Find Your Thing

Posted by JanetB, written by John Hartford

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- Play count: 56

Size: 897kb, uploaded 1/26/2019 2:12:16 PM
Genre: Other / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

One of the hardly-known tunes of John Hartford from the new book, Find Your Thing has title with a deep thought. As I was watching the Australian Open wheelchair finals last night, practicing the tune, I was moved that these men had "found their thing."

Fine Times at our House

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 1055

Size: 1,556kb, uploaded 12/2/2012 9:38:49 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

This Hammons Family tune is one of those captivating mountain melodies that make fiddle tunes a pleasure to hear. Played on a Bart Reiter Whyte Laydie in open G tuning, it would be capoed at the second fret to play with a fiddle.

Fire on the Mountain

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 980

Size: 1,041kb, uploaded 7/28/2013 1:14:50 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

Learned from Adam Hurt's Earth Tones CD. This tune kept going through my head on July 8th as I wondered how close the Smartsville grass fire would come. It ended up burning 73 acres. This version appears to originally come from North Carolina fiddler Marcus Martin.

Five Miles from Town

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 88

Size: 1,967kb, uploaded 12/17/2017 9:38:14 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

From the fiddling of Kentuckian Clyde Davenport -- one never can get tired of his style or tunes. This one has those little unexpected twists in meter and melody that delight us. I'm in good company with Joe Newberry and Don Borchelt who both uploaded this tune on BHO years ago. Jeff Titon claims it's related to an Irish tune called The Mullingar Races and that other tunes with different melody have been recorded with this title.

Five Miles of Ellum Wood

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 1277

Size: 752kb, uploaded 7/29/2014 7:56:39 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

Learned from Bruce Greene's CD of this title. I recently "discovered" his fiddling and the significance it had in our knowledge of Kentucky fiddlers, though he first heard this from a banjo player in western Kentucky named James Dickison. It's in the Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes, which I'm happy to also discover.

Flannery's Dream

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 727

Size: 1,268kb, uploaded 1/6/2013 8:55:47 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

For the Tune of the Week (TOTW) January 5, 2013. This version comes from the playing of Adam Hurt.

Flatbush Waltz (KC)

Posted by JanetB, written by Andy Statman

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- Play count: 289

Size: 1,340kb, uploaded 12/15/2015 9:19:23 AM
Genre: Other / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

KC stands for Klezmer Clawhammer. This is my first attempt at it, in response to Banjo Judy's query for some tab and after a look at a newly formed portion of her website devoted to Klezmer music (http://www.banjojudy.com/klezmer-music/). The tune is in Gm according to notation found there, so I used a Gm tuning of gDGBbD -- one I'd just been working on with another tune. If the tune was played in Am I'd be trying it out of open G tuning using chordal positions.

Flatwoods

Posted by JanetB, written by Clyde Davenport

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- Play count: 348

Size: 1,316kb, uploaded 9/29/2017 5:55:48 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

Clyde Davenport, Kentucky fiddler and banjo player from Kentucky, still must be alive today, in his 90's because I can't find anything otherwise. There's a youtube of him playing at his birthday concert at 91 years old six years ago. I think the tune he plays like this one are enchanting and engaging.

Flower Drum Song of Feng Yang

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 44

Size: 1,797kb, uploaded 2/19/2018 9:15:01 PM
Genre: Traditional / Playing Style: Other

This Chinese folk song is as old as the Ming Dynasty and is the title of an Oscar and Hammerstein musical of the 1950's. A friend in my photography class from Hong Kong sent it to me and wanted to hear it on banjo. I obliged him and also set it to photos, which I'll post in a Sound Off! thread.

Flowers of the Morning

Posted by JanetB, written by Ed Haley

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- Play count: 821

Size: 1,086kb, uploaded 5/30/2014 6:22:09 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

This pretty tune comes from the scratchy recordings of the blind fiddler originally from West Virginia. Ed Haley's son, Ralph, recorded him in the 1940's, but Ed resisted commercial recordings. There are three volumes available on amazon.com of these home recordings. I first heard of Ed Haley through John Hartford when the soundmen were blasting a CD at a bluegrass festival intermission--my reaction was: "Who is that? That's the music I've been looking for!"

Flowery Girls (TOTW)

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 134

Size: 1,249kb, uploaded 6/20/2020 3:55:51 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

In topics:
Tune of the week 06/19/20

Tennessee 2-finger style banjo player Omer Forster named his one CD with this title song in the 70's. Played on a vey short-scaled Doc's Banjo, it went all the way up the neck! I clawhammered, though with a very similar arrangement.

Flying Dove (original)

Written/Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 86

Size: 2,027kb, uploaded 7/12/2019 6:39:35 PM
Genre: Other / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

When I ordered a custom banjo from Carolina Banjo I asked Ryan Navey, an artistic luthier, to carve the dove on my necklace. It was so exciting that I wrote this tune, no less in a unique tuning gGGAD.

Folding Down the Sheets

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 688

Size: 1,400kb, uploaded 8/17/2015 3:17:34 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

From the playing of Henry Reed, inspired for learning from the fiddling of Rayna Gellert. I'm reminded of crawling into bed when very tired, but satisfied from having had a good day.

Forked Deer

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 870

Size: 1,421kb, uploaded 9/11/2014 6:21:37 AM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

This has been one of the most popular tunes with old-time musicians for a long time and was the subject of the Tune of the Week a while back. This arrangement is first mine, then Kentucky fiddler Ed Haly's via Adam Hurt. My favorite version, which influences me in my arrangement, comes from bluegrass extrodinaire banjo player Craig Smith. He and Adam live within blocks from each other, so here they come together musically.

Fortune

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 902

Size: 884kb, uploaded 8/31/2014 1:57:45 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

For the old-time Tune of the Week, based on Kyle Creed playing and Brad Leftwich's Round Peak Style book. Lots of Galax licks in the A part and slides in the B part.

Fourth of July Breakdown

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 165

Size: 1,567kb, uploaded 7/3/2016 9:54:32 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

For the old-time Tune of the Week, 7/1/16, this tune comes from the playing of Illinois fiddler Waldo Helton and is #67 in R.P. Christeson's Old-Time Fiddle Repertory Vol. 2. He played the tune every year at a fourth of July picnic. What makes this tune unique this week is that their is no longer an available recording from the tune -- just the notation in the book. BHO members have collaborated to resurrect the tune and even give it a title.

Fox Hunter's Reel

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 70

Size: 1,952kb, uploaded 12/19/2017 6:51:35 PM
Genre: Fiddle/Celtic/Irish / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

As played on fiddle by banjo Bluegrass Boy Tony Ellis. Retiring from Bill Monroe's band in 1962, Tony now enjoys most fiddling with fiddles in his shop in his Ohio home. When I contacted him about his favorite tunes and what to learn, he didn't recommend this traditional Irish tune, Fox Chase Reel. Here it is anyway, and next will come more of his recommended original tunes.

Frank Palmer

Posted by JanetB, written by Turlough O'Carolan

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- Play count: 268

Size: 726kb, uploaded 7/18/2011 9:38:50 AM
Genre: Fiddle/Celtic/Irish / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

Thanks to Ron Hughes for his classified ad on Banjo Hangout for his excellent resource, O'Carolan for 5 String Banjo, and for siting his resource--'Carolan, The Life and Music of an Irish Harper, by Donal O'Sullivan (1958).

Freda (TOTW)

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 105

Size: 1,380kb, uploaded 7/4/2020 6:53:05 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

In topics:
FREDA - TOTW for 3 July 2020

Famous fiddler Kenny Baker played Freda and Carthy Sisco (b. 1921), originally from Arkansas and later from Washington state, played his version of Freda. Carthy played lots of Kenny Baker tunes. Here I combine the two.

Frosty Morn/Cold Frosty Morning medley (TOTW)

Posted by JanetB

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- Play count: 133

Size: 1,998kb, uploaded 8/24/2018 4:00:22 PM
Genre: Old Time / Playing Style: Clawhammer and Old-Time

Frosty Morn is the old-time Tune of the Week, 8/24/18. Related to Cold Frosty Morning in some of its melody and chordal movement, here's a medley of the two. The first was learned from the guitar flat-picking of Doc Watson, who I idolize. The second was learned from Miles Krassen's Clawhammer Banjo book. He used Henry Reed's version which he had published previously in his Appalachia Fiddle book. Sawmill tuning, playing on my Doc's Banjo.