Thumb-Lead Style

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Two Finger Pickers

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For the eclectic banjo player who counts 2-finger styles among their tools of the trade.

515 Members, Created 1/31/2011 -

Administrators: stigandr5 (owner) , Marc Nerenberg , revellfa

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From deleuran on 2/4/2011 7:20:21 AM

I started practicing Thumb-Lead a few months ago, and I think I have ten or fourteen videos on my homepage where I play it. I would like to link to a couple here but don't know how. Being mainly a guitar picker for many years, I have not yet got the hang of the clawhammer style. It feels awkward to me, and I can't help doing some up picking. I started out in the 70's using the three finger picking I already did on the guitar, and it sounded pretty bluegrassy to me. But as I play old-time music only now, I want to pick up the old styles. As there's no "right" way to play old time banjo, I like doing two finger picking and thumb lead being one of them, and it feels more natural to me.

2 Comments
	Austin Stovall says: 3/11/2011 12:43:45 PM thumb lead is a great Unfortunatly I haven't been able to really get the thumb lead style I can play a few tunes in thumb lead but what seems to come more natural to me is two finger Index lead kind of like Wade Mainer. I guess since I'm a Clawhammer player picking out the melody notes with my finger comes more naturally than picking out the melody with my thumb.
	deleuran says: 3/14/2011 6:40:25 AM My problem was the same, just the other way around. Probably because I started out with three finger picking, the thumb lead comes more natural to me. I think one of my problems with the clawhammer style is that I can't up pick as I'm used to. But as thumb lead is an accepted old time style it doesn't matter that much. I know several banjo pickers and they all play clawhammer, and none of them finger pick, so that makes my "thing" a little special around these parts.
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