UK Banjo day this Saturday

Premier Sponsors

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue, we will assume that you agree to our privacy policy which includes details of cookie usage.

(hide this)

Posted by 5stringJim on Wednesday, March 1, 2017

1 person likes this

I am honoured to have been asked to give a short workshop at the UK5 group's annual get together in Stalybridge, near Manchester. Have to leave very early morning to make the 11am start time, as it's at least a four-hour drive. My intention is to pinpoint the use of the melody in Scruggs style banjo, with a few choice examples.

The reason I picked this subject is that someone I know has been playing for years, but didn't realise that in Scruggs - style playing not ALL notes are created equal. He was assigning the same volume level to every note he picked...now that's ok in Melodic style.

A recent thread on the BHO has also pointed this out, ie, you can use various rolls to achieve the same tune, as long as they fit the melody line into the proper position. That's how Earl developed the style, picking out the melody notes then surrounding them with appropriate, quieter, support notes.

Just listen to "Blue Ridge Mountain Home" or even "Fireball Mail" as played by Earl, and as sung by Lester and Roy Acuff....he gets all the right notes in there !

On the melodic style side, I also recently had my tab for Snowflake Reel published in the Banjo Newsletter, as Donald Nitchie thought my video was the closest he'd heard to Vic Jordan's classic version. It was in the issue which had a tribute to Vic, who passed away in 2016. Unfortunately, there was an error with the printed version of BNL which had the wrong tab assigned, and wouldn't have matched up with my version, but that was corrected in the next issue.

3 comments on “UK Banjo day this Saturday”