Bluegrass Banjo & Beyond

Just out on Berklee Press/Hal Leonard.

Play and improvise with more expression and freedom in bluegrass and related styles. These ideas, exercises, and etudes will help you expand your palette of improvisational and compositional techniques and sounds. Develop your versatility over the fingerboard, and master harmonic and rhythmic ideas on the banjo. The CD has demonstration and play-along tracks, performed by an all-star bluegrass band.

You will learn to build solos using techniques such as:

• Recognizing a melody’s defining notes, and using them in new contexts

• Reharmonizing chords and changing modes

• Breaking down, rearranging, and varying melodic and rhythmic cells

• Arranging melodies in different registers that span the full length of the fretboard

• Drawing from chord forms, tetrachords, guide-tone lines, and other constructs

“This book opens up new vistas on the banjo, particularly useful for advanced players. Thanks to Berklee authors Hollender and Glaser, you will find a lot of fresh, musical sounds, informed by a solid theoretical base. It securely fills a hole in the middle of banjo pedagogy.”

—Tony Trischka

“This is a very valuable resource for banjo players. I like that the emphasis is first and foremost on furthering one’s musicianship and that the scope of the discussion is not narrowed by whether the application is technically “banjo-friendly.” The tunes provide concrete and insightful examples of how the concepts can be effectively put into practice on the banjo. Very worthwhile.

—Noam Pikelny

“Beyond Bluegrass Banjo” is designed for the intermediate to advanced contemporary bluegrass banjo player who is ready to get serious about applying jazz concepts to their playing. Matt Glaser’s compositions will open your ears to a world of new sounds, and Dave Hollender’s arrangements and analyses introduce concepts that will open your mind to new ideas about improvising, composing, and arranging. I guarantee that your fingers and your brain will be supremely stretched after spending even just a bit of time with this important new book.”

—Bill Evans