If you came here looking for the dueling banjos TAB, I’m sorry to disappoint. I don’t want to offend the music copyright patrol and I know you aren’t going to pay to get me out of jail 🙂 However, what I AM about to offer…
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…
You’ve mastered your four basic banjo roll patterns and are now ready for the next level of banjo rolls? Today, I’ll share with you a few that are a bit more challenging. Some will be much harder and some will fall under your fingers easily….
When learning an instrument, it’s often difficult to know where to begin. Especially now with so much information out there. You have Youtube videos, online courses, banjo TAB libraries with thousands of songs. Let me help you out here and give you some great beginner…
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…
Today, we are going to cover the four basic banjo roll patterns for beginners. I’ll explain what banjo rolls are and how to think of them. What are Banjo Rolls? What are the Essential Rolls? Forward Roll Alternating Thumb Roll Forward-Reverse Roll Tag-roll Banjo Roll…
People are often intimidated by the word Improvising. I think this is sometimes due to the incorrect notion that you must play something complicated. People incorrectly believe that it’s something you make up on the spot, that you’ve never played or practiced before. Improvising ~…
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…
I somehow stumbled upon this Billy Strings live concert footage. They were playing the bluegrass classic “John Hardy.” I really liked the lick Billy Strings uses at the 9:05 mark; therefore, I decided to figure it out and do a lesson break down of the…
Banjo lesson on the key of D minor Common D minor chord Progressions The most common chords in the key of D minor are D minor, G minor, and A major. You can also have an A minor sometimes. However, that is less common in…
Here are some awesome banjo songs that you need to hear. I’ve chosen some that are more off the beaten path by some of my favorite players. A few of these banjo players aren’t that well known, but all of them are great players with…
The 12 bar blues is one of the most common forms in all of music. There are literally thousands of songs written using the the 12 bar blues form. The great thing about the 12 bar blues is once you internalize it, you can follow…
Most modern music is played using chords built on THIRDS. For example, a basic G chord: GABCDEF# G-B-D However, you can get some interesting sounds by changing the intervals used to build the chords. In fact, some more complex music will use a combination of…
If you are thinking about learning banjo or you already own a banjo, here are some of the most popular banjo songs of all-time. The more of these you know, the better off you’ll be when the requests start coming in! You’ll notice that a…