Chapter 1

Bluegrass Music and the Banjo

IN THIS CHAPTER

Becoming familiar with Scruggs, melodic, and single-string bluegrass banjo techniques

Discovering the African and early American roots of the banjo

Using online resources to jump-start your progress

Finding online resources, jams, festivals, and music camps in your area

Establishing great practice techniques from the beginning

In 1945, when the 21-year-old North Carolina banjo player Earl Scruggs stepped on stage on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time and began to play, no one could’ve imagined the worldwide musical phenomenon that was being launched at that moment. This was something new, a sound that was both complex and wild, redefining the musical potential of the five-string banjo for all who experienced it.

That banjo sound pulls in more people today than ever before. There are many ways to make music on the five-string banjo, but none has captivated so many musicians or is as versatile as the style that originated with Earl Scruggs. This way of playing is called three-finger, bluegrass, or Scruggs-style banjo, and it’s a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. If it’s bluegrass, it simply has to have a banjo played in this way.

Over the last several decades, banjo players have built upon Earl’s contributions by developing new three-finger techniques (called melodic and single-string banjo) that allow musicians to more easily incorporate jazz, classical, world music, blues, and rock influences into bluegrass banjo style. From bebop to Bach, the kinds of music that can be played using the variety of the three-finger approaches available today are virtually unlimited.

In this chapter, you step back in time to survey the long and fascinating history of the instrument before exploring what’s unique about bluegrass banjo style. In these pages, I introduce you to the basic musical skills that will turn you into a great bluegrass banjo player.

Uncovering Banjo History

By the mid-20th century, the banjo had been in the Western Hemisphere for more than 300 years, arriving from West Africa first in the Caribbean and then by the 1750s in colonial America. By the mid-19th century, the banjo had become one of the most popular instruments in the United States, played by African Americans and Anglo Americans alike.

African banjo roots

Many kinds of banjo-like instruments — ranging in size, number of strings, and playing methods — are played by West African musicians. With the slave trade, thousands of African musicians were forcibly brought to the Western Hemisphere over several hundred years, bringing with them ideas about music making and instruments. What we know about the banjo in the Caribbean and in the United States comes from travelers’ accounts of music making and drawings and paintings of early instruments.

For a classic study of African music in the New World, including early banjo music, check out Dena J. Epstein’s landmark book, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals (University of Illinois Press). If you’d like to play an ancient African song on the banjo, as well as explore several other 19th- and 20th-century playing styles, head straight to my book, Banjo For Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,).

Modern banjos reflect the African influence in two very important ways:

• Banjo heads: The unique sound of the banjo is largely determined by the skin or plastic head that acts as the top vibrating surface of the instrument. (Head to Chapter 2 for more on modern banjo parts.) This method of transmitting sound is found on banjos from all historical periods from both Africa and the United States and remains the primary tone-producing feature of the modern bluegrass banjo.
• High-pitched drone strings: The other defining characteristic of the banjo is the presence of a high-pitched drone string that’s within easy reach of the picking-hand thumb, located next to the banjo’s lowest-pitched string. A drone string provides the continuous note that you hear repeatedly in banjo music of all types. This unusual arrangement of strings has resulted in many of the unique playing techniques used on the banjo both in Africa and in the United States. All banjo players love to hear the ring of that high fifth string, even as this aspect of our playing sometimes mystifies those around us.

Figure 1-1 compares a modern-day West African banjo-like instrument called an ekonting with a modern-day bluegrass banjo. Note that both instruments have skin or plastic heads for the top playing surface. It’s easy to locate the short fifth string on a modern banjo — in this figure, it’s on the left side of the banjo neck, ending at the tuning peg that’s located halfway up the banjo neck. The ekonting has only three strings, with its high-pitched drone string also located on the left side of the neck. The strings on this instrument are made from plastic fishing wire and there are no tuning pegs — you slide the knotted wire up and down the neck to change the pitch of a string!

Now compare the arrangement of banjo strings to the guitar, as shown in Figure 1-2. Whether it’s Earl Scruggs’s driving bluegrass, Pete Seeger’s folk styles, or Béla Fleck’s jazz-influenced original music, it’s just not banjo music without this high-pitched fifth string (which, by the way, is almost always played with the picking-hand thumb).

In Chapter 5, I introduce you to roll patterns, which are the right-hand picking sequences that are the basis of three-finger banjo technique. These roll patterns are designed around the unique arrangement of banjo strings, as is also the case with melodic-style banjo, a way of playing scales on the banjo (see Chapter 11).

19th- and 20th-century American banjo

By the mid-19th century, the banjo was one of the most popular instruments in the United States and England, played by white and black musicians alike. The minstrel banjo style of the 1840s to 1860s reflects continuing African and African-American banjo influences that helped launch the instrument to international fame, accompanied by the publication of the first instructional books and factory-made instruments.

By the 1860s, new ways of playing banjo were adopted from American guitar styles, leading to the virtuosic finger-picked ragtime-influenced music of the classic banjo style of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Much of classic-style banjo music is played using a three-finger picking technique that’s similar to bluegrass playing, but without the fingerpicks that are almost always used for bluegrass banjo. (See Chapter 4 for selecting fingerpicks and getting a comfortable fit on your picking hand.)

Five strings became the standard on the banjo by the 1850s, but frets were not commonplace on the instrument until the 1880s. To add volume and clarity, heads were attached more tightly with additional metal brackets, and tone rings and resonators were introduced by the early-20th century. Figure 1-3 compares a mid-19th-century minstrel banjo to an early-20th-century instrument.

When record company representatives and folklorists began to document the music of the rural South in the 1920s and 1930s, they uncovered a wealth of regional banjo styles. Radio created hillbilly banjo-playing stars, like Uncle Dave Macon and Molly O’Day, and recordings helped to spread influential playing styles all across the United States. This recorded legacy continues to influence banjo players today.

Old-time banjo encompasses a wide range of banjo styles of Southern origin that includes clawhammer (also called frailing), as well as two- and three-finger picking styles. Clawhammer banjo is a very popular way of playing the banjo today, at home in old-time traditions all over the world, as well as used as accompaniment by singer-songwriters such as Sarah Jarosz and Gillian Welch.

The five-string banjo found other ways to national awareness in the mid-20th century. As young people discovered the power of folk songs played on the banjo, Pete Seeger popularized the banjo among urban audiences, playing music on a long-neck banjo. Pete’s style was eclectic, drawing on old-time and popular music influences.

Figure 1-4 compares the kind of banjo typically used to play old-time music (in this case, a handmade banjo by Chuck Lee) with a long-neck Pete Seeger Vega model instrument.

If you’re interested in trying your hand at all the banjo styles mentioned in this section, check out my book, Banjo For Dummies.

Bluegrass Banjo Yesterday and Today

Thousands of new players became attracted to the sound of the banjo after hearing Earl Scruggs play, first with mandolin player Bill Monroe in the 1940s and then with longtime musical partner...