free banjo tabs – Page 26

Clawhammer Tune and Tab of the Week: “Old Joe Clark”

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Old Joe has been patiently waiting in the wings for his time in the spotlight.

Alas, it’s finally his moment.

Of course, he’s had more than his fair share of attention. He’s a fixture at old time and bluegrass jams alike, and everything in between, with countless recorded versions by professional musicians.

So Joe was ok with sharing the stage for a while.

But this is one of those tunes that, if you’re caught with a banjo in your hands, you’re just kind of expected to know.

Melodically speaking, Joe isn’t all that complicated, which gives us a bit of space to play.

I like to play around with the rhythm a bit, inserting a healthy dose of syncopation, which means you’ll find a few “syncopated skips” sprinkled throughout.

Old Joe Clark

aEAC#E tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

old joe clark clawhammer banjo tab part 1

old joe clark 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.

Learn More About Breakthrough Banjo

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

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

Clawhammer Song of the Week: “Mr. Tambourine Man”

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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So much music, so little time.

Even just limiting yourself to the world of traditional folk for source material, you could spend a lifetime and never reach the bottom.

Yet, sometimes it’s fun to stretch a bit, to move outside the boundaries of traditional banjo tunes and see what else we might adapt to the 5-string.

Sometimes it works out well, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Other times, though, you figure out a way to shape the peg so it fits quite nicely. And, in doing so, you usually learn something in the process.

So, even if you’re a purist, harboring no desire to play anything outside the realm of the tradition, I’d still recommend trying your hand at some non-traditional material, even if it’s just for learning sake.

It’s a great way to expand your ideas of what’s possible with clawhammer.

Besides, were it not for people pushing up against the musical boundaries throughout the course of history, we’d have no traditions to uphold in the first place.

The best place to start doing this sort of thing, in my opinion, is with the music you already love that you don’t associate with the banjo.

This week’s song, Mr. Tambourine Man, has long been one of my favorites. I’ve played it for quite some time on guitar, but only recently decided to adapt it for the 5-string.

I’ll continue to post music outside the realm of traditional banjo from time to time, partly to inspire and motivate you to do likewise, and perhaps spark some ideas for how you might go about it (Breakthrough Banjo members can look for a Module soon all about adapting music to clawhammer banjo).

But also because it’s great fun.

Mr. Tambourine Man

aDADE tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

mr. tambourine man clawhammer banjo tab part 2

mr. tambourine man clawhammer banjo tab part 3

Notes on the Tab

In the tab above, you’ll note I’ve tabbed out both a “lead break” (something to play in between verses) and the “vocal backup” (what I play while I’m 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

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 Breakthrough Banjo

Clawhammer Tune of the Week: “Sourwood Mountain”

Click Here To Get The Tab

One of the great things about old time music is that, while it exists within a cultural tradition, its rules are flexible.

Take the classic fiddle tune. Technically, a fiddle tune is an instrumental. It’s right there in the name, after all.

But when you’re locked into a really good fiddle tune, it feels great. And in those moments of high emotion, sometimes you just want to sing.

Yet, if you’re sitting first chair violin in the London Philharmonic performing Mahler’s 3rd symphony and decide to improvise a verse, you may soon find yourself jobless. In that tradition, there’s ONE way of doing things, and departures, well intentioned or not, are not tolerated.

But in old time, you’re free to let it rip. Such spontaneous emotional emissions aren’t only expected, they’re welcomed. In fact, getting yourself to a state in which you feel so inclined is kind of the point.

And so, even though most “fiddle tunes” don’t technically have words, that hasn’t stopped musicians from adding them.

Over time, different tunes have come to be associated with different sets of words. And you’ll find certain verses recur in multiple tunes, dubbed “floating verses” due to their tendency to “float” from one tune to the next. These are Swiss army knives of old time lyrics, providing easy access to something to sing when the mood strikes you.

Sometimes things go in reverse, as was the case with this week’s tune of the week, Sourwood Mountain. It began its life as a song, with words integrated at the moment of conception.

Somewhere along the way a fiddler liked it so much he or she decided it must be sawed. And from there it took on a second life as a “fiddle tune.”

Sourwood Mountain

aEAC#E tuning, Brainjo level 3

Sourwood Mountain clawhammer banjo tagb

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.

Learn More About Breakthrough Banjo

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

View the Brainjo Course Catalog

Clawhammer Song of the Week: “Poor Orphan Child”

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

We kicked off this whole Song of the Week series with a number first recorded by the Carter Family.

This week brings another gem from the original stars of country music, whose body of work offers a voluminous supply of songs ideally suited for five string adaptation.

It’s also perhaps their most heartbreaking.

I must admit I have to deliberately ignore the lyrics when performing this one, else I turn into a floundering, blubbering mess of a musician (especially when singing it with Jules and her goose-bump-inducing harmony lines…).

Nonetheless, I love this song.

In this performance, I’m actually tuned to a#D#A#D#F tuning, which is simply “Double C” (gCGCD) brought up 3 frets. This puts the resulting song in the key of D#. Since Jules carries the lead vocal here, she got to choose our performance key. Feel free to adjust to suit your own voice.

(RELATED: More on how to choose a key and tuning to suit your voice inside the “Essential Guide to Music Theory” Module, part of the Breakthrough Banjo course.)

You’ll note that there are two vocal lines in the chorus, so it works well as a duet. However, when singing it solo, you can of course just choose one of the lines to sing.

Poor Orphan Child

a#D#A#D#F (“Double C” capo 3) tuning, Brainjo level 3

poor orphan child clawhammer banjo tab part 1

Notes on the Tab

For this song, I tend to play the same thing on the banjo both while backing up the vocal line and when “solo-ing”. As such, the above tab represents what I tend to play for both parts.

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

PRIOR SONG OF THE WEEK EPISODES

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 Breakthrough Banjo

Clawhammer Core Repertoire Series: “GumTree Canoe”

Season 3: Songs for Singing!

EPISODE 4: “Gum Tree Canoe”

Sign up here to get a downloadable PDF of Seasons 1 and 2 of the “Clawhammer Core Repertoire Series!”. You’ll also be notified whenever a new episode comes out, and when the next book is ready.

When it comes to places to mine for great songs to play on the banjo, there are several great sources to mine.

We pulled from one of those sources – the body of work by Stephen Foster – for our last episode.

Today, we’ll pull from another, one of the greatest singing banjoists of all time: John Hartford. He played “Gum Tree Canoe” in his own distinctive fingerstyle, but here we’ll be learning it in the downpicking manner.

And while Hartford crafted his share of originals, this song was first penned in 1847 during the minstrel era (speaking of great sources for banjo songs….). He revitalized it.

Beyond being our first encounter with Hartford, it’ll also be our first time playing and singing in 3:4, or waltz time. Instead of the “1 and 2 and 1 and 2 and” beat structure we’ve been playing so far, this time the beat is “1 2 3, 1 2 3…” But rather than talk about these numbers in the abstract, the easiest way to get the beat into your head is simply to listen.

Step 1: Know Thy Melody

Give the song enough listens so that you can sing or hum it to yourself, or out loud to surrounding life forms.

When you’ve reached that point, proceed onward to….

Step 2: Find The Chords

We’re playing this one out of standard G (gDGBD) tuning, so we’ll be looking for our chord progression in the key of G. Our usual suspects, the I, IV, and V chords will thus be G, C, and D.

See if you can pick them out for yourself by just strumming along with the song, changing chords when a change seems to be in order, and see what you come up with. Then check your answer below:

Step 3: Play A Basic Backup Pattern While Fingering The Chords

So here’s where you need remember that we’re in waltz time. In our previous time signature, we’ve played a repeating “bum ditty” while fingering the relevant chords as our starting point for backup.

In this case, to make everything come together rhythmically, we’ll instead play a “bum ditty ditty pattern in each measure”. Tabulationally, this is represented thusly:

And sounds like this:

Now we’ll just play this pattern while fingering the chord progression we’ve just discovered to create a basic backup for our voice. Here’s what that basic backup looks like in tab:

And it sounds like this:

Step 4: Dress It Up With “Connective Tissue“

One thing I prefer doing on this tune (and on waltzes more generally) is to play full fingered chords whilst playing backup. All those “ditty” strums that are required in waltz time can make things sound a bit muddy, so fingering the chords allows more control over how much sound you put out behind your voice.

The other thing I do here is play a bit of “connective tissue” between the chords (examples in measures….). These are sometimes referred to as “leading tones,” meaning the notes suggest to the listener what chord is coming next.

Using leading tones in this way requires that we play some of our chords “up the neck.” Here’s what my backup from the video looks like in tab:

And, voila, we’ve got ourselves another song to sing!

You can of course add in a banjo solo in between the verses as I’ve done in the video.

More Playing and Singing Material?

You’ll find an ever-expanding library of arrangements for songs and tunes, with lead and vocal backup arrangements, along with video demos for folks of all abilities inside of the Breakthrough Banjo course.

So, if you’re looking for more material for playing and singing, come and check it out! Click here to learn more.

Learn More About Breakthrough Banjo

Go to the Core Repertoire Series Table of Contents

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