Overall Comments
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This is the review I originally posted in the forum about a year ago.
Building repertoire comes up a lot on banjo forums and for good reason – clawhammer is, for the most part, not about fantastic chops and blowing away the competition, but about having a good time, socializing and playing along with like minded others. Sort of like pre-school for adults.
Having a lot of tunes under your belt not only makes it more likely that you will know the next tune that comes up at a jam, but actually makes it easier to quickly “catch” tunes you don’t know, since many phrases show up in many tunes. There comes a point for most banjo players (other instruments too, but this is a banjo forum) where new tunes just seem to drop into place and while you might be missing a few notes, you have the general shape of the melody and can easily “fake” it almost immediately.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been playing my way through R.D. Lunceford’s two books of banjo tabs and listening to the cds they go with and find they impress me as excellent ways to build up that repertoire. Usually I don’t recommend tab books as I find that many book arrangements are fussy, and designed to be played solo at tempos that simply will not fly in most jams, or they are based around a style that is not completely adaptable to the sort of semi-generic nature of most old time jam groups. Ron’s books don’t fall into either category.
I know the cds were made for entertainment, but other than saying he is a fine player and they are good cds I am more interested in pointing out their value for the banjo player in the stage many call “intermediate”.
The first book “Drop Thumb”, consists of 21 tabs of tunes that are all playable either as solos or in jams. There is not a lot of extraneous material cluttering the page (or the recordings) and while a couple moderately scarce techniques are occasionally used there is nothing too difficult here for anyone who has the basic drop thumb techniques down – the frail, the double thumb, drop thumb, slides, hammers, and pulls – I’ve already forgotten if there is any Galax Lick in the book but if there is, it is not excessive.
This is however, not an instruction book. Except for a page on reading the tabs, there are no lessons whatsoever, so this is not a good start for the beginner. There are several relatively simple familiar tunes like June Apple, to get acquainted with Ron’s tabs and some fairly complex but familiar tunes like Soldier’s Joy to build toward.
I found all the tabs clear and easy to read, which is very important. The arrangements are also pretty close to the way Ron plays the tunes on the cd so you have both the written form and the sound as a guide.
There are also some rare tunes (like Shaving a Dead Man – aka Protect the Innocent) in exotic tunings. A couple of these are beautiful banjo solo tunes that are probably in danger of fading away simply because no one seems to take the time to re-tune for them any more (I could write pages on that subject). Ron plays them beautifully and should inspire at least some people to start turning those buttons.
The second book, “Cotton Blossom” is a little more complicated. Many of the tunes are adaptations of minstrel tunes and, while the playing here is still modern clawhammer, several tunes have occasional bits that will take some work to get them down smooth. As Ron points out however, this is not a book of complicated solo pieces like the ones in the 19th century tutors but modern interpretations using nothing that isn’t found in current techniques. Many of these tunes are standard repertoire for clawhammer players and jam groups, and as in the Drop Thumb book they are presented in clear easy to read tab.
Ron plays the cd for this book on a fretless, but I only found two spots in the tabs where I felt I had to make a change from the written version to adjust for the fact that I was playing a fretted banjo. Listening to a low tuned fre |
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