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Noam Pikelny talks about his Deering Hartford.

From snapjackson on 3/15/2012 11:17:31 PM

"I experimented with various tunings/positions, and ultimately decided it would be best to tune down my banjo Hartford-style and play out of open Eb. Bela Fleck owns some of John Hartford's personal banjos, so I built up the confidence to call him and ask if he would loan me one to use on “Fish and Bird”. Bela graciously agreed, and said that he thought John would have wanted to people to still be making music and recording with his banjos. It was an incredible honor to be able to use it. It's one of the most magical instruments I've ever picked up. I've fallen in love so much with that sound, I went and bought a new Deering John Hartford model so I can have that sound full time in my arsenal. I ended up using that banjo on 4 songs on the new Punch Brothers record. "

"A couple months ago I bought a Deering John Hartford Model, and I borrowed one from Bela Fleck that was one of Hartford’s personal banjos to play on"Fish and Bird" the song that Aoife O’Donovan [of Crooked Still] sang on the record, and I just really fell in love with that sound and found myself wanting something like that to use with Punch Brothers. Also, I’m getting an album relase tour in December, and Aofie is coming on board and doing things like “Fish.” I think it’s a really cool combination that when you have a low tenor banjo with a third string that’s sounding an E-flat or E instead of a G but will still set up bright if I played with normal strings. If I tuned my Hartford banjo to G it would be a really bright, bluegrass sound. It would be way too bright for me to use on any material we played. When you tune a banjo set up like that all the way down and put on heavy strings you get a really cool juxtaposition of this low richness. I’ve fallen in love with that sound a lot recently, and a lot of it is instrumental to John Hartford’s music."

-Noam Pikelny
 

1 Comments
	camlan says: 1/3/2014 12:25:59 PM Seems a lot of people use the Hartford tuned down only. Do people out there use it in 'G' for straight Bluegrass? How does it do there?
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