|
Please note this is an archived topic, so it is locked and unable to be replied to. You may, however, start a new topic and refer to this topic with a link: http://www.banjohangout.org/archive/125989
mrphysics55 - Posted - 09/04/2008: 15:36:18
"Yates WL5"
That's just WRONG! 
MrP
Do you need a Fiddle Player to Practice With 24/7? Go To http://www.fiddletunes.net
Edited by - mrphysics55 on 09/04/2008 16:16:46
carteru93 - Posted - 09/04/2008: 15:51:33
Yates WL5 
____________________________________
Blaylock Bear Tracks maple
EggerRidgeBoy - Posted - 09/04/2008: 16:19:15
That short "drone" string has been a feature of the instrument since it (or its ancestors) came over from Africa. It is noted in early descriptions of banjos, can be seen in early drawings and paintings of banjos, and is present on the oldest existing banjos themselves. Most of those first banjos were three or four string instruments, but they had the short "drone" string. As I understand it, the fifth string that was added and standardized at the beginning of the minstrel era was an additional long string.
Of course, that doesn't really answer your question - why the short string in the first place? I think you'd have to go pretty far back into the origins of the instrument in West Africa to answer that.
Below is an image of the oldest known banjo, the Stedman Creole Bania. It was collected in Surinam during the 1770's by the Dutch Capt. John Gabriel Stedman. He also published an account of his naval service in South America and the Caribbean, from which the engraving below is taken - in the upper right hand corner is an illustration of a four-string "bania" similar to the one he took back to Holland.
Those photos are both from http://www.myspace.com/banjoroots, as is the following:
The Early 4-String Gourd Banjo
From the 1690s on through the emergence of the wood-rim 5-string banjo in the early 1840s, the most commonly documented form of the early gourd banjo throughout the New World was an instrument with a 4-string configuration: three long strings of equal length with a short ‘thumb string’ as the top fourth string. While there were a few reports of early gourd banjos with three strings, most period descriptions refer to 4-string instruments.
We find all the aforementioned common design elements present in the only known extant 4-string early banjos: the Stedman Creole Bania (see above photo; for more information, see the Influences section of the left column on this page) and the Schoelcher Banza (see the photo below). The Creole Bania-- considered to be the oldest example of an early banjo and the only one known to have had a body made of calabash, rather than gourd -- was collected in the northeastern South American country Suriname (also formerly known as Dutch Guiana) by Captain John Gabriel Stedman (1744-1797), sometime between 1773 and 1777. French abolitionist writer Victor Schoelcher (1804-1893) acquired the Banza in Haiti during his 1840-41 sojourn through the Caribbean. Likewise, these features are evident in the instrument depicted in the The Old Plantation (anonymous folk painting, South Carolina, c.1777-1794), the oldest and most detailed depiction of an early 4-string gourd banjo in North America (see illustration above).
The short 'thumb string', in particular, is a feature that connects the banjo to its West African heritage. It's also found on West African plucked spike lutes like the Jola ekonting (akonting), the Bujogo ngopata, and the Manjak bunchundo as well as those lutes that are exclusive to specialist griot music artisans, such as the Bamana (Bambara)/ Maninka n'goni, the Wolof xalam, the Fulbe hoddu, and the Soninke gambare, to name but a few.
Edited by - EggerRidgeBoy on 09/04/2008 16:41:30
1four5 - Posted - 09/04/2008: 16:32:52
Last year I built a poor boy version of the Yates WL5, and it works REALLY REALLY REALLY good. For me it makes the question even more of a mystery.
Dean
Jaminbanjo - Posted - 09/04/2008: 16:41:29
We get credit for playing five strings, but we only have to fret four. Pretty good deal.
Austin
Visit my website,
JohnTheWhite - Posted - 09/04/2008: 16:45:07
The design of the 5 string banjo makes it easy to play chords and also easy to play melody. It's a wonderful and versatile design that takes advantage of the human opposable thumb design. It's "made" for finger picking. Finger picking, however, requires a certain manual dexterity that is only obtainable from a reasonable amount of practice. Thus, when the banjo became more and more popular in the 1920s, people wanted to be able to play chords with a flat pick. This caused an almost wholesale abandonment of the 5 string in favor of the same scale in a 4 string (plectrum). This evolved to a shorter scale tenor model that has even easier chord positions up the neck. Now we've come back full circle to the original design, because the instrument no longer needs to be so approachable. Back in the 1920 the banjo was the iPod. Now people look for more and more difficult things to try to play, and the instrument doesn't disappoint.
(
='=<|>
===
This is bluegrass type advice; you can do what you want to with it.
JohnTheWhite - Posted - 09/04/2008: 17:14:16
quote:
Originally posted by 1four5
Last year I built a poor boy version of the Yates WL5, and it works REALLY REALLY REALLY good. For me it makes the question even more of a mystery.
Dean
='=<|>Edited by - JohnTheWhite on 09/04/2008 17:16:56
Jammer - Posted - 09/04/2008: 17:55:34
For years I had friends ask me that question. But, those were pre-internet days, and I did not feel like researching for the answer at the local library. So I got to speculating how it came about. I knew about the banjos from Africa not having 5 strings, so that ment it might of been an American that built the first 5-string banjo with the short drone string. (Actually I recall reading that it was not an American, but nevertheless)....
I cooked up my own dea of what MIGHT of happened. I figured that maybe in the mid 1800's a cowboy got a little too drunk while playing his 4-string banjo and broke the 1st string. I next speculated that this same drunk cowbow took the broken string and invented the drone string by tacking the string on where we now put the 5th string. I just figured the cowboy wanted to keep using the broken string, but it was too short to be strung like the other ones were. (' sounded good to my friends too) -
Turns out my speculation was wrong. Somewhere online there is a long story about the guy they give credit to for inventing the drone string- on a 5-string banjo. As I recall, he wasn't drunk at all.
Terry
EggerRidgeBoy - Posted - 09/04/2008: 19:21:48
quote:
Originally posted by Jammer
Turns out my speculation was wrong. Somewhere online there is a long story about the guy they give credit to for inventing the drone string- on a 5-string banjo. As I recall, he wasn't drunk at all.
Terry
imac50 - Posted - 09/04/2008: 23:58:45
I thought it was because you have 4 long fingers and a short thumb. If all your fingers were the same length it would look odd. Same with the banjo. It's a representation of your hand.
Iain
www.iainmaclachlan.com
zac - Posted - 09/05/2008: 08:00:07
Why. Tim you are right.
After putting my looking glasses on I cannot do anything else but verify that mine has one shorter too.
If there is a wide-spread quality control issue or worse...fraud, we should unite and sue the banjo manufacturing industry. Cutting corners and selling 4,75 as a 5 is outrageous. Maybe we could get them take those defected necks back, no matter how old the instrument is and publicly burn them and then... oh yes...Let's make them to give us full square, no bumps, full five-string necks... no that wont do... six-string necks
for free replacement.
I am angered
Zac
Edited by - zac on 09/05/2008 08:07:36
Thor - Posted - 09/05/2008: 15:15:49
quote:
I still want to see how people react to a 7th fret " 5th"
Newest Posts
