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Banjo Lessons for the Adult Beginner

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Clawhammer Song of the Week: “Hard Times”

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“Hard Times,” originally published in 1854, is the fourth Song of the Week selection penned by the great Stephen Foster. To put his influence in perspective, how many songs written by anyone this year will hominids still be singing in the year 2180?

It’s a beautiful melody, and its words beckon is to recognize the suffering of those less fortunate, and hopes for a better tomorrow for all.

It’s a sentiment that I doubt will ever go out of style. And one well suited to the reflective tones of the gourd banjo.

Hard Times

gDGBD tuning (tuned low on the gourd), Brainjo level 3

hard times clawhammer banjo tab part 1

hard times clawhammer banjo tab part 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”

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

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Clawhammer Tune of the Week: “Hell Amongst the Yearlings”

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!

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In doing my bit of background research to explore the meaning of this tune’s title, I found the best available explanation to have been written by none other than my fellow Georgia Jay mate Justin Manglitz, a man with some experience in the realm of animal husbandry. From a thread back in 2012 on the Banjo Hangout:

“In the antebellum South, and later in some locales, livestock were not kept in enclosures (i.e. paddocks, pastures) but were allowed to roam around freely to eat whatever they could wherever they could get it. People fenced the areas they wanted to keep stock OUT of rather than IN. this applied to both hogs and cattle (and sheep and goat somewhat less commonly). A few times a year folks would round up the animals and notch their ears or brand the young ones, pen them for butcher, or drive them to market. Yearlings in this context specifically refers to young cattle about a year old, a prime time to sale them or butcher them. Drovers of local men would drive huge herds of young cattle or hogs in masse to be separated later, mainly by ear notches, at market. It could be many hundreds of animals, all roiling around not too happy with the situation at all.”

 

Small world.

This is a quirky little tune, for sure.

It’s crooked, for starters, with an extra measure in the A part. Perhaps that’s a nod to the organized chaos of herding a mass of young cattle.

And then there’s the melodic “pause” that occurs in the 3rd and 4th measure of the B part, where the fiddle usually just plays a rhythmic “vamp” of sorts. I consider these two measures to be a kind of a free-for-all for the banjoist – with no melody to adhere to, you have free reign to do anything that sounds good on top of an A chord!

Some of you may note that the B part of this tune and the B part of “Cricket on the Hearth,” a tune common in bluegrass circles, are virtually identical. That’s because they are.

And that is a guitar track you hear in the background, as I thought it made a nice addition to this tune.

 

Hell Amongst the Yearlings

aDADE tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

hell amongst the yearlings clawhammer banjo tab part 1

hell amongst the yearlings clawhammer banjo tab part 2

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.

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

 

Clawhammer Song of the Week: “Dixie”

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


Reclaiming Dixie

When I was a child of about 5 or 6, swinging and singing was a favorite past-time. And I had a small handful of “go-to” songs for the occasion – my “swing set,” if you will…

“Dixie” was one of them.

I’d belt out the words as loud as I could, while my legs propelled me as high as the chains would allow (and on one occasion – which led to a fractured tibia – higher).

I’m not the only one spellbound by this Dan Emmett classic. The following was published in the New Yorker during the American Civil War:

“‘Dixie’ has become an institution, an irrepressible institution in this section of the country … As a consequence, whenever ‘Dixie’ is produced, the pen drops from the fingers of the plodding clerk, spectacles from the nose and the paper from the hands of the merchant, the needle from the nimble digits of the maid or matron, and all hands go hobbling, bobbling in time with the magical music of ‘Dixie.'”

As a kid, I knew there were parts of Southern history marked by racial tensions and bigotry. In the cloistered realm of my childhood, though, I understood those to be things of the past.

The story of the South I carried around was that we’d made some mistakes we weren’t proud of, but had learned from them and created a better place. And in my little corner of the southern U.S., the available evidence fit that narrative.

At my elementary school, children of all ethnicities and colors befriended each other without a second thought. We didn’t have to learn to see past those things, because it never occurred to us that there was something to see past.

As the black and white lines of childhood blurred into the murkier adult shades of gray, I came to realize we hadn’t all come as far as I’d thought. There were still some who wished things were still the way they’d been, who were still fighting against a world where all were equal.

And I learned that “Dixie,” one of the most beloved songs of my childhood, had been recruited as a pawn in this battle. Somewhere between the year it was penned and the year of my birth, the forces of intolerance had adopted it as their anthem.

This song that was a favorite of Lincoln, a song played at his political rallies and at the announcement of Robert E. Lee’s surrender, had, for some, become a symbol of the very thing he fought to destroy.

Dixie had been stolen from me.

Without a doubt, the story of the American South is as complicated as they come. And as is always the case, and especially true here, the broad brush never paints an accurate picture.

The worst parts of that story tells of intolerance, ignorance, and unspeakable cruelty – the worst parts of our nature.

The best parts of that story tells of openness, love, and acceptance – the best parts of our nature.

It was in the South where European and African cultures collided. Where that collision was met with open-mindedness and a generosity of spirit, innovative and brilliant new works of art emerged (at a time when such collaborations were dangerous), including musical forms (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) that would go on to grip the imaginations of people around the world.

It released an explosive burst of creativity and artistic work that continues to this day, with a scope of influence in significant disproportion to the size of the region from whence it comes.

This is the South I love.

This is the South that has produced the music that’s so dear to me, along with an instrument and playing technique that encapsulates the best of Southern culture.

This is the South that’s produced some of the world’s greatest storytellers, telling stories with a richness and depth that could’ve only emerged through this open cultural exchange.

This is the South where my friend and musical companion Justin Manglitz can take a family tradition of clandestine grain distillation, mash it up with tools and techniques of the old world, and produce some of the finest and most original brown spirits ever to trickle past the soft palate.

This is the South I sing of when I sing Dixie.

For many years, I’ve been reluctant to sing it outside of the confines of my home, but that never sat well. That felt like letting the bad guys win.

After all, Dixie was stolen from me.

It’s time to take it back.

Dixie

gCGCD 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.

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

 

Banjo Lessons From Steve Martin (Laws of Brainjo, Episode 24)

Episode 24: Banjo Lessons From Steve Martin

“I guarantee you, I had no talent. None.”

                                                           – Steve Martin

I think you’d be hard pressed to name a celebrity more beloved than Steve Martin. More than an “A lister,” he’s one of those people you can’t imagine a world without (nor would you want to!). In fact, I hope he outlives me.

And there’s seemingly no end to the things he does really, really well.

A master actor, entertainer, magician, writer, storyteller, songwriter, comedian, and – last but certainly not least – banjo player, he’s clearly one of the most talented humans walking atop our spinning blue rock.

Yet, he claims to have “no talent.”

Readers of this series know that I would agree. Because what he means by this is that he wasn’t born with the skills needed to become great at all of those things, he acquired them. He got good at a lot of things because he’s good at getting good at things.

I recently had the pleasure of listening to his memoir “Born Standing Up,” which recounts the early days of his career as a stand up comedian. In addition to being entertaining, funny, and, at times, poignant, it’s also an illuminating look at why he’s so good at getting good.

And while the book contains no banjo instruction, it is nonetheless rich with lessons that are applicable to anyone trying to learn to do anything well, including banjo pickery.


Brainjo Law #1: To learn to play like the masters, we must learn to play like the masters.

LESSON 1: Seek feedback relentlessly, and modify accordingly. 

Feedback is essential to the learning process. In fact, the fundamental learning loop can be described as practice –> feedback → modification → practice → feedback…and so on.

Increase the frequency and quality of feedback, and you accelerate the learning loop. Positive or negative, feedback is always valuable information.

Yet, most folks are apprehensive about subjecting their abilities to public scrutiny, lest they risk an unfavorable reaction. For Martin, though, bombing on stage wasn’t viewed a personal failing, but a necessary and invaluable opportunity for growth.

And so he sought out time on stage whenever he could get it. His objective was never to show everyone how funny he was, but to find out how he was doing. Each session in front of an audience was an opportunity to collect data and get better, and learning was more important than praise.

Acquiring feedback is just the first step, however. The key is to then use that information to modify the thing you’re trying to learn.

Which is exactly what he did. Martin kept detailed records of every joke and gag, and how they landed with the audience. He’d then take the data from those performances and write out a plan for how to make his act better the next time.

Regardless of what you’re learning, treat the process as a scientist would. Every practice session or performance is an experiment, a chance to test your hypothesis, rather than a referendum on your self worth.

If the results indicate the hypothesis is incomplete or wrong, then it’s back to the lab to devise a new one. Learn to love this iterative process above all else, and continued progress is guaranteed.


Brainjo Law #6: There is no failure, only feedback.

LESSON 2: Seek out sources of inspiration, and study them in depth.

Martin cites many influences along his rode to mastery. During his time working at the Main Street Magic shop at Disneyland, for example, he was drawn to the act of Wally Boag, the headliner at Disney’s Golden Horseshoe Revue.

But his role models and mentors were more than just sources of entertainment and inspiration. They were the subjects of intense study. Martin meticulously analyzed and memorized the nuances of Boag’s routine, to the point where he could re-enact his act verbatim.

Nobody gets better in a vacuum, and I think its hard to overstate the value of seeking and studying the heroes you wish to emulate, especially in the formative stages of your journey. It’s no coincidence this is a theme in every master’s story.

For the banjo player, this means identifying the banjoists whose playing speaks to you most, and studying them. Study their music, study how they play, what they say, and how they learned.


Brainjo Law #19: Pay close attention to other players that make you FEEL something, and study them.

LESSON 3: Believe you can become anything.

Perhaps the biggest learning lesson in the entire book, which is also the overriding theme in all of Brainjo, is that, thanks to a brain that continuously changes throughout your life, you can reprogram yourself into what you want to become.

[RELATED: Click here to learn more about the Brainjo Method, and the recently launched Breakthrough Banjo course for fingerstyle banjo.]

 

So getting good at the banjo, or anything else, has nothing to do with natural ability. That just determines where you start.

But getting good at the banjo has everything to do with HOW you learn, or how you go about reprogramming your brain. That’s what determines where you end up.

And this is why I loathe the concept of natural talent. Not just because it isn’t useful, but because it leads so many to never live out their full potential.

Without a firm belief in our capacity to continue to grow and improve, we’d never have the courage to pluck that first banjo string, or hop on stage for the first time.

Nor would we have the courage to soldier on in the face of negative feedback. If our abilities are fixed, then better to remain silent and be thought of as “funny” or “musical” than to perform and remove all doubt.

Had Steve Martin bought into the talent myth, we’d never seen the likes of Navin R. Johnson or Lucky Day.

We’d have never added the phrases “I’m a wild and crazy guy” or “excuuuuse me” to our collective vocabularies.

Our ears would’ve never been graced by the sounds of The Crow or Rare Bird Alert.

And in the 2nd grade, my friends and I could’ve never spent hours at McDonald’s rolling in stitches as we tried to perfect our timing of “the napkin trick.”

Had he bought into it, there’s no telling how many millions of hours of laughter and joy the world would’ve lost.

By the way, the book “Born Standing Up” is outstanding, and hopefully this post has whetted your appetite. The audio version is particularly excellent, as it is narrated by Martin, and contains his banjo playing interspersed throughout the recording.

— 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

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And the winner is….

 

The 2017 March Madness Winner

The votes have been entered, tabulated, and kept as far from the accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper as possible.

And the winner of the Song of the Week March Madness 2017 Tournament is….

 

I must say, I’m not surprised by this result.

Like the winners of the past 2 years’ contests, Snowdrop and Wandering Boy, this is simply an outstanding song. And my job in playing it is to figure out how to best do it justice, and then just get the hell out of its way.

As I said in the original Song of the Week post for “Darling Corey,” there may not be a better tune for showcasing all that’s great about the banjo. It’s in a funky tuning that on paper looks ridiculous…until you try it. It’s about whiskey making. And murder.

(right-click here if you don’t have the tab for “Darling Corey.”)

A couple takeways:

Don’t resist the alternate tunings. It’s a natural tendency to resist using the alternate tunings on the banjo, especially if you have experience on an instrument where doing so isn’t commonplace. But don’t. Almost always, those tunings exist because they make a song

a) easier to play and

b) sound better.

That couldn’t be more true in this case. Sure, you could play “Darling Corey” out of standard G, for example, but it wouldn’t sound half as good.

A great song played well beats anything else. I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. For 3 years straight now, the winner has not been the song that’s the most technically complex or challenging to play, again affirming how little relationship between the technical sophistication required to play a song and the pleasure it delivers.

Music is still fundamentally about the transfer of feeling from one human mind to another. Anything that diminishes that objective gets the axe. The longer I play, the more I appreciate the value of subtraction.

Taking a great melody and playing it with good tone and timing really is what it’s all about.

 

And the runner-up spot, with a highly respectable showing, went to “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

Thanks so much to everyone who took part in the voting. We’ll do it again next March!

 

[RELATED: The “10 Greatest Hits of Clawhammer Banjo” book of tabs was based on the results of the first two March Madness tournaments. Click here if you haven’t grabbed your copy of it yet.]

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

brainjo larger musical mind

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