![]() I've taught retirees, waitresses, grade schoolers and college kids, doctors and lawyers. I teach bluegrass banjo lessons in my home studio right here in Little Rock. On this site you will find banjo instructional videos, tablature for several popular banjo tunes, plus other tools and advice to help the beginner as well as the more experienced picker. I teach 5-string, Scruggs-based bluegrass style banjo. I've played banjo since I was in high school in the mid-70's. Easier action that the No 1.My name is Bill Nesbitt and I play and teach banjo in the central Little Rock area. It also works well for later jazz standards like I Left My Heart In San Francisco, Alison and I Can't Make You Love Me. This instrument was created to play 20's standards like It Had To Be You and On The Alamo. The other area I've enjoyed exploring is the jazz heritage of the tenor banjo. Songs like Louie Louie, Can't Explain, Every Day Is A Winding Road, Going Up The Country and Go Your Own Way suddenly "work". This releases the possibility of playing a lot of songs which were tricky or impossible with strumming or picking. It allows drumming on the head while simultaneously producing quiet chord sounds. The effect is entirely different on a tenor banjo. On the last verse he started striking the guitar strings above the bridge with his fingers, which produced an eerie almost ghostly chord sound. About six months ago I was watching a Youtube video of Richard Thompson playing She Moves Through the Fair. Jimmy Buffett tunes fall close to reggae for a Caribbean sound too. My new challenge is reggae.I Can See Clearly Now and Down Under.you really need some drums for the rocksteady afterbeat though. Straight-up 5 string fingerpick banjo tunes like Reuben's Train and East Carolina Blues are good on the tenor, even without the drone string. Thumb whacking the rim on the metal tone ring produces a sound like a steel drum. I walked away from "Werewolves of London" for a month, tried again, and it clicked just in time for Halloween.ĭrumming on the snare-like head is good accompaniment for a group with lots of string players. At first it's hard to sing melody while playing an Andalusian or other down cadence (such as in "Sultans of Swing" or "Sunny Afternoon") but it gets simpler with practice. ![]() What you're doing when you play open fifth "thumb-bass" this way is vamping. Without that it’s bright, buzzy and loud.Īll this may sound bogus, but listen to St Cyr playing the tenor as a walking bass on King Oliver’s Canal Street Blues. I’m doing this on an Orpheum No 1 with a sock mute under the dowel stick. It’s grunt work that drives the group, and is simple enough for me to do the lead singing. ![]() This is not showy flatpick work, nor is it chopchording. Try this on The Kinks “Tired of Waiting for You” or Setzer’s “Stray Cat Strut” or Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” or Cobain’s “Come as You Are” and see what you get. ![]() Played against guitars/mandolins/fiddles you can do things they can’t. If you tune Irish and finger the bottom two strings with your thumb, the tenor becomes a simple high bass/rhythm instrument for acoustic singaround use. The following helpful tips came from Thomas Quick. And when you do know it inside out, don't just leave it there and say to yourself, ''well at least I know that song now'', you need to keep in touch with songs and play them regularly or you will forget them. It's better to know just one tune off by heart than bits and pieces of a hundred songs. My advise is to find a song you like and stick with it until you learn it off by heart before moving to the next song. It's a trap many musicians starting off fall into. Years ago when I first started to learn songs I'd buy song books, no internet in them years, I'd buy loads of sheet music books and flick from one song to the next never really learning how to play many songs off by heart. That's because a lot of players don't think of playing pop songs on their mandolin or banjo and tend to stick with the same stuff year after year not realising that that musical instrument sitting in the corners is capable of playing millions of songs and tunes in every category of music you can think of, be it pop, country jazz or folk. Most banjo players who arrive at this page are probably surprised to find this kind of music here that's worked out for the mandolin / banjo. If you have any requests then please let me know. I'll continue to add banjo tabs to this section. The very low notes with the comma after them are seldom used on this site as I like to keep s many songs as possible mid range. The banjo chart above says how these notes work. Included in this section also are the letter notes which are very handy for those who play recorder or the flute.
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