get The CLAWHAMMER Tab

Click Here To Get The FINGERSTYLE Tab


To learn more about the Breakthrough Banjo courses for clawhammer and fingerstyle banjo, click the relevant link below:

— Breakthrough Banjo for CLAWHAMMER Banjo —

— Breakthrough Banjo for FINGERSTYLE Banjo —


— The Laws of Brainjo Table of Contents —

About the Author
Josh Turknett is founder and lead brain hacker at Brainjo Productions

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