Clawhammer or frailing is one of the main styles of banjo playing. Used in old-time music and to play fiddle tunes.
We have articles on:
Basic Bum Ditty Pattern
Drop Thumb
Alternate String Pull-offs
and much more to help you on your clawhammer banjo journey!
If you’ve spent a good bit of time with the basic bum ditty clawhammer pattern, it may be time to add the drop thumb motion to your arsenal. Drop thumb allows you to add more melody notes and greater rhythmic variety to your clawhammer playing….
Today I want to cover your basic clawhammer banjo technique. Some people call this the Bum-Ditty technique. This is because if you say this word, it tells you the correct rhythm of the right-hand stroke. In TAB form, it looks as follows: Bum-Ditty has the…
Looking for some clawhammer banjo books? I have you covered. Everything from basic beginner clawhammer to intermediate and advanced clawhammer. From How To Play to masses of fiddle tunes. Banjo Books -Clawhammer Banjo Clawhammer Banjo For The Complete Ignoramus This is a book by well…
We are certainly living in an era of incredible open back banjo builders. Most of these are small shop builders, many are only one-person shops. Unfortunately, what you are about to find out is if you wanted an incredible custom open back banjo, you should…
Definite Guide to the Galax Lick What is the Galax Lick? TAB of Galax Lick Galax Lick Example #1 Galax Lick with Triplet Sugar Hill Galax Lick Example What is the Galax Lick? The Galax Lick is a clawhammer banjo technique commonly found throughout old-time…
One of the most popular tunings for old time banjo is sawmill tuning. This is where you raise the 2nd string up to C instead of B. g D G C D The problem with this is if you want to play chords, all of…
First off, clawhammer banjo is often called by a variety of terms. Here are a few synonyms: Frailing Knocking Down picking Stroke-style (pre-cursor to old time banjo methods) Clawhammer Banjo Technique The fingers travel DOWN into the strings versus UP like in three-finger style. Please…
I recently began transcribing some old-time fiddle tunes for fingerstyle banjo. I happened upon Luther Strong and really liked his versions of these tunes. So I adapted them for banjo (no picks). I’m playing my 1978 Gibson RB-250 in these videos. The darker sound of…