DVD-quality lessons (including tabs/sheet music) available for immediate viewing on any device.
Take your playing to the next level with the help of a local or online banjo teacher.
Weekly newsletter includes free lessons, favorite member content, banjo news and more.
Page: First Page Previous Page ... 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... Next Page Last Page (14)
From the prolific repertory of hoodoo David comes a tune many of us know under a different title, though variations indeed exist. Listen to some of the pros' take on this tune with several examples provided from what David calls the University of Google. I'll be exploring all three tunes which are associated with TOTW, 5/29/20, The Hog Eyed Man.
I hope everyone who posts a TOTW gets as much enrichment and pleasure as I do. This week's presentation allowed me to contact two musicians I admire greatly -- Stephen Wade and Art Rosenbaum, both icons in the old-time music world. It introduces us to a banjo player from Georgia whose music should be remembered, Chesley Chancey (1913- 1980). Tune in for the enriching enjoyment of TOTW, 6/5/20, Mulberry Gap.
Kentucky fiddle tunes are often a listening treat. The very title of this week's tune tickles your imagination and the quaint and sweet melody entices you to try it yourself. See for yourself how charming is the TOTW, 6/12/20, Old Aunt Jenny With Her Nightcap On, posted by yours truly as a substitute presenter this week.
Edited by - JanetB on 06/13/2020 21:31:56
Neill Connor, Hay-on-Wye of Wales has blessed us with a beautiful tune from the playing on a CD we should all have, called Old Time Banjo Festival. Rick Good learned the tune from a recording of Omer Forster given him by Carl Fleischhauer, who played it in a picking style. Neill shows us how to play using clawhammer and links some great performances, including his own. Listen and enjoy the new TOTW, 6/19/20, Flowery Girls.
In volunteering for a TOTW sometimes you hit the jackpot in tune choices, history, and discoveries, as did Carolyn Faubel. She not only found the tune via one of our absolute favorite fiddlers, James Bryan, but she dug down and discovered his source, and then conversed with that fiddler's grandson to get some real life stories. Here's an entertaining and informative TOTW, 6/26/20, Messenger.
The prolific tune explorer and talented player Pat Lyons introduces us to a fiddle player born in 1921, with no death records I can yet find, who he says was a staple around the Pacific Northwest for years. Carthy Sisco was originally from Arkansas and had a keen liking for Kenny Baker tunes. Carthy made his own corn stalk fiddles as a boy and eventually developed his own energetic style of playing, especially for dances. This week you may explore one of his Kenny Baker tunes here at: TOTW, 7/3/20, Freda.
Mark T is covering a great tune from the recordings of Kentucky fiddler Luther Strong. This is a good opportunity to learn more about this source fiddler whose playing was influential in spite of how relatively little information there is about him. We just need to dig down a little deeper this week and can do so thanks to Stephen Wade's chapter in his excellent book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us. I love the title and the tune for this week's TOTW, 7/10/20, Glory in the Meeting House.
Edited by - JanetB on 07/10/2020 17:54:58
Stephen Rapp has an excellent and constant source of rich and valuable old-time tunes with his fiddling partner Paul Kirk. This week Stephen plays one of the tunes from a Library of Congress recording available on a compilation called Altamont Black Stringband Music. John Lusk, born in 1889, grandson of a slave, is the fiddler. His grandfather was sent to New Orleans to learn to play the fiddle. Give a listen and give a try to learn this week's TOTW, 7/17/20, Apple Blossom.
It's nice to have a gospel song on this week's Tune of the Week, an African American spiritual. There's history to read and nice examples to hear. Enjoy Joshua Gilliland's presentation for TOTW, 7/24/20, Gospel Plow.
It's certainly a treat to learn any of WV fiddler (and banjo player) Lee Hammons' tunes. Thanks to clawhammer teacher Tim Rowell we have a tune that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. Tim learned one from West Virginia fiddler Jimmy Triplett, who has released his own renditions of Lee Hammons tunes. Lee was related rather distantly, it is said, to the more well-known Hammons family, but knew them and played with them. This is most likely how our Tune of the Week came to be called TOTW, 8/7/20, Burl Hammons Tune.
It's a treat to have Douglas Bonnyman all the way from Edinburgh present his first Tune of the Week. In fact we get a two-for-one. Douglas was interested in the second version of Old Plank Road, but found lots more information on the first and more famous one -- Uncle Dave Macon and Grandpa Jones having popularized it. I'm going to try the newer version, but hope to hear some brave souls here playing and singing http://TOTW, 8/14/20, Old Plank Road.
We're lucky to have Carl Baron presenting another rare Melvin Wine tune from West Virginia, learned from his father. Carl includes a recording of him playing with Melvin and Bob Carlin in the 80's. Melvin comments about the meaning of the title. Melvin himself was an expert fiddler, so he wasn't a jack of all trades and master of none! Enjoy this TOTW, 8/21/20, Jack of all Trades.
Billy Kearney's moniker is WVDreamin and he's chosen one of the great Billy tunes from West Virginia. With the rich heritage Henry Reed left us via Alan Jabbour we have nearly one hundred tunes to explore in the Library of Congress. There's a native feel in the old-time music when you hear West Virginia fiddle and banjo. You've heard of Billy in the Low Ground, but have you listened to TOTW, 8/28/20, Billy in the Low Land?
This week's new tune introduces us to another one from Samuel Bayard's remarkable Pennsylvania collections. Thanks to Mark Tamsula and Richard Withers, we've been blessed with many of the Bayard tunes coming back to life. Adam Schweigert brings us one of these Pennsylvania tunes after recently moving to Pittsburgh himself. I'll also soon be learning TOTW, The Carrolltown Breakdown, 9/4/20.
I had the pleasure of presenting the new Tune of the Week and delved further into a tune called Cattle in the Cane learned several years ago. I had read there was an "antecedent" in another tune. With this hint came the discovery of Captain Moses J. Bonner, who at age 78 recorded that other tune. He's left us a long trail, with coast-to-coast recordings and multiple versions of the two tunes. They may be challenging tunes, but maybe you'll try to learn TOTW, Yearlings in the Canebrake/Cattle in the Cane, 9/11/20.
If you've followed the classic bluegrass legend Bill Monroe, you'll hear the Tune of the Week echoed in Monroe's composition Jerusalem Ridge. Our intrepid presenter, Neill Connor, follows the trail back as far as he can and plays a hauntingly lovely 3-part version of this week's tune as portrayed by Bob Smakula in a Clifftop performance. I can't wait to dig further into TOTW, 9/18/20, A Rose for Polly.
An old favorite and very challenging tune is the subject of this week's Tune of the Week. The presenter, Mark Tomko, likes to explore music from the top players of the day and this week it's the champion fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves. Her rendition of a familiar tune was learned from a recording by Emma Lee Dickerson (1923 - 2001), buried in Ashland, KY (Ed Haley's last home, too) -- an area that must have a rich fiddling heritage. It's taken me a long time to work out an arrangement of this tune, but I'll try another by exploring the TOTW, 9/25/20, Blackberry Blossom.
Any Tune of the Week chosen by the brilliant Carolyn Faubel is a treat and this week is no exception. She has "discovered" a delightful crooked North Carolina tune named for a river (crooked by design) and played by two fiddle players worth studying -- Marcus Martin and Osey Helton. Have a listen to clawhammer arrangements and come up with your own old-time version, whether clawed or picked, when you learn about the TOTW, 10/2/20, Green River.
When Rick Hocutt presents a tune we know we'll be in for some old-time education. This week he has chosen a tune to present and play most authentically from a 1927 recording by Dock Boggs. Rick explains that Dock recorded with 3-finger picking, but Rick plays it 2-finger style, thumb lead. It sounds fantastic and quite bluesy! Check it out at TOTW, 10/9/20, Country Blues/Hustling Gambler.
Edited by - JanetB on 10/09/2020 16:59:07
It's not often we get some delightful Irish polkas for the Tune of the Week. Andy Alexis has presented a medley of three such polkas and noted that the well-known Red Clay Ramblers played them here in the states. You can hear Andy's performances and try out his easy-to-read tab provided for clawhammer banjo. The discussion is also interesting in our TOTW, Ballydesmond Polkas, 10/16/20.
When Noah Cline offers a TOTW presentation we get the best of the younger WV generation carrying on the tradition. This week Noah offers us an original tune from Joe Herrmann, who apparently lives with his wife Sam in West Virginia. I'm trying to contact them to get more information on this original tune by Joe -- a captivating one with an interesting title. So check out TOTW, Coyote Howl, 10/23/20.
When Stephen Rapp posts we get great tunes that come from old sources, which he learns from his bandmate and master fiddler Paul Kirk, Jr. Today's new tune is a march, with its repugnant title (though it may be named for a General Pisseli), it is still a fun one to play, coming from a fifer notated in Samuel Bayard's seminal book Dance to the Fiddle and March to the Fife, Instrumental Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania. Enjoy TOTW, Old Piss, 10/30/20.
Different old-time tunes sometimes share a title. This week's tune is a less known dance tune than the more popular Ebenezer, covered as a Tune of the Week in 2013. Played as a simple tune by fiddler Ivan Weddle of Virginia in the 80's, I look forward to listening to the fiddle's intricate notes and rhythm and attempting a clawhammer arrangement. Thanks to our own gentleman from Virginia, Joshua Gilliland, for finding something novel to offer this week. Check out TOTW, 11/6/20, Ebenezer.
Page: First Page Previous Page ... 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... Next Page Last Page (14)
Newest Posts