Miss McLeod’s Reel

Did you ever see the devil, Uncle Joe?

Hop high Ladies.

Regardless of what name you choose to refer to it by, this week’s tune is a time honored chestnut if there ever was one.

First appearing in 18th Century Ireland, it has been beloved by fiddlers ever since, likely undergoing countless transformations at the hands of the folk process, replete with the addition of various and asundry turns of phrases and alterations of time signatures.

Most folks outside of the old time tradition know it as “Hop High Ladies”, which references the lyrics now typically sung along with the B part (Hop high ladies, three in a row…).

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to North Carolina to work on a new project for Brainjo Productions. It’s one that I’m really excited about, and in fact is what inspired this tune (and tuning) today. More on this soon.

For now, enjoy this wonderful tune.

Miss McLeod’s Reel

fDGCD tuning, Brainjo level 3-4

Notes on the tab: The tuning here, fDGCD, places the resultant tune in the key of F. To play it in the key of G (which is where you’ll usually find it in jams), just tune or capo up two half steps to gEADE.

The notes in parentheses are “skip notes”, meaning they aren’t sounded by the picking finger (for a full tutorial on these, go here).

“Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” – Orson Welles

So much of the music we love, or any great art for that matter, is born out of constraints. This truism is certainly on full display in the history of traditional Appalachian folk music, where glorious sounds sprang forth time and again from the most modest of circumstances and materials.

I also think it’s on full display with clawhammer style itself.

The continuous pulsation of the picking hand is what gives clawhammer the driving, hyponotic sound we all love; but the necessity of maintaining that persistent up and down movement of the hand also imposes its own constraints and limitations, as does the fact that we’re only allowed a single finger and a thumb for the striking of notes.

Yet, I think this is the very the thing that makes it so compelling. It’s in our solution to these challenges that we’ve created a sound that cannot be replicated in any other way, a sound that would never have made it’s way into the sonic ether had we not been brave (foolish?) enough to try to make music in the face of these obstacles.

Fiddle tunes, where it’s common for melody notes to be crammed into all the available spaces, certainly force us to confront these limitations head on. Sure, for the fiddler, getting all those notes is relatively trivial, given the mechanics of a playing a bowed instrument.

But for us banjoists attempting to present fiddle tunes in the clawhammer style, we have to get a bit creative if we want to include all those melodical embellishments, especially those that fall on the offbeats.

So decisions must be made. Decisions about what notes to leave, and what notes to throw out so as to not sacrifice rhythm at the altar of melody.

With some tunes, like “Little Billie Wilson”, the gods of downpicking smile upon us. Pretty much all the notes in this melody sit quite nicely in standard A tuning, making it impossible to resist the temptation to get em all in.

It’s a peppy, sweet little tune that doubles as both a great solo clawhammer piece and a workout for your fretting fingers. Enjoy!

Little Billie Wilson

aEAC#E tuning, Brainjo level 3

For more information on how to read the tablature, check out the complete guide to reading banjo tabs.

I think it goes without saying that I love clawhammer banjo.

But I happen to be a huge fan of fingerstyle banjo, too. Truth be told, I love just about every sound that can come out of a banjo. There’s seemingly no end to the number of ways you can make great sounds on the 5-string.

In fact, part of the charm of our beloved instrument is just how many idiosyncratic ways of playing it that folks have dreamed up over the years.

When it comes to fingerpicking, one of my all-time favorite pieces has to be “Coal Creek March. ” The iconic version of this tune was first performed by Pete Steele, and then further popularized by Pete Seeger. To me, it’s part of a long line of flowing and hypnotic old time fingerpicked numbers that I could listen to and play all day. And I love to play this one fingerstyle myself.

However, there’s no reason the up-pickers should get all the fun! And this being the clawhammer tune of the week series, I decided I’d present this beautiful melody in downpicking style. Not just because it can be done, but because it sounds great when you do!

The tuning here is one you may not be familiar with, f#DF#AD. In other words, you’re tuned to an open D chord. It’s a great sounding tuning for the banjo, and fun to play around with.

It also lends itself to an economy of fretting hand work, given that you can make fully formed chords up and down the neck in the bar position.

The arrangement I have here, besides being rendered in clawhammer style, is also an amalgamation of various versions of this tune I’ve heard over the years, including Pete’s (Steele, that is) original, of course (for more on the history behind this tune, go here).

Coal Creek March

Brainjo level 3-4, f#DF#AD tuning

If you need any help decoding the tab, check out this “soup-to-nuts” guide to reading banjo tab.

This week’s tune, while not technically a minstrel number, is of similar historical pedigree. Durang’s Hornpipe was first composed in the 18th century by Mr. Hoffmaster, a German violin teacher, for the famous hornpipe dancer John Durang.

What’s a hornpipe dance? Good question. Though we’ll never know the moves Mr. Durang became famous for, I imagine it looked something like this.

Fast forward 200+ years, and the tune is still going strong. That’s because it’s awesome.

I’ve tabbed out both my main and optional “up the neck” variation (for the A part) below. The up the neck variation is a little trickier, hence the higher Brainjo level rating.

Durang’s Hornpipe

aDADE tuning, Brainjo level 3

A part “up the neck” variation

Brainjo level 4

Before there was Page, Hendrix, and Clapton.

Before there was Elvis, or the Beatles.

Long before any of these icons of music riffed their way into our collective consciousness, there were the minstrel banjoists.

With names like Emmett, Briggs, and Buckley, the minstrel banjo players were the rock stars of the 19th century. They were the ones touring internationally, playing to packed houses, and burning up the fingerboard to the delight of adoring fans (click here for an excellent history of the minstrel era).

Times have changed, of course.

But the influence of these early 5-string stars still holds sway today, especially amongst fans of downstroke style banjo. Though the history of the minstrel show era is complicated, one of the bright spots of its legacy is the wonderful body of music it left us with. Like Appalachian old-time, it was the synergistic amalgamation of a of range diverse musical influences, and a uniquely American art form.

A body of music that, if you’ve learned the basic clawhammer technique, is accessible to you (with a bit of time in the woodshed, of course).

So, for this installment of the tune of the week, I’m introducing our first minstrel banjo tune in the form of Frank Converse’s “Callowhill Jig.” It’s a lilting, infectious little melody.

If you’ve never dabbled into minstrel tunes before, you’ll find that playing them will feel simultaneously familiar and strange. This is still downstroke style banjo. The nail of your index or middle finger and the flesh of the thumb are still your string-striking implements. The fretting hand also gets plenty of action, and you’ll find alternate string pull-offs commonly employed to generate melody notes.

But gone is the bum ditty backbone you’re accustomed to. The rhythms here are bit different, and the melodies a little more ornate. You’ll find ample use of triplets, some of them (as in the 5th measure of this tune) generated by dragging your nail across multiple strings – the Galax lick, slow motion style. You’ll also find the thumb emerging often from the shadows of rhythmic support to play melody notes on the 5th string, a variation that may take a bit of getting used to.

I think these tunes are loads of fun, and the new techniques you pick up along the way will only expand the range of music you can make with your 5-string. New shades of color in your style palette, so to speak.

These tunes were played on what we now refer to as “minstrel banjos” – fretless, strung with gut, and tuned lower in pitch than the modern steel strung banjos of today. “Standard” tuning for the minstrel banjo repertoire was the equivalent of what we now label as “standard C”, or “drop C”, tuning: gCGBD.

On a minstrel banjo, the pitches were down to either dGDF#A (which is what my gourd is tuned to) or eAEG#B, known as “Briggs” and “Converse” tuning, respectively.

As I said, the rhythms used in minstrel tunes are often a bit different – less squared off than what you’ll find in the typical old-time banjo repertoire. I’ve tried to represent them here in the tab, but you’ll probably find it easiest to listen to the video to get a sense for how it should all come together.

Callowhill Jig

gCGBD tuning, Brainjo level 3