It's done: I've added a 6th (extra bass) string to my Pisgah-esque banjo build "El Hefe" (more on El Hefe here)....and its amazing! I'm still in the "experimentation" phase of learning how to play the thing - for this week, I'll share some pics of the process and throw a "teaser" sound file in at the bottom of the Post. I'll likely do a more in-depth post on the various uses of a 6 string banjo in the future.
Adding the extra tuner: In the past two posts on this topic, I sketched out my plans for adding an extra bass string to El Hefe (here), then described adding extra slots to the nut (here); the only thing remaining from a hardware point of view was to add the extra tuner, for which I enlisted the help of a friend who's garage is slowly being converted to a fully-equipped woodshop (f.y.i., he and I have plans to do a bit more banjo building in the near future...I'll definitely be devoting future posts to some of those adventures come to fruition). The tuner I was adding was a brass tuner I purchased from Balsam Banjo Works (pictured below), which matched the other 4 on "El Hefe."
The brass tuner I got in the mail from Balsam Banjoworks.
As I mentioned in previous posts, I had planned on putting the additional tuner right in the middle of the headstock (not really sure where else to put it on a paddle-head banjo). Patrick Heavner (owner of both Pisgah Banjos and Balsam Banjoworks) told me installation required drilling a 3/8" hole. Not having a drill-press at our disposal, my buddy and I had to come up with a plan for "straight as possible" drilling with a hand drill to get the new tuner installed. In comments to a previous post (here) my buddy Stew mentioned the existence of something called a "doweling jig" which clamps on to a piece of wood and guides your drill bit to make a perfectly straight hole. While I didn't end up a doweling jig, my buddy and I basically made a low-tech alternative using scrap wood. The process went as follows: First we tried to drill a really straight hole in scrap wood using the 3/8" bit we'd be using to install the tuner (this took a few tries); once we got something that appeared straight, we clamped it on to the headstock with the hole centered where the new tuner was going; finally we inserted the bit into the "scrap wood doweling jig" and used the previously-drilled hole to guide our bit straight through the headstock. Believe it or not this worked pretty flawlessly:
Drilling the hole for the new tuner. You can see my homemade "doweling jig" which was used to guide the drill. Note that I had to take all the other tuners off to do this.
Once the new hole was drilled, I installed the new tuner and strung up my "new" 6 string banjo:
After tuner installation. The tuner ended up pretty close to center and works great! If you look closely, you'll notice the center tuner is quite noticeably more shiny then the other ones : )
As I mentioned last week, I decided to just use my existing 5 string no-knot tailpiece and double-up strings on the middle "nub." 6 string tailpieces are available for fairly cheap but for the life of me I can't think of a super-compelling reason to buy one as what I've done seems to work just fine:
Closeup of the tailpiece with the 3rd and 4th strings doubled up on the same "nub."
Once again, this came out like a dream! It's like the banjo was purpose built this way. Here's a couple of final product views for good measure:
The final product: El Hefe has a 6th string....and sounds pretty cool!
I ended up using a 32w 5th (bass) string that I stole from a pack of strings for Irish tenor banjo. I'll admit its a bit light - tuned up to A its tolerable if a bit anemic sound wise; tuned down to G its unacceptably "floppy" and can't even hold decent intonation up to the 4th fret as a result. I'll definitely have to go bigger on the 5th (bass) string quite soon. The guy from Banjohangout who gifted me the 6 string bridge recommends a 40w for the 5th (bass). For the sake of my fingernail, I'd like to end up a hair lighter than that if possible.
But how does it sound?? For today's test file, I decided to play Clyde Davenport's "5 miles from town." I did this because, while I love hearing this tune on fiddle, the banjo part I've had to settle into for it leaves something to be desired on a standard 5 string. Fiddlers play this D tune so that the A part is in the low octave for a fiddle in first position, while the B part is in the higher first position octave. If I want to stay below the 5th fret on a banjo (...which I typically do...) I only have enough notes to play both parts in the same octave on a 5 string banjo. The A and B parts of "5 miles from town" have some similarity, and the tune ends up sounding just a bit monotonous without the musical distance between octaves to further differentiate the parts. However the added bass string on El Hefe finally unlocks the low octave for the A part of this tune!! In fact the very first melody note in the sound file below is an open A (5th/bass) string:
"Five Miles from Town," a pretty nifty Clyde Davenport tune played on my Pisgah-esque banjo
"El Hefe," post the addition of an extra bass string!
Hope you enjoyed following along to this construction adventure! Once again, I'll definitely post some more sound files in the future. Finally - a big thanks once again to the kind 6-string enthusiast who sent me free bridges for this project, and a big thanks to my building-buddy for loaning me shop time and tools : ) As you may have noticed, I'm being a bit cagey with names because I haven't asked their permission to use them; however - due to the kindness of these two people, this whole project only cost me ~$35....way less than I would have paid for a purpose built 6 string.
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Last week (here), I laid out my plans and reasoning for adding a 6th string to El Hefe, the "Pisgah-esque" banjo I built in a workshop last January (more on that here). This past week, I received the remaining necessary materials (i.e. a set of nut files and an extra tuner) in the mail, and today I got about halfway through the conversion process. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish converting El Hefe to a 6 string today, and I've got too much "real work" (...microbiology stuff...) to catch up on tomorrow to finish up this weekend. Therefore, I regret to inform any regular readers that this series of posts has turned into a 3-parter and, sadly, there will be no sound files further down the page for you to chew on : ( However, I did make progress and I'm pretty eager to share, so here we go: New plan for adding slots to the nut: If you read last week's post (again here) you'll remember that, rather than making a new nut for El Hefe's 6 string configuration, I decided to simply add extra slots to the existing nut and live with the resulting mess. My original plan was to use the existing 1st and 4th string slots for the new 1st and 5th (bass) strings and cut 3 additional equidistant slots between the two as follows: Figure 1 - My original plan for where to put the 5 long strings in the 6 string configuration of El Hefe (in red). Note that the "outer slots" would have been left where they were for this plan. ....however, after thinking about this a bit more I decided to alter this plan a bit. While I would still use the old 1st string slot in El Hefe's new 6 string configuration, I decided to cut a new 5th (bass) string slot a bit to the left of the old 4th string slot. Once this was done, I would cut 3 equidistant new slots between the (old) 1st and (new) 5th string slots for the remaining 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings. I chose this path for 3 reasons: 1) I could make the string spacing at the nut just a hair wider. While the old spacing of 1 3/16" was probably going to be wide enough, I figured it couldn't hurt to go a little wider if possible; in the end I was able to add another 1/16" without the 5th (bass) string being in danger of flopping off the edge, so I went for it. 2) I could easily convert the banjo back to a 5 string if I didn't like the results of the 6th string addition. If I widened the existing 4th string slot too much to make room for a fatter 5th (bass) string, I might have problems putting a 21w (my preferred 4th string gauge) in there if I ever choose to shift El Hefe back to a 5 string. While I'm pretty stoked about having a 6 string currently, El Hefe is just a phenomenal 5 string banjo and I could see myself wanting to shift back in the future (though I'm not sure what I'd do with that pesky extra tuner I plan on adding : ) 3) Moving the 5th string over centers the string spacing. This one takes a bit of explaining for those who may not spend much time thinking about banjo construction. Though its to the left side of the nut, the 3rd string is actually the "center" of the banjo neck; see pic below: Figure 2 - "Brasstown Belle," Jeff Johnson's hand built "Pisgah-esque" banjo and a littermate of El Hefe (Pic courtesy of Jeff Johnson). I've marked the path of the 5th string in red; you can see that it goes over the center of the bridge and tail piece; it also marks the center of the neck where it meets the pot. As a result of the left side of the neck being "cut away" above the 5th string, the 3rd string sits towards the left site of the nut. However, the 3rd string is still correctly though of as the "center" of the banjo neck. Hopefully that picture helped illustrate what I was talking about above (there are likely much better explanations at www.banjohangout.org). The logic for my change in plans therefore goes like this: on a 5 string banjo, the 3rd string should be "centered" on the neck. On a 6 string banjo, the neck should similarly be "centered" halfway between the 3rd and 4th strings. However, if you look at my original plan (Figure 1) the original 3rd string slot is not centered halfway between the new 3rd and 4th string slots; rather, its skewed a bit left. By moving the new 5th (bass) string a bit left and leaving the 1st string where it was, I hoped to correct this error. Actually filing the new nut slots: To actually do all of this, I bought what can only be described as the cheapest set of nut files available from Amazon. To be clear, I mean "cheapest" in every sense of the word: The whole set, which includes 14 files of various sizes, only cost me ~$10, while individual files usually cost ~$20 each. So I saved some cash but the files were crazy dull, and it took me several hours to file 4 slots. Furthermore most of the files bent in the process. I only have the "after" pictures, below: Figure 3 - "Mr Power Music Sander Files for guitar nut and bridge saddle" that I bought from Amazon. While the name is definitely amazing, and likely worth the price alone, nearly every file I used bent (see right image) and I'll likely never get another use out of these. I used my old strings slots as guides for how thick of a file to use and how far to file down into the nut. Despite the bent files, I'm actually pretty pleased with the results in the end. Below is a closeup pic of the nut with the new and old slots visible: Figure 4 - The nut after my hours of labor with "Mr. Power Music Sander Files...." As you can see, the "Old" 3rd string falls halfway between the "new" 3rd and 4th strings; mission accomplished! After getting the nut slots cut, I put a 30w guitar string on the 5th (bass) string slot, tuned it up to pitch (low A), and plunked around a bit....sounded pretty cool!! Final thoughts for now: As I've said, I've yet to drill the hole for the new tuner but I plan on doing that at a friend's house this coming week. I couldn't resist seeing what the final product would look like with a string in every slot, so I doubled up on one of the tuners and one of the tailpiece knobs and took the following pics: Figure 5 - Closeups of the head/bridge and fretboard/nut of El Hefe in its new 6 string configuration. Those aren't the best pictures, but I'll try and take some good ones once the new tuner is up and running; I just can't wait!! Also, I plan on ordering a couple of loop end options for the 6th string - the 30w string I tried seemed okay but its much lighter than what's been recommended (40w) so I'll try a few heavier options as well.
Thats all for now - stay tuned for sound files in the near future! Following up on last weeks post (here), in which I described the addition of a round brass tone ring to my Buckeye, I'm using this week's post to talk about my next bit of banjo tinkering: adding a 6th string to El Hefe, the "Pisgah-esque" banjo that I built in a workshop just over a year ago (post about that process here). This project is still in the planning stages, so today's post will part 1 of a two parter....however I've got the necessary equipment on order so I hope to bring you part 2 quite soon! Motivation: Why add another string to my banjo?...and where would it even go? A couple months back, I got my hands on a Gold Tone 6 string banjo owned by a local Old Time musician and took it through a couple D tunes alongside a fiddler. I'll clarify here that when I describe a 6 string banjo, I'm not talking about a banjo that is tuned like a guitar (commonly known as either a banjitar or guit-jo depending on who you talk with); rather, the instrument I am talking about is basically a 5 string banjo with an extra bass string added between the 4th string and the 5th/drone string (which I guess is best referred to as a 6th string in 6 string configuration). When tuned to the equivalent of double D (aDADE), the added bass string on a 6 string banjo is tuned an octave below the 3rd string (i.e. aADADE) giving the instrument extended range. For various reasons (outlined below), playing this banjo was an amazing experience! A couple week's back I wrote a pair of blog posts about playing in the low octave (here and here) with the second post focusing on techniques for filling space when you run out of range in the bass register; with a 6 string banjo, this particular annoyance happens less often : ) Playing the Gold Tone that night, I was instantly able to play the whole low octave B part of "Soldier's Joy" (which I focused on in the aforementioned low octave post, again here) along with low octave arrangements for several other tunes. On a related note, there are tunes for which the banjo lacks the range to even play the standard octave melody (i.e. an octave below the standard fiddle part) and the added bass string fixed this issue for a couple tunes as well. I'll avoid getting too "into the weeds" about this until I've got a 6 string in hand to give some audio files.... On top of how musically-useful the extra bass string on the 6 string was, I was also amazed at how quickly I figured out how to use it! Perhaps due to the tuning symmetry across the banjo, everything felt so instinctive; the low notes I needed just fell right under my fingers on the 5th/bass string. I've yet to try a 6 string banjo in A (aAEAC#E), A modal (aAEADE), Old G (gGDGDE), or Open C (gGCGCE) equivalents, but I can already see the possibilities! I definitely wanted one in my collection.....and soon! Why convert El Hefe? While I could simply buy a purpose-built 6 string banjo (Gold Tone has discontinued their model but you can still find them used....), I've got several reasons for converting El Hefe instead. First off, with a 3.5" deep 12" pot capped with a white ladye tone ring, El Hefe puts out some massive bass. I really think that the low notes of an added bass string will really boom out of that setup. Secondly, since I built El Hefe, I've got no qualms about taking a drill/saw etc. to it (you may remember that I have a "no saws etc." rule for my Buckeye); I am also comfortable saying that I've got the skills/experience necessary to make the necessary mods, which I'll outline later. Finally, I've struggled to figure out separate roles for my two irreplaceable banjos, both of which have 12" deep-pot construction. From this perspective, turning El Hefe into a 6 string is a much better option - buying another banjo would only make the problem worse! I don't doubt that I'll often want the simplicity of a 5 string, so the Buckeye is definitely in no danger of collecting dust either. After all that....how am I going to do this?? Believe it or not, I don't think it will actually be that hard or expensive! The biggest things I've got to do are as follows: 1) add another tuner to the headstock; 2) Get a 6 string bridge; 3) reconfigure/add slots to the nut; 4) Get a 6 string tailpiece. I'll go through the details of each of these steps below: 1) Add another tuner to the Headstock To add another "long string" to my banjo, I'll obviously need to add another tuner to the headstock. Since I built this banjo at a workshop with the Pisgah guys, we used Balsam banjo works hardware (Balsam banjo works is Pisgah's sister company; www.balsambanjoworks.com). I am able to buy a single matching tuner from those guys for ~$20....and its in the mail : ) As for where to put this thing: most of the 6 string banjos I've seen have the extra tuner right in the center, which is likely what I'll do as well: El Hefe's current headstock with indications for where the new tuner will go. The first 4 tuners were installed with a drill press to allow for drilling straight holes. I'm still in search of one I can "borrow" in the area, and I may have to buy an appropriate drill bit as well. If I can't find a drill press, I suppose I could try going free-hand with my hand drill. If this sounds sketchy, keep in mind that this is actually the way we drilled the hole in the base of the neck to attach the dowel stick as well. Theres a chance that I may simply take the banjo to Elderly and have the repair department to install the new tuner as well. 2) Get a 6 string bridge Believe it or not this part is already done! I contacted a guy on Banjohangout asking for some dimensions of his Buckeye (!!) 6 string (banjo 166, which you can see on Greg's site here) - specifically I was asking about string spacing at the nut and bridge. He generously offered to send me a spare 6 string Buckeye bridge for my "project" and wouldnt take a dime for it! Its always nice to come across generosity out in the world and I've noticed theres a lot of it in the Old Time community : ) I've placed the bridge on El Hefe in the picture below (I just diverted the current strings to fill slots 1,2,3,5 and 6 on the bridge): El Hefe with a snazzy new 6 string Buckeye bridge in place; the bridge was generously donated by a fellow 6 string enthusiast from Banjohangout! The bridge is centered to the best of my ability and all the strings still sit comfortably over the neck! I've got pics below of where the strings lie above the 5th and 12th frets: Pictures of where the strings lie above the 5th fret (left) and 12th fret (right) with the 6 string bridge placed on El Hefe. Note that the 4th string position is not filled on the bridge, which explains the strange string spacing in both photos. The most important thing to note above is that neither the 1st or 5th (future 6th) strings fall off the edge of the neck; Though the 1st string appears pretty close to the edge at the 12th fret I can actually fret it all the way up the neck without losing it off the side (and I rarely venture above the 7th fret anyhow...). If this wasn't the case, I'd likely have to get a bridge with thinner spacing, which might be a bit uncomfortable from a playability standpoint. The width of El Hefe's neck is one of the big reasons that I thought this project might work to begin with. 3) Reconfigure/add slots to the nut: In the end I'll need a nut with 5 slots instead of the current 4. I thought about ditching the current nut and making an entirely new one, but it seemed easy enough to simply carve new slots alongside the existing ones, saving both time and money. I really don't care that there will be "extra" slots that reveal El Hefe's 5 string past : ) Here's the nut as it currently looks: El Hefe's current nut with 4 slots for the 4 "long" strings of a 5 string banjo. The only question is where to cut the new slots. My plan is to use the current 1st and 4th string slots for the future 1st and 5th strings and cut 3 additional equidistant slots in between. I was initially worried that the end product would be a bit "crowded" but the kind soul that sent me the bridge told me that the distance between the 1st and 5th strings on his instruments is 1& 3/16", which is exactly where the 1st and 4th strings land on El Hefe currently. This is actually wider than the spacing on my electric guitar, which I can play comfortably, so I figured I wouldn't mess with success. The new strings will end up arranged as follows: Diagram of where the 5 "long" strings in the 6 string configuration of El Hefe will end up sitting (in red). Note that I'll leave the "outer slots" where they are and cut new slots for the middle three strings. I've got a $10 set of nut files in the mail; these were designed for guitar work and look quite cheap, but I hope that they'll work at least long enough to cut these new slots : )
4) Get a 6 string tailpiece I know that these are available (obviously they're used on banjitars) but I may see if I can get away with doubling-up on the center loop of my 5 string tailpiece for now. I just like the current brass tailpiece and this would also save me a bit of money : ) Final thoughts Once again, all of the necessary tools are on order, and I really hope to get this done quite soon! The biggest pain will be drilling the hole for the new tuner since I'll likely have to remove the other tuners to do this right. My aforementioned bridge-donor buddy tells me he uses strings of the following gauges for his 6 strings: (10.5, 12, 15, 26, 40, 10). For the most part, I use slightly lighter strings on my banjos (5 string configuration: 9.5, 11, 15, 21, 10) so I'll likely pick something a bit lighter for the new 5th string (maybe in the 32-36 range?) when I get things set. With the new tuner, the new bass string, the new nut files, the new drill bit, and a free bridge (thanks again!)....I should be able to do this whole thing for under $40! Can't wait to get this done and share some pics/audio of the results - stay tuned!
I've always been a bit of a tinkerer when it comes to my banjos and since my first banjo building experience last year (here), I've gotten even bolder in that department. However, when tinkering with my Buckeye, I have a hard and fast rule...no saws or drills touch the banjo - anything reversible I can do without these tools is fair game : ). Believe it or not, that still leaves me a lot of options when it comes to tweaking both tone and playability. For instance, you can really change the sound of a banjo by trying out different string gauges, bridges, tailpieces, head types, and head tension (more on that here); I've experimented with all of these things on the Buckeye. A couple weeks back I had a crazy idea: what if I added a second tone ring? Well, I've done it.......and I can't wait to show off the results!
If you've read my previous post on my Buckeye (here), you may remember that it has already gone through a couple different phases in the tone ring department; the banjo originally came with a rosewood tone ring (we'll call this "Phase 1"), which was later replaced with a rolled brass tone hoop ("Phase 2"). I've drawn cross-sections of Phase 1 and Phase 2 below:
Figure 1 - Buckeye cross-section with rosewood tone ring (a.k.a. "Phase 1" - left) and with Rolled Brass tone ring (a.k.a. "Phase 2" - right). Unfortunately all of the rosewood had to be removed to make room for the rolled brass ring.
As an aside - I typically use the phrase "tone ring" to describe a piece of metal on top of the banjo rim; if the head is resting on metal, I'd say the banjo has a tone ring; if its resting on wood, I'd normally say that it doesn't. However, gluing a piece of extremely dense wood (e.g. ebony, rosewood, or persimmon) to the top of the rim certainly is different than simply putting the head on an unadorned rim, and I've increasingly seen banjos with this configuration labelled as having "hardwood" tone rings (note: some people also call these "woodies"). Using this terminology, "Phase 1" of the buckeye had a "rosewood tone ring." Later, the whole rosewood layer was removed to make room for the "rolled brass tone ring" shown in "Phase 2."
Back to the tinkering: looking at the "Phase 2" picture on the right side of Figure 1, you can see that there is a little shelf of wood next to the rolled brass tone ring upon which I thought a second tone ring could sit without any modification to the rim; once again, no saws necessary : ). I decided that a "round brass" (rather than "rolled brass") tone ring of the right diameter would be just the ticket. As a bit of clarification: the terms "rolled brass" and "round brass" describe slightly different brass tone rings, the cross-sections of which I've shown below.
Figure 2 - Cross-sections of rolled brass and round brass tone rings. Note that these terms are those used by musical instrument parts supplier, Stewart MacDonald, from who I bought both of these tone rings. I have no idea if these terms are universally used by Banjo builders.
As you can see, a "round brass" tone ring is exactly what it sounds like (i.e. it has a round cross section). Round brass tone rings typically sit right on top of a flattened off banjo rim and are held in place with head tension (however, Jason Romero cuts a slot for round rod tone rings in the "Belle Rose" configuration of his banjos and other builders may do this as well). "Rolled brass" tone rings, which are flat on the bottom and rounded off on top, are inset into the rim by cutting a slot towards the outside edge (e.g. "Phase 2" in Figure 1). My goal was to find a rolled brass ring of just the right diameter to accomplish what's shown in Figure 3 (below):
Figure 3 - Hypothetical (okay, not anymore) cross-section of "Phase 3" for the tone ring configuration of my Buckeye, accomplished by adding a Round Brass ring, which is held in place by head tension without any modification to the rim as it existed in "Phase 2."
My goal here was to have the round brass ring stick out just a little bit above the rolled brass ring so that the head actually rests on top of it (I tried to illustrate this in Figure 3). This is the same kind of principle behind the "archtop" tone ring design the bluegrass guys use (note: I think legendary Old Time banjo builder Kyle Creed actually made a few archtops as well). Once again, finding the right diameter round brass ring was key; if the diameter was too small, the head wouldn't actually touch the new tone ring (i.e. no "archtop" effect); if the ring was too big, it may not rest on the shelf on the rim as I'd hoped. Furthermore, I realized that the added height would raise the head slightly and I didn't want to go overboard on this for fear that I wouldn't have a bridge low enough to compensate.
Also, rather than buying straight-stock brass at a hardware store and bending my own tone ring by hand (...which I would likely do a poor job of...), or buying a ring roller, I decided to get a pre-bent purpose-built tone ring from a supplier. As mentioned above, I ended up buying a round brass tone ring from Stewart-Macdonald (www.stewmac.com); the diameter of the brass rod is listed as 0.275", which was perfect for my needs. The tone-ring came as an un-broken loop with a 12" diameter, and I used a hacksaw to take out just enough material for it to tightly fit inside the original rolled brass ring. To be sure, this ended up as a really tight fit: I don't think theres a bit of air between the rolled brass and round brass tone rings. The folks on banjo hangout (www.banjohangout.com) say that there is no need to seal the ends of the tone ring back together before installing, which is a good thing because I had no way to do this; once I got the ring sitting in there, I put the head back on and got back to pickin'! I took some pics of the final product, which I've included below:
Pic 1 - closeup of the front of my Buckeye, with the rolled brass tone ring (installed by Greg) and the round brass tone ring (installed by me) labelled; you should be able to make them both out beneath the translucent Renaissance head.
Pic 2 - A picture of the underside of the banjo in which you can just make out
the rolled brass tone ring protruding out from its "shelf."
Pic 3 - Another "underside of the banjo" pic where you can clearly see
the unjoined ends of the newly-added rolled brass tone ring.
Well, you've seen the results of the tone ring addition, but how does it sound? In short, by reducing the vibrating area of the head and adding a bit more mass to the pot, I've sacrificed a little bit of "prettiness" of the banjo played solo, for a bit more "cut" when the banjo is played with other instruments. Though the low end of the Buckeye used to fill the room when played alone or with a fiddle, these "round" notes were kind of lost amongst fiddles and guitars; with the addition of the round brass tone ring, I can definitely hear the 4th string in the local jam (tried it out last week) and actually feel those notes rumbling my chest to boot! Overall a bit less delicate and a bit more aggressive.
I've got the head dialed in to 88 on my drum dial and I thought it would be fun to compare the current sound with the "88 drum dial" sound file of me playing "Spotted Pony" from my head tension post (again, here); note that the Buckeye was in the "Phase 2" configuration of tone rings when I recorded the first file.
Example 1 - Me playing "Spotted Pony" on the Buckeye in "Phase 2" of tone ring configurations.
Example 2 - Me playing "Spotted Pony" on the Buckeye in "Phase 3" of tone ring configurations.
I'll admit that this is not likely a fair comparison because I recorded the two files in different rooms and I have no idea what the settings on my Mic were the first time. However, we can pretend like any sound differences apparent between the two files are due to the tone rings : )
As an ending to this post, I'd like to say two things: 1) I owe a debt to the brave souls who added round brass tone rings to their Deering Goodtimes and posted their methods on banjo hangout; without those examples I never would have gotten the idea for this project, nor would I have been brave enough to go through with it! 2) For the record, I am very, very, very, happy with Greg Galbreath's work (for those who don't know, Greg is the mastermind behind Buckeye Banjos). Adding the tone ring is in no way critical of how he built the banjo to begin with - its just a bit of reversible-tinkering I did in my spare time. I've loved every "phase" of the banjo so far for different reasons - recently I wanted a bit more "cut"...but its entirely possible that I'll remove the "round brass" tone ring in the future to go back to where Greg last left off. If you'd like a custom banjo like mine, I would not hesitate to recommend getting a Buckeye! Thanks for reading!
In last week's post (here) I gave some tips on playing fiddle tunes in the low octave on banjo. For that post I purposefully picked a section of a tune (the A part of "Barlow Knife") for which the low octave falls entirely within the banjo's range. However, the banjo doesn't have the range to play full low octave parts of most tunes in standard tunings; this week I'll give some tips for playing the low octave on tunes like this.
My tune of choice for this exercise is "Soldier's Joy," which is probably one of the first tunes most clawhammer players learn. While many people groan when "Soldier's Joy" is called at a jam, I still greet this one with excitement because I just love playing my low octave B part; its this part of the tune that I'll focus on today. Lets get started by hearing a simple fiddle (OK...mando) version of the B part:
Example 1 - Me playing the B part of "Soldier's Joy" on my still-new-to-me Bacon mando (here).
I'm guessing that sounds pretty familiar to most anyone reading this. You may notice that many fiddlers take a few more "melodic liberties" with their versions; I've purposefully kept my version here a bit closer to the streamlined consensus version I hear out of clawhammer players. Speaking of which, let's check out a banjo tab for the standard "high octave" part:
Figure 1 - A standard "high octave" B part for "Soldier's Joy" on clawhammer banjo.
The tab in Figure 1, along with every other tab below, is meant to be played in double D tuning (aDADE), which is the tuning clawhammer players tend to use for most D tunes. I also suggest using the following left hand position (click here if you don't know what I'm talking about) for playing Figure 1, and every other tab below as well:
Hand Position for Figures 1-5: 2nd fret - index finger 3rd fret - middle finger 4th fret - ring finger 5th fret - pinky finger Finally, to avoid harmonic clutter, I've replaced brushes with ghost notes (if you're not familiar with ghost notes, I've got an explanation about halfway down this post). So let's hear what Figure 1 sounds like (once again, played alongside a mando for context):
Example 2 - Me playing the tab shown in Figure 1 on my Buckeye in aDADE tuning.
(Mando from Example 1 included as well)
Not too bad...but let's make things a bit more interesting by trying to find a low banjo part to contrast the mando. As I hinted at above, if you stick to double D tuning and try to find the melody in the low octave you'll end up out of range for a few notes. Here's a "low octave" tab of the B part for "Soldier's Joy;" you'll notice that four notes are marked "too low" and omitted:
Figure 2 - A "low octave" B part for "Soldier's Joy" on clawhammer banjo with 4 notes that fall outside the range of the banjo in aDADE tuning omitted (these notes are marked "too low").
So, the good news is, we can play most of the B part to "Soldier's Joy" in the low octave. But how do we deal with the notes that we can't play? I've got 3 approaches that I'll outline below
Approach 1 - jump to the high octave That's right, when I run out of notes in the low octave, I frequently just jump up to get them in the high octave. When you're the only solo instrument, this approach can sound a little strange, but when you're playing with a fiddler it really doesn't stick out that much. While you could jump to the high octave for single out of range notes, I think the "aesthetics" of this work a little better if you jump up an octave for a whole melodic phrase instead. If you look back at Figure 2, you'll notice that I've drawn dotted lines around 2 phrases that go out of range (note - apparently I favored roman numerals when labelling phrases...not sure where that came from). In the following tab, I'll replace phrases I and II with their "high octave" counterparts from Figure 1.
Figure 3 - A "low octave" B part for "Soldier's Joy" on clawhammer banjo with two phrases replaced with "high octave" playing.
Here's a sound clip of Figure 3 played alongside the mando:
Example 3 - Me playing the tab shown in Figure 3 on my Buckeye in aDADE tuning.
(Mando from Example 1 included as well)
Approach 2 - "Fill in the blanks" with chords
Probably no need to over-explain this one : ) In the following tab, I replaced phrases I and II (as labelled in Figure 2) with simple "bum ditty's." In this case, both phrases happened to occur over A chords:
Figure 4 - A "low octave" B part for "Soldier's Joy" on clawhammer banjo with two phrases replaced with chords. Note - these chords force you to break left hand position; I finger them using my index finger on the 2nd fret of the 4th string and my middle finger on the 2nd fret of the 2nd string.
Let's hear this one too:
Example 4 - Me playing the tab shown in Figure 4 on my Buckeye in aDADE tuning.
(Mando from Example 1 included as well)
Approach 3 - Replace the out of range phrase with something else in the low octave
This one's a bit of a grab bag. The idea is to play a melodic phrase in the low octave that rhythmically-mirrors what's going on in the fiddle's melody without clashing. As an example: if you look at the "out of range" phrases in Figure 2 that we're trying to replace, you'll notice that phrase I is five uninterrupted notes in succession (i.e. no rests in between notes), while phrase II is three uninterrupted notes in succession. In the following tab, I've replaced these phrases with five-note and three-note phrases in the low octave that differ from the fiddle's melody, but don't sound too bad alongside it:
Figure 5 - A "low octave" B part for "Soldier's Joy" on clawhammer banjo with two phrases replaced with....something else in the low octave : )
Its probably a stretch to call these "harmonies" or "counter melodies"....I just picked them out by ear and they kind of work with what's going on. In fact, I'm not sure I'm too happy with what I chose for phrase I (could clash with chords?), but you get the idea : )
For good measure, lets hear this one too:
Example 5 - Me playing the tab shown in Figure 5 on my Buckeye in aDADE tuning.
(Mando from Example 1 included as well)
Anyways, I don't have a real favorite approach for "filling in the blanks" of an out of range low octave melody; really, I just kind of mix and match these approaches throughout a tune for variety. If you add in potential "high octave" variants for the B part, one need never be bored with "Soldier's Joy" again!
Hope this post inspires you to find "low octave" variants of your favorite fiddle tune....even if you run out of notes : )
If you've spent much time playing with a fiddler, you've probably notice this oft-used trick in fiddle playing: often after 3 or 4 turns through a fiddle tune, they'll jump down to the low strings for a turn or two. To my ears, the bark of the bass notes in this maneuver really kicks a tune into high gear! Today I'm here to give you the tools (and permission!) to steal this move - let's talk "low octave banjo playing."
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, a bit more on motivation for low octave playing: If you've seen my posts on my banjos (here and here), you'll notice they have a couple things in common: both are 3.5" deep 12" pots; these things were designed to pump out bass! However, most tunes don't spend enough time on the 4th string for my taste. So in recent years, I've gravitated towards trying to find familiar melodies on the low strings. This trick is also great for playing with other banjo players - while banjos in unison can clash a bit, two banjos an octave apart really sing! Amazingly, I never really hear other banjo players "go low" on most tunes; so If you find yourself in a jam with other banjos, this territory is likely available for the taking! Let's get started! Playing the Low Octave in "Barlow Knife" For today's post, I've chosen to focus on the 3 part G tune "Barlow Knife." As with just about all of my G tunes, I play this one in Old G tuning (gDGDE) rather than the more commonly-used Open G tuning (gDGBD); reasons behind this decision can be found here. I've included high and low octave recordings of the A part of "Barlow Knife" below. I decided to play them on my new mandolin (here) to spare you from my squeaky fiddling. It should be noted that standard tuning for fiddles and mandolins is identical; you can think of a mandolin as a "fiddle you play with a pick."
Example 1 - the A part of "Barlow Knife" played twice in the high octave on my Bacon Mando.
Example 2 - the A part of "Barlow Knife" played twice in the low octave on my Bacon Mando.
A note on terminology - I'll talk about "high octave" and "low octave" melodies on banjo and mandolin. These terms refer to different octaves of the same melody that can largely be reached below the 5th fret on the respective instruments. While you may be able to find even higher octave melodies by going up the neck on both instruments, this is not something I do much in my playing and I'll ignore it here. For the most part the "high octave" melody on each instrument is the standard range of melody favored by most players; once again, while mandolins/fiddles may jump down to the low octave during a tune for variety, they don't typically start the tune there.
Here's some tab for the high octave A part melody on banjo:
Figure 1 - Tab for the A part of "Barlow Knife" in the high octave on banjo.
To be played in Old G tuning (gDGDE).
A couple notes here. First off, the above tab employs "ghost notes" to remove brushes; there's an explanation of ghost notes about halfway down this post for the unfamiliar. Second, Figure 1 is meant to be played in a single left hand position (click here if you don't know what I'm talking about) which can be described as follows:
Hand Position A (for Figure 1 and Figure 2): index - 2nd fret middle - 3rd fret ring - 4th fret pinky - 5th fret So, lets take a listen to Figure 1 played alongside the mandolin:
Example 3 - the A part of "Barlow Knife" played twice in the high octave on my Bacon Mando accompanied by high octave banjo (the Buckeye in Old G tuning following the tab in Figure 1).
If your ears are sharp, you'll notice the following: "high octave" banjo is already an octave below "high octave" mandolin (and fiddle); this just results from the range of these instruments in standard tunings. Therefore, if you stay in the "high octave" on banjo when a fiddler goes low, you actually get a cool unison effect (demonstrated in Example 4 below):
Example 4 - the A part of "Barlow Knife" played twice in the low octave on my Bacon Mando accompanied by high octave banjo (the Buckeye in Old G tuning following the tab in Figure 1).
That unison sound is pretty crazy with the mandolin....it almost sounds like a single instrument with a really complex, and perhaps a bit abrasive, tone; thanks to the bow, the fiddle provides a bit more contrast with the banjo in this case : ) Anways, I'm here to show you that the banjo too can jump down an octave, so lets get to it! Tab for a low octave A part of "Barlow Knife" is shown in Figure 2:
Figure 2 - Tab for the A part of "Barlow Knife" in the low octave on banjo.
To be played in Old G tuning (gDGDE).
You'll notice that I decided to do the whole run on the 4th string, which required a jump in hand position. The "low octave" melody could be played in hand position A, but it requires some slightly crowded drop thumb, and I'd rather jump up the neck. Hand position B, which starts the phrase, is as follows:
Hand Position B (for Figure 2): index - 4th fret middle - 5th fret ring - 6th fret pinky - 7th fret When might you use a low octave melody like this? Really....anytime you want to. You could try to jump down simultaneously with a fiddler, or you jump down while they stay high for contrast. Remember that the banjo's "low octave" will actually be two octaves down from the fiddle/mandolin's "high octave" playing, and you'll be a single octave down from their "low octave" playing. I've got recordings of both contrasts below:
Example 5 - the A part of "Barlow Knife" played twice in the high octave on my Bacon Mando accompanied by low octave banjo (the Buckeye in Old G tuning following the tab in Figure 1).
Example 6 - the A part of "Barlow Knife" played twice in the low octave on my Bacon Mando accompanied by low octave banjo (the Buckeye in Old G tuning following the tab in Figure 1).
Pretty cool right??
While I encourage you to figure out some "low octave versions" of your favorite fiddle tunes, it should be noted that 5 string banjos in standard tunings (i.e. the tunings I use: gDGDE, aDADE, aEADE, and aEAC#E) quickly run out of range to play in the low octave for most tunes. With "Barlow Knife" you'll notice that I focus on the A part; barring alternate tunings or 6 string banjos (i.e. 5 string banjos with an extra bass string rather than guitar-banjos) you run out of notes to play low octave B or C parts for this tune. Usually, I simply jump back up to the "high octaves" for these parts. However, I have come up with a few techniques for "filling in the blanks" in low octave arrangements when you run out of notes; I'll talk about those in a future post : ) To finish out - I didn't want to leave you hanging with just the A parts of "Barlow Knife" in Old G so I've included a tab of the whole tune (with both "high octave" and "low octave" A parts written out) below. Enjoy:
One final note on this website: I added an index of blogposts to the bottom of my homepage (link in the sidebar) to make finding old posts just a bit easier. Hope you find it helpful - see you next week!
At the bottom of last week's post (here), I mentioned that I'd recently lost my friend Cory to a tragic accident. The day after I found out he was gone, I sat down and wrote a fiddle tune that channels some of my favorite memories of Cory. In remembrance of him, I thought I'd share it here.
A fiddle tune I wrote last week called "Pig Roast with Cory." (solo banjo)
Cory was the bass player for my band down in VA. Several years back the band made the collective decision to turn our profits from gigs into Pig Roasts for all of our friends (i.e. parties we threw at which, you guessed it...we roasted a pig). Rather than writing a mournful tune after hearing he'd passed on, I decided to try to capture those weekends with Cory, which are memories I'll always cherish. I made a lot of decisions while writing the melody that were intended to tie the tune directly to Cory; I'll outline the writing process below so that when you hear (or play) the tune, you can hear him in it.
The first phrase of the A part (which ends ~ 8 sec into the above recording) was rattling around in my head while I was making coffee and thinking about Cory the morning after he passed away. In my mind this phrase is the musical representation of our first effort at roasting a whole pig, which was a bit primitive in comparison to where our pig roasts ended up with Cory's help. Though the sight of a whole cooked pig was quite the spectacle for our friends, it was clear to those involved in the first pig roast that the process could stand some improvement the next go round. Cory, an Engineer, was of course up for the task; soon he took the reins as pit master....which is an impressive title for a Midwesterner at a Southern BBQ! As Pig Roasts continued, Cory's extended family even started making a pilgrimage to join in the fun - the rest of us got to sit back and drank his fantastic home-brew : ) To capture Cory's quest for Pig Roast perfection, the rest of the A part is spent repeating that first phrase with an interesting tweak (a slightly-unexpected D major chord) and a cool tag added on the end....both of which definitely improve the basic theme to my ears. Like many fiddle tunes, "Pig Roast with Cory" has an AABB structure and the B part mirrors the A part with just a few deviations. First, there is a quick succession of 1/8th notes (i.e. "A, G, A, G, A, G, A, G, A, G") that begins the B part (~29 sec into the above recording) and occurs again in the middle (~36 sec). These phrases were intended to represent Cory's natural inclination to tinker (in fact I silently sing "tin-ker, tin-ker, tin-ker, tin-ker tinker" along to these notes)....in this case, Cory was tinkering with the fire. Cory didn't sit still for long during the Pig Roasts (or in general). He would frequently open the door to the pit and use his infrared thermometer (that guy was full of gadgets) to take the temperature of the walls of the roaster then adjust the fire accordingly. Secondly, I decided to end the first phrase in the B part on an E chord (~33 sec into the above recording; I play a "power chord" but I think an E major would work there), which sticks out a bit. Here I was imagining Cory playing bass on this tune with me - I just think he would have enjoyed getting to take a few beats on his lowest note. A couple of times, I talked with Cory about installing a C extension on his bass which would have allowed him to go even lower (and would have saved him a bit of right-hand effort on C tunes); given a couple more years, I have to guess that he would have built his own from parts he found sitting beside a dumpster : ) As I said last week, to see Cory at a pig roast was to see a guy in his element. I'd encourage anyone reading to pick out "Pig Roast with Cory," pass the tune around to your friends, and think of Cory while you play it.
This week's post is the 3rd installment of a series of blogposts on playing Waltzes on Clawhammer banjo. In the 1st post (here), I talked about "straight rhythm" waltzes. In the 2nd post (here), I talked about the more-common-to-Old-Time "swing rhythm" waltzes, in which the beats are subdivided into groups of three rather than two. In both of those posts, I leaned pretty heavily on the Christmas tune "The First Noel" as an acessible example of a Waltz which could be played either way (i.e. either with "straight" or "swing" rhythm). If you haven't read these posts yet, I'd encourage you to go back and glance through them first to give this wee's post some context.
In this week's post, I'm doing a 3rd installment on playing waltzes on clawhammer banjo, in which I'll talk a bit about "breaking right hand stride" (post on right hand stride here) in waltz playing. As an example tune, I'll veer away from the holidays and back towards a relatively recent addition to the Old Time canon, "Swannanoah Waltz," which was written by the fiddler Rayna Gellert, and which I learned for a recent squaredance (here). For those unfamiliar with Rayna Gellert's playing, she is (in my opinion) the unquestioned master of putting "groove" into Old Time fiddling... I guess I'll start by providing a tab of "Swannanoah Waltz," give a bit of an overview on my approach to playing it, then spend some time picking apart a particularly nasty section that shows up in the B part:
Note on the above tab - if you look closely at the B part you'll see evidence of me digitally correcting a mistake (...poorly...) at the end of the second line. Sadly, trying to get ther resulting corrected file down to a reasonable size prior to uploading it turned out to be so taxing on my computer skills that if I make a mistake in the future, I'll likely just rewrite and rescan a new tab : )
Overview of playing "Swannanoah Waltz": First, this is a D major tune and, as indicated on the tab, I play it in double D tuning (aDADE)....no surprises there. It is also a swing rhythm waltz, meaning that notes, such 5th string as thumb pulls, are delayed a bit to give a "swingy" feel. As I explained in last week's post (once again, here) this is accomplished first by subdividing beats into groups of 3 rather than groups of 2, thereby creating a "one, and, and, two, and, and, three, and, and" (rather than a "one, and, two, and, three, and") pattern to each measure; notes are only played on beats or on the second "and" beat; the first "and" beat after each beat is generally left empty. Real quick, lets look at a couple tab examples of "straight rhythm" and "swing rhythm" waltzes to hit home what I'm talking about:
Figure 1 (last weeks Figure 2) - A "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm for straight ryhthm waltz playing.
Figure 2 (last weeks Figure 4) - A "bum-diiiiitty-diiiiitty" rhythm for swing ryhthm waltz playing.
If you're still a bit confused about the difference between Figures 1 and 2, check out the audio examples of "The First Noel" in last week's post (again, here). So, all of that was to say that, because "Swannanoah Waltz" is a swing rhythm waltz, the beats are divided into threes. Becuase I always explicitly indicate beat above each tab I write, you'll see the "1 + + 2 + + 3 + +" rhythmic indications similar to FIgure 2 above the tab for "Swannanoah Waltz" (rather than the "1 + 2 + 3 +" rhythmic indications).
As discussed last week, swing rhythm waltzes may include notes on both "and" beats following a single beat, which can be difficult to negotiate without breaking stride. "Swannanoah waltz" (as I've written it) only includes one instance where both "and" beats are occupied. This occurs in the 7th measure of the A part:
FIgure 3 - The 7th measure of the A part of "Swannanoah Waltz."
(from the tab at the top of the page).
While both "and" beats following beat 3 are filled with notes, we can get them all with a series of pulloffs from a single pluck with the striking finger - no "stride breaking" necessary in this instance . However, I did promise that we'd break stride somewhere in the tune....lets dig in!
Breaking Right Hand Stride in "Swannanoah Waltz" I've covered right hand stride in several posts (here and here) and even re-introduced my rules governing right hand stride in a waltz context (here and here). I guess it behooves me to put them up one more time for reference: ---------------------------- Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride: The striking finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every beat; the thumb never plays notes on the beat. Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride: The striking finger is never used to play notes between beats; these notes should be played with the thumb of the right hand, with a left hand pluck, or by hammer-ons/pull-offs from notes played on preceding beats. Rule 2a) if the note on an "and" beat is on a lower string than the preceding note (or if the preceding beat contains a brush, cluck, or ghost note) this note should be played with the thumb of the right hand, or by plucking the string with the left hand. Rule 2b) if the note on an "and" beat is at a higher fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a hammer on. Rule 2c) if the note on an "and" beat is at a lower fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a pull off. Rule 2d) if the note on an "and" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand. ----------------------------- Though I developed these rules in the context of playing 4/4 tunes, straight rhythm waltz playing can easily be accomplished by following these rules as well; swing rhythm waltzes need not break rules either, as long as only one "and" beat following each beat is occupied with a note. As we've seen in Figure 3, right hand stride can even be maintained in the face of notes on both "and" beats in a swing rhythm waltz with some careful tricks (like two consecutive pulloffs from one pluck with the striking finger). As I've mentioned before (here), there are times when right hand stride must be broken out of necessity. In the tab for "Swannanoah Waltz," I've actually chosen to break stride in the 7th measure of the B part as a stylistic choice. Let's take a look at the offending phrase without any markups to indicate right hand maneuvering:
Figure 4 - A phrase from the B part of "Swannanoah Waltz" without any indications of how to play it.
As written, this phrase would be a bit difficult to play without breaking right hand stride. This is mostly due to the note on the second "and" beat following the first beat of the measure (which I'll refer to as the "1 + +" beat). Since this note occurs on a higher string than the note prodceeding it on beat 1, we could follow rule 2d above and play it with a left hand pluck thereby maintaining right hand stride. Here's what I'm talking about, (with the rest of the phrase filled in "in stride" for good measure):
Figure 5 - Using a left hand pluck to play a phrase from "Swannanoah Waltz" while maintaining right hand stride.
However, left had plucks are much more easily accomplished on open strings; in the case of what's shown in Figure 5, you'd have to simultaneously hold down the 3rd fret with your middle finger (assuming you're using the left hand position indicated in the tab - click here if you dont know what I'm talking about) and pluck the string with the ring or pinky finger of your left hand. These are acrobatics I'd prefer to avoid : ). We could move the two notes on the 1st string over to the 2nd string and get everything with hammer-ons and pull-offs, while maintaining right hand stride:
Figure 6 - Shifting notes onto the 2nd string to maintain right hand stide.
As you can see, the approach shown in Figure 6 allows you to match the fiddle on every note without the inconvenient left hand pluck shown in Figure 5, and because you can cover the 5th fret with your pinky, you dont even have to shift left hand position to get there! So why don't I play it this way? To look at the answer, let's go back to the initial phrase, and point out a couple notes:
Figure 7 - A phrase from "Swannanoah Waltz" with "strong notes" circled.
When you listen to Rayna Gellert play this tune, you'll notice that the notes I've circled above are given just a bit more "umph" than the other notes in the phrase. To my ear, Rayna Gellert's aforementioned "groove" is at least partly ascribable to her emphasis of off beat notes (i.e. syncopation). If we play what's written in Figure 6, the "strong" notes circled above are played as a hammer-on and a pull-off respectively....when played this way, these notes sound weaker than those that proceed them in my hands. In other words, by playing this way, we are in danger of losing the "groove."
So how to fix this? To me, the "strongest" sounding notes made by a clawhammer player are those played with the striking finger (though left hand plucks can be pretty strong as well). Therefore, I choose to break right hand stride and use the striking finger to play the notes circled in FIgure 7 as follows:
Figure 8 - Breaking stride to play a phrase from "Swannanoah Waltz." The notes with asterices above them are meant to be played with the striking finger even though they occur on "and" beats.
Below I explicitly break down whats going on here. I'll just stick to the notes within the offending measure (once again, measure 7 of the B part in the tab at the top of the page) since the "lead in" notes and the notes in the following measure are actually played in stride.
Description of what's going on in Figure 8 (bold lines indicate stride breaking moves): ----------- Beat 1: Striking Finger (Rule 1) Beat 1+: (empty) Beat 1 + +: Striking Finger (violation of Rule 1) Beat 2: Pull off (violation of Rule 1 in that striking finger should play on beat notes) Beat 2 +: (empty) Beat 2 + +: Striking Finger (violation of Rule 1) Beat 3: drop thumb (violation of Rule 1) Beat 3 +: (empty) Beat 3 + +: Hammer-on As you can see, Figure 8 does involve playing two notes in a row with the striking finger (those on beat 1 and beat 1 + +)...though you do get a bit of a "grace beat" in between them due to the extra "and" beats associated with swing rhythm playing. As a review: two quick consecutive notes can be played with the striking finger in a single motion as long as the second note is on the next higher string up from the first. You simply have to aim your strike of the first string so that you end up resting on the next string, then lift your hand up while continuing forward motion to get the next note as follows:
Figure 9 - A poorly drawn explanation of how to play two notes with the index finger on adjacent strings in quick succession (this originally appeared as Figure 8 in my second post on right hand stride here). For the figure on the left, pretend you're looking down your banjo neck from the nut to the bridge...and that every part of the banjo other than the strings and bridge has disappeared for some reason. For the figure on the right, the circled numbers represent cross-sections of strings 1-5 and the line at the bottom represents the fingerboard.
I'd encourage you to try both FIgure 6 and Figure 8 and see if you can hear the difference. In my opinion, while you may not naturally accentuate the desired strong notes (i.e. those circled in Figure 7) by playing what's written in Figure 8, breaking stride in the ways indicated by FIgure 8 makes it easier to alter your playing to accentuate those notes.
After all that, I think its time to hear this thing!
Me playing the tab of "Swannanoah Waltz" that you can find at the top of this page on my Buckeye in aDADE tuning. To be perfectly honest, I think I could have played this better (...gets kinda laggy in the B part...) but I had already put away the microphone before noticing....so I left it as is : )
Hope that this third Waltz installment brought it all together for you - feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments!
-------------------------------- A sad note to end this post: This past week we lost Cory, the bass player from my former band, in a tragic accident. Cory was far from just a bandmate and musical partner - I really feel like I've lost a family member. A couple years back (when I was still living in VA and gigging with the band), we decided that we'd start putting any profits from gigs towards hosting pig roasts to which all of our friends were invited. Cory (an Engineer by trade) couldn't help but take the reins in the cooking department and while watching him manage (and iterativly improve upon) the primitive cinder block contraption we built for roasting a whole pig, I knew I was to truly seeing a guy "in his element." Those pig roasts were some of the happiest memories I have of Cory - over time attendance swelled as most of his extended family started making the trek down to VA from the Midwest every time we had one. To all of Cory's family and friends: know that I'm grieving with you from my spot in Michigan.
A couple weeks back I wrote a blogpost about playing waltzes on clawhammer banjo (here), something that I've noticed a lot of players shy away from at jams. I've got a bit more to say on that subject, so coming at you from New Hampshire (where I reside with my in-laws during the holidays), I bring you "Clawhammer waltzes, part 2." The main purpose of this post is to discuss the "swing rhythm" types of waltzes frequently encountered in Old Time Music - its my opinion that these waltzes, rather than their tamer non-swinging counterparts are the ones that truly tongue-tie most clawhammer players. So lets dive in!
As I said in my last post on waltzes (once again, here) I use the term "Waltz" to describe any tune in triple time (i.e. time signatures like 3/4 or 9/8 where beats are corralled into groups of three). In that post I used "the First Noel" as an example of a seasonally-appropriate waltz that would hopefully be familiar to most people reading. Though Christmas has passed, humor me by listening to that example one more time:
Example 1 - "The First Noel" played with straight rhythm on clawhammer banjo. Note that a tab of this tune is available in my last waltz post (here).
Now listen to a second version of that tune, with a little more "swing" in it and see if you can spot the difference:
Example 2 - "The First Noel" played with swing rhythm on clawhammer banjo.
Hear that loping rhythm? Thats what I call "swing rhythm," which is in contrast to the "straight rhythm" you can hear in Example 1. So whats going on here? To get an answer let's first check out a bit of the tab I included last week:
Figure 1 - The opening line of "the First Noel" played on clawhammer banjo. The above tab is meant to be played in double D tuning (aDADE).
You could refer to the tab shown in Figure 1 to play either version of the tune (i.e. Example 1 or 2), and indeed sheet music for many waltzes shows them written in straight rhythm, though they may be played with swing rhythm in practice. To extract swing rhythm out of the tab above, just keep the on-beat notes (those with numbers above them in the tab) where they are, but move the "and-beat" notes (those with "+"s above them) back in time a bit. In other words, while the beat is normally counted as follows: "1 and 2 and 3 and," you could get swing rhythm in the tune by counting this way: "1....and 2....and 3....and," with the ellipses indicating slight pauses. Most players can fall right into this rhythm with just a bit of practice - for fun, try swinging the one of the basic waltz rhythms I introduced in my last waltz post (again, here):
Figure 2 - The "Bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm I introduced as a basic waltz rhythm. This example is written in "straight rhythm" but can be played in "swing rhythm" by simply delaying the thumb pulls a bit.
But, this approach is a wishy-washy: how would one explicityl indicate swing rhythm in tab? To figure this out, we need to figure out how long the "pauses" in the "one.....and two....and three....and" rhythm we discussed above are. It turns out these pauses are actually just long enough to fit an extra note into. To illustrate what I'm talking about listen to this (admittedly silly) example of "the First Noel" where I've inserted an extra chromatic note into a couple of phrases to fill some space in the tune:
Example 3 - The opening phrase of "the First Noel" with a couple of chromatic notes added in.
If you were to cut the middle note out of the triplet slurs in Example 3, you'd end up with the same type of rhythm you heard in Example 2. It turns out that the best way to write out a swing rhythm waltz in tab form is to subdivide the beats into groups of three rather than groups of two; I've chosen to indicate this in tab by putting two "+" marks after each beat. Here's a swing rhythm version of Figure 1 (which corresponds to what I play in Example 2):
Figure 3 - A swing rhythm version of the opening phrase from "the First Noel" (a swing rhythm version of Figure 1 and an explicit rendering of what's played in Example 2).
And for good measure, here's the "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm from Figure 2 written in swing rhythm:
Figure 4 - A swing rhythm version of the "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm shown in Figure 2.
(maybe call it a bum-diiiiiiity-diiiiiity rhythm? : )
So, rather than counting swing rhythm waltzes as "One....and two....and three...and" we can count them as follows: "one and and, two and and, three and and." It's just that the first "and" after the beat is typically left empty while notes may be played on the second "and." To inject a bit of music theory, these types of tunes could be written in a time signature like 9/8, also a triple meter, in order to accomodate "splitting the beats into three" as I've discussed above....but I find the "1 + + 2 + + 3 + +" approach works well for tab.
So, what are the right hand concerns when playing swing rhythm waltzes? To answer that question, let's go back to the rules governing right hand stride (first introduced here) and try to figure out how these swing rhythm waltzes fit in: ---------------------------- Rules governing right hand stride: Rule 1 for maintaining right hand stride: The index finger of the right hand moves towards the strings on every beat; the thumb never plays notes on the beat. Rule 2 for maintaining right hand stride: The index finger is never used to play notes between beats; these notes should be played with the thumb of the right hand, with a left hand pluck, or by hammer-ons/pull-offs from notes played on preceding beats. Rule 2a) if the note on an "and" beat is on a lower string than the preceding note (or if the preceding beat contains a brush, cluck, or ghost note) this note should be played with the thumb of the right hand, or by plucking the string with the left hand. Rule 2b) if the note on an "and" beat is at a higher fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a hammer on. Rule 2c) if the note on an "and" beat is at a lower fret of the same string of the preceding note, this note should be played with a pull off. Rule 2d) if the note on an "and" beat is on a higher string than the preceding note, this note should be played by plucking the string with the left hand. --------------------------- In my last post on waltzes (final time, I promise: here) I mentioned that all of these rules governing right hand stride could easily be applied to walzes as well....however, I was focusing on "straight rhythm" waltzes in that post. Do the rules governing right hand stride hold up to swing rhythm waltz playing? Well, if you're only playing on one of the "and" beats after each beat, as would be the case for the "swing rhythm" playing we've been talking about here, no editing needed - these rules work just fine. However, sometimes swing rhythm waltzes require you to play notes on both "and" beats following a numbered beat. This can present some problems for clawhammer players. Using the same finger/thumb twice in a row would break right hand stride, so we'll avoid discussing those possibilities for now. If you have to play notes on two consecutive "and" beats, there are a couple of ways to do this without breaking stride. First, if all the notes are available on the same string, you can figure out a series of hammer-on's and pull-off's to allow you to play them from a single pluck with the striking finger. This is the approach I took to add the chromatic runs into "the First Noel" in Example 3:
Figure 5 - Adding chromatic runs into "the First Noel" using strings of hammer-ons and pull-offs.
This is the approach I used to play Example 3.
If the notes you want are on different strings and can't be reached by hammer-ons or pull-offs, you can get one of them with a left hand pluck. As an example, we could put some left hand plucks in to add to the "bum-ditty-ditty" rhythm, outlined in Figure 4.
FIgure 6 - Using left hand plucks to get (I guess) a "bum-ditt-a-ty-ditt-a-ty" rhythm. Note that I decided to call them "left hand pulls" in the above example...not sure where that came from but pull=pluck.
Now that I've (hopefully) whetted your apetite for swing rhythm waltzes, I think I'll end this post here for now. As an exercise, I'd suggest running through the tab of "the FIrst Noel" (here) with both straight rhythm (as played in Example 1) and swing rhythm (as played in Example 2) to get used to the differences in feel. Next week I'll talk about rule-breaking in a waltz context and give tab and audio for "Swannanoah Waltz," a swing rhythm waltz in D, which I recently played at a local squaredance (here).
---------------------- Finally, this week (which once again, I've spent in New Hampshire) a friend I met at Clifftop took me to a Boston-area jam at Doyle's pub, where I got to play with some really fantastic musicians! Later in the week, another Clifftop buddy also hosted a fantastic jam at her house - I'm lucky to have camped next to such a friendly group on my first Clifftop excursion! To anyone reading this: Happy New Year : )
Walking into music stores is a financially-dangerous, yet irresistable, pastime for me....which makes my banjo-testing gig (here) at Elderly instruments (here) a bit of a risky endeavor : ). While stores like Elderly (...of which there are exceedingly few....) are definitely my kryptonite, I make time to go into less banjo-centric shops as well since there's always the chance that I'll find something great. The story typcially starts like this: I'm wandering around a new city and I spy an unassuming music shop and think to myself....well I've got a few minutes to browse. In my experience, independent instrument stores (i.e. not Guitar Centers) are mostly of two types: those that cater to school band orchestra students, and those that are jam-packed with imported electric guitars. While I can have fun wasting a few minutes around any pile of instruments, I usually end up back on the street after a quick lap around the showroom.
There's also the elusive 3rd type of independent non-Elderly-caliber type of shop: the type with waaay too many instruments for the space (some of which are hidden in piles of cases) that caters to would-be treasure hunters like myself : ) I've never asked, but I have to imagine, that most of these shops started when the owner's personal instrument collection got out of hand...one look around my apartment makes me think that this fate lies in my future as well. Needless to say, I can spend hours in a shop like this. However, most non-Elderly-caliber shops, regaurdless of type, don't really know what to do when an interesting antique or custom-made acoustic instrument falls into their hands.....but every once in a while I come across one that I'm glad to provide with a fine home : ) To give an example: at a friend's wedding in Minnessota a couple years back I found a music shop that is probably best described as a "band instrument/treasure hunting" hybrid - while taking my customary lap I almost walked right past the banjo I would end up buying that day. The tag said "Bobby Flesher banjo: $399.99." Yup - that Bob Flesher (who's highly ornate banjos typcially run in the $2000-3000 range new)....don't know if he ever actually goes by "Bobby." Though the headstock shape was a design fairly unique to his work, there were no marks identifying the builder on there - if this was a "Bobby Flesher" banjo, it was likely an early model (maybe a prototype?) - it was also pretty plain-Jane in comparison to what he normally produces. I asked the shop owner a bit more about the banjo and he, I kid you not, uttered: "we're not sure what happened to the back of it" (presumably in reference to the "missing" resonator). I talked him down to $300.00 and left Minnesota with quite the souvenier - pics below.
Left - Pic of the "Bobby Flesher" banjo I bought in MN....never actually found out what happened to the back of it : ) Right - Closeup of the headstock; note the shape, which Bob Flesher still uses on many banjos. Pretty nice inlay, but be sure and peruse his site to see how far he's come....
To cap this story off: I showed the above pics to the masses on banjohangout and everyone agreed I'd likely found a Flesher (I tried emailing Bob to confirm this but never got a response). However, I was after a short-scale 12" banjo at the time so I did some bartering: first for a Ramsey, then a Reiter....which I later sold to buy a Pisgah...which I later sold to fund my Buckeye (here). In short, this banjo got me in to the custom banjo market at a time (in Grad school) where I couldn't have afforded it otherwise.
I've had some other spur of the moment instrument purchases in the past few years as well: I bought a cheap tenor banjo for $60 in an antique shop on my honeymoon and I bought an imported octave mando for $250 (in Canadian dollars) in Montreal this summer; you can hear the latter instrument here. However, I only came across my second true "diamond in the rough" find this past week while visiting my wife's family in New Hampshire. I pulled into a shop I've been to a couple times before, which has quickly become a must-drop-in "treasure hunting" favorite of mine: there are piles of funky old guitars, a wall of weird ukulele's, and cases full of possibility on the edges of the floor. In past visits I've found some interesting stuff (mostly in the banjolele department), but I've never felt compelled to pull the trigger and buy anything. However, this all changed when I saw a Bacon oval-hole mandolin hanging on the wall!
Pics of my new find - a 1924(ish) Bacon Mandolin!
Check out the grain of that back wood (which the internet tells me is likely birch).
I didn't have too much interest in mandolin until I heard some really great players at Clifftop, most of who played Gibson oval-holes. Ever since, I've tried out every one of those I've come across and had yet to find that sweet sound in the low register that these players seemed to bring out of their instruments. However, I havent spent a lot of time training myself to coax great tone out of a mandolin, which I assumed may have been part of the problem - but when I pulled that Bacon off the wall and plucked a few notes on the G string....well I kinda had to have it. I knew Bacon as a great turn of the century banjo brand (which is probably why the mandolin caught my eye), but a little online sleuthing showed that they indeed made carved-top mandolins for ~2-3 years in the 1920's. While their higher-end models, which have pretty bizarre body shapes, were probably made in house, the construction of the more conventionally-shaped "Amateur" model (above) may have been farmed out to Gretsch - no slouch of a brand in its own right!
This particular mandolin has had some upgrades: new tuners were installed (perhaps incorrectly as one side works in reverse), a new bridge was added, and the neck was replaned and refretted. These things likely decrease the "collectability" of the instrument....but I have no complaint as it plays like a dream. And the sound....I don't think I have much of an ear for mandolins, but it really sticks out. I made sure to play a couple other mandolins in the store to make sure that the room wasn't just "magically resonant" in some way - no dice....this guy had some gravitas! Perhaps it has something to do with the birch back and sides? This seemingly-peculiar wood choice was also common in the small bodied budget guitars from the 20s and 30s favored by some fingerstyle blues players - those things can have quite the bark! I talked $50 off the price (which was already quite reasonable - I actually feel a tad guilty about this). Knowing that music shops struggle to survive these days, I added $10 back to my final offer to offset the credit card fees associated with my purchase. Enough talking about the mando's sound - let's hear the thing:
Me playing "Sally in the Garden" on my new (yet old) Bacon Mandolin. "Warts and all" recording complete with background noise, excessive pick "scraping," and a melodic fumble to cap off the 2nd B part. Recorded in my In laws' living room using a Yeti microphone, Garage Band, and my own underwhelming mandolin skills : ) Hopefully I'll improve in this department in coming months.
Anyways, the inital stop-by that sparked this purchase was a momentary diversion from a Christmas shopping expidition. I didn't walk in expecting to find a Christmas present for myself but luckily Santa had other plans : ) Speaking of Christmas, I'm posting a day early to give myself time to kick back and enjoy the day with my in laws in New Hampshire. Hope that anyone reading this has a great holiday season as well, whatever you may celebrate! Between Christmas and New Years, I'm getting together with my newfound Clifftop crew (most of whom live in and around Boston) - these guys are fantastic musicians with a deep tune list....hopefully a few easy tunes come up so I can try my new toy out in a jam setting!
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