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Teaches Lessons:
In Person
Styles:
Clawhammer and Old-Time, Minstrel (Stroke Style)
Levels:
Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Teacher Since: 2013
Pricing: $25/hour (loosely speaking)
Listing Created: 3/29/2015
Listing Updated: 3/29/2015
More About Me
I studied piano as a child and have been learning the banjo for 55 years. In the beginning, I taught myself from Pete Seeger's book and by hanging around fine musicians in New York, Chicago and the northeast. If published banjo methods (like Pete's) don't work for you, if you want both hands-on instruction and a musical colleague, we should talk. If you don't have any musical education, if you don't know what I mean by "circle of fifths" or chord inversions, I can teach you the rudiments while also introducing you to the several styles of banjo picking and to banjo tablature. I'm most adept at minstrel and clawhammer, but I'm no stranger to bluegrass. I begin with beginners as I myself began, with Pete's "basic strum," because I think it trains the hand and the brain to the contours of banjo playing. I can show intermediate players the tricks and tropes of clawhammer, how the masters play(ed) as well as my own interpretations of the standard repertoire. But just leading students through tablature seems to me a waste of their money. Advanced students? I'm not sure how advanced I am, but I can take an instrument apart and reassemble it, mount a skin head, perform basic set-up and action adjustment, and I can anatomize the playing of great recorded artists, teach those who've never tried how to improvise counter-melodies, second voices, descants, and I can point out harmonic alternatives to the usual three- or four-chord settings that bring out hidden richness in simple tunes. Also, for those who will, I can expostulate (at length, and with photos, citations and bibliography) on the history and cultural significance of the banjo and the evolution of banjo styles. Anyway, enough about me. How about you?
