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I've been trying on-and-off for several years to learn the basics of clawhammer banjo but have been totally unsuccessful so far. I've purchased a stack of home-study books, tried following multiple youtube tutorials, even subscribed to the popular online clawhammer instruction-services seen on the Banjo Hangout- but none of them work for me.
All of these seem well-produced and well-meaning, but suffer from what might be called a mid-stream personality-switch disorder. They are very good at initial introductions and teaching some of the basic elements that seem to make perfect sense at the time, but then suddenly switch to alien, alternate forms, rhythms, and unexplained techniques the moment a song is introduced. The played song does not resemble the previous exercises or tabs in any way. This leaves the student totally befuddled... There is nothing further to do except blink a few times, stare for awhile, then put the banjo down and walk away.
To present an analogy; If one wanted to learn a new language like Spanish, one would start by learning how certain letters like "J", "X" and "LL" have different sounds from English, and how "o" and "a" suffixes generally denote gender. You would then listen to individual spoken words, parroting them repeatedly until eventually you may begin to sound a little like the instructor. The real progress begins when you learn certain commonly-used phrases and how to put them together to form primitive sentences that must sound like baby-talk to a native speaker. This is the point where the clawhammer courses switch personality. Going back to the language analogy, this is where they've started you with Spanish, then suddenly switch to German with a bit of Swahili mixed-in to really muck things up. It becomes a case of "do what I do- not what I say", (i.e., now do something COMPLETELY different and upside-down from what you've been practicing all week [or month]) which just does not work for me.
I'm certain they are not doing this intentionally. I believe the instructors are honest and very, VERY good players, but have become so experienced and conditioned by years of excellent playing that they can no longer perceive the low-level hand and finger movements and coordination from the perspective of a clumsy 10-thumbed neophyte student, so they are unable to pass along their hard-learned knowledge. I can understand this. Although I consider myself at somewhere between beginner and intermediate "skill-level" (MUCH closer to beginner), there are many things I've learned to do by muscle-memory that I cannot easily explain, and simply thinking about them while playing really screws things up.
Put another way, if one wanted to learn Foggy Mountain Breakdown, it would be much better to study and repeatedly practice variations of "foggy mountain breakdown rolls" with their hammer-ons and pull-offs instead of just simple scales and arpeggios on one or two chords.
I have a notion that spending an afternoon in-person with an experienced clawhammer player might be enlightening, but although I live near Huntsville Alabama, I just don't see that ever happening as the traditional/folk music scene is not openly embraced down here.
So, are there any recently-hatched clawhammer players out there who have successfully learned how to play this traditional form by using online/printed/video courses or tutorials?
I have had great success with Tom Collins free You Tube Banjo Blitz series and with his Banjo Quest Patreon sight.
quote:
Originally posted by nealsotn
So, are there any recently-hatched clawhammer players out there who have successfully learned how to play this traditional form by using online/printed/video courses or tutorials?
Not recently, but yes, no 1-on-1 lessons of any kind. Just books and YouTube, etc. With a number of frustrating, hit-a-wall periods.
The first (and easiest to explain) thing that got me past one of those walls (and still pays dividends today) was spending a couple days doing nothing but scales and then regularly every 2-5 days (on average) after that. Just the G-major scale to start with, and then scales-with-extras. Such as G-diddy A-diddy B-diddy C-diddy. Or G (drop thumb string 1+2 instead of diddy) A (drop thumb string 1+2 instead of diddy) B (drop thumb string 1+2 instead of diddy). etc and so on, back and forth. Saying the notes aloud as I played them.
Putting the songbook on the shelf for half a week or so and just trying to be the best in the world at playing scales was, hands down, the single best (and also the simplest) thing I ever did that got thru a wall and, as I mentioned, I can still tell is paying off years later. So if you haven't tried that, I suggest that.
Ron -
PM sent.
I would say forget about learning a song to start with, just work on the right hand getting the clawhammer pattern. I'm a guitar player who plays old finger style ragtime guitar, so I thought clawhammer would be easy. I already know the left hand stuff, but I just couldn't get the right hand, I eventually got it... but it took a few weeks!!!
I'm currently ~4 years into my self-taught clawhammer journey.
I think your language-learning analogy is good. In my opinion, immersion in the language is more helpful than learning about grammar and spelling. So I didn't focus much on courses or technique lessons beyond the initial open string bum-ditty stage.
What helped me the most was finding simple tunes that only involve beginner techniques and then putting the video on repeat until I could hum every note. Then I'd get the banjo, slow down the video, and begin working at it piece by piece until I can play it poorly on the banjo. Tab is okay during this process, but don't let it be a crutch.
From that point the melody is internalized and the mechanics have been figured out, so I can work on the tune without the reference material, trying to make my played version sound like the idealized version in my head. Mostly this means an even tempo, consideration of dynamics, and of course accurate notes.
Then once I get happy with it, I go back to the original video and compare notes.
It's not a quick process, especially at first. But each time I learned a new tune, I was able to do it quicker, or learn something a little more complex.
Edited by - A Drum On A Stick on 08/15/2024 08:47:01
Both in learning and in teaching, I've found that it is difficult to convey the rhythm of clawhammer through text or tablature. Videos can help but area also difficult.
One thing I will say: Begin with double-thumbing (stroke), rather than a "bum-ditty" (aka basic strum). Index-thumb-index-thumb should be your fundamental right hand movement upon which all other right-hand techniques are based. Unfortunately, the vast majority of instructors do it backwards and teach double-thumbing as an "advanced technique" later in lessons. This is not correct and harms the neophyte banjoist.
Over the last decade at various festivals, I have taught dozens of 100% brand new "never held a banjo" students how to play clawhammer with this method. At this point it is likely over 100 new players, which isn't much compared to older folks but it's not nothing. With this method, along with some basic partial chord shapes, I have brought people from literally never touching a banjo to being able to play basic accompaniment with fiddlers and singers within about an hour. It can be done and it is quite simple if you use the correct approach.
Feel free to PM me and we can video chat and go over it if you'd like. I have never charged a student for any lesson and never will. I'm not even a real teacher. I just want more people to play banjo.
To continue the language analogy, IMO there's nothing so essential to achieving fluency as in-person conversation with a native speaker. Better yet, conversing with as many different native speakers as you can find.
A few private lessons (maybe one or two with each of several teachers) will be a big help in figuring what works and what doesn't for your individual learning style and musical taste.
This may or may not help, but it is a different approach than many instructional series. I have a free 8-lesson series on YouTube in which I start with a “bare bones” version of Cripple Creek, then lesson by lesson, add in embellishments including slides, hammers, pulls, and drop thumb. The concept is to start with the simplest possible version of a tune, using just a bum ditty pattern played over basic melody notes, and then incrementally build it up with various embellishments. The intent is to help you see the essence versus the "ornaments" of a tune played in clawhammer style, and to help free you from slavishly learning someone else’s fully rendered version note for note. Regardless, best wishes on making the progress you are aiming for.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL00z9mDkwwfcWTEIEffIlzr_aumdiNAGs
I was self-taught using only on-line materials and got quite far along before I ever sat down with someone for expert feedback. I think the key is to master the very basic elements and then try learning songs (because, let's be honest, there is nothing more motivating than being able to play something that is recognizable as a song) that are truly level-appropriate. For me, that came in the form of the Brainjo materials by Josh Turknett. The songs come with videos but also tabs that are leveled (1, 2, or 3). At the beginning, I only attempted level 1 tabs, which required absolutely no advanced techniques (no drop thumbs, double thumbs, hammer ons, pull offs, slides... none of that). Obviously, I couldn't play them well immediately, but I could understand how to approach them based on the introductory skills I had learned. Eventually, I could pick the level 1 tabs up faster and attempt level 2 tabs. And so on. The other benefit I found to Brainjo was that some of the more advanced skills were linked to specific songs, so rather than learning how to do something in a vacuum, I was learning it in the context of a song that applied it. I believe he still has a free trial, so I would check it out and see if it works for you!
I'm with Dan Gellert on this one.
I had developed my own version of clawhammer after decades of playing. But I made a huge advance from a single encounter. Actually it was a master class, with about a dozen students, and we learned one tune. After a while, as we played through the song again and again, the teacher, the inimitable Mary Z. Cox, went around to each student and coached and prodded as she saw appropriate for where the student was in their playing. For me, she stood behind, reached around, and moved my right hand and arm to get them going my productively. I think I've played much better ever since.
Ron,
I think you worded your "issue" exactly like my brain thinks but I don't seem to have the ability to say things as well as you !
I learned the basic bum ditty from Youtube and never found another source of learning that I thought was worth my time.
To me there's nothing more frustrating than trying to start a new learning source only to here "First put your banjo in double C tuning". I've been playing "folk" banjo for some 40 years and
never played anything except G tuning. While double C and sawmill tuning sound really good I don't think they are for the beginner. I started taking lessons a couple of years back and at the end of the first lesson my teacher told me for homework to put my banjo in sawmill tuning and learn Shady Grove for the next lesson !! I hadn't heard of either previously.
Or how about watching and learning how to drop thumb. I learned the basic right hand but never really found how to add it to a song. So now I can play drop thumb on a chord but can't play it in a song !
I know that part of it is me. I find that at my age (73) I'm playing less and don't really practice. I just play songs the way I hear them.
I really like Cathy Fink's clawhammer course on TrueFire. She has exercises that match the songs. truefire.com/banjo-lessons/cla...nner/c672 . You can click "Play" to see some samples lessons.
As for clawhammer lessons in Huntsville, banjohangout.org/teacher/PhillGibson says he teaches primarily Scruggs-style, but also teaches clawhammer.
Why not take up fiddle and not only be TOTALLY frustrated, but lose all yer friends too!
If you are fluent in some basic techniques- (double-thumb, bum-ditty, hammer-on, pull-off, slide) you should be home free.
The important thing is knowing how basic CH style is constructed, and how to apply the basic techniques to a simple melody.
For example, can you play a bare bones nothing but melody "Mary had a Little Lamb"? All quarter notes.
Tune to double-C and start on the first string, second fret note. Now (and I'm ducking as I say this) insert a 5th string note after every second-beat note
and you have dropped the melody into the bum-ditty pattern.
I don't know if applying the basic techniques so as to come up with a CH arrangement is what you are asking or not.
A lot of this is conceptual, and thinking about it in a certain way is what causes the light to come on.
My Dad used to describe it as; "playing your own accompaniment". Really basic CH is somewhat like Carter Family-style guitar in that respect.
I took the liberty of looking at your BHO home page and noted that your list of favorite musicians didn't include any CH/OT banjo-players. You've got to saturate your brain with this music- listen, listen, listen. Spend twice the amount of time listening as you do practicing.
Best of luck.
BTW; The all quarter note melody only version of Mary Had a Little Lamb should be played exclusively with middle/index finger downstrokes. The 5th string notes should obviously be with the thumb.
1) Bum – pause - dit-ty on any string, no left hand needed
2) G scale with bum ditty, no left hand needed
3) Insert D7 and C chord with bum ditty and not lose rhythm
4) Simplest song – Skip to My Lou, Mary Had a Little Lamb, whatever
5) Cripple Creek with its hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides
6) Other simple songs you are drawn to
7) Shady Grove to learn modal tuning scale/songs
8) Drop Thumbing – 1-2-1-5
9) Drop Thumb – 2-3-2-5, 3-4-3-5
10) Banjo Player's Songbook by Tim Jumper
banjered
I taught beginning banjo at a coffee-shop in HSV for years, never had anyone want to learn CH. 
I retired to SC in 2020...
Both "The Fret Shop" and "Harmony Sound" would be good places to look for a local teacher.
You might contact NOTSBA (Nashville Old Time String Band Assoc.) and set up a one-on-one with a teacher up there. Their website is a great resource. Their annual March jam, "Breaking Up Winter" is excellent, I rarely miss it.
I studied music teachers for years...and I have a very large collection of instruction books. It is very difficult to find a good personal match for an instructor...and I only learned how to do something from about 10% of the books.
Find somebody to sit in front of you and play slowly. Stop and ask questions, have them demo one measure or one note at a time.
I always admired Dan Knowles' beginning CH banjo group sessions. He would get 30 people playing in just a few minutes...and so much fun!
For me, one of the basics is that the thumb is played as the hand is moving up; down with the fore or middle finger and up sounds the thumb strike.
I have found that brainjo works well to learn songs. I’ve also found that I don’t enjoy old time clawhammer songs very much at all. But I like the sound the instrument makes and I love the practice. I love the practice of over and over complex patterns and changes in chords and moving through scales.
What I find works best is 1000 repeats of the same three measures regardless of whether it’s a song or a complex pattern. It sux at first then you get decent then stumble a lot when you get fatigued then it sort of clicks. Then the next day your fingers just play it and you’re shocked. I find it’s like learning to sketch or learning to throw darts or perform an Olympic lift. As Josh at brainjo says, it’s about chunks of information.
I'm coming back to CH after not playing a banjo for 10 years or so. I was only a beginner then, and I've been working with and getting a lot out of Brad Kolodner's Clawhammer Corner lessons on TrueFire, which are modestly priced: https://truefire.com/channels/clawhammer-corner/welcome-to-clawhammer-corner/l29384
Find a teacher is you can. I started playing clawhammer when I was about 52 (I am 77 now) and had known people who were outstanding clawhammer players since I was a teenager, and played guitar behind some good ones. I thought I knew it all when I decided to play the banjo. I was just wasting time until a friend took me to his house sat me down and pointed out I was not doing right.
Down picking is so different from other forms of string instrument playing because it is based on an African approaches to playing a string instrument. I still constantly find myself fighting things I did since I was 12 on a guitar or finger picking the banjo. Get someone who can sit with you and watch what you are doing and correct it. I needed that big time.
You can find teachers who are not in your local area on zoom. Go find where people play old time music or even bluegrass. Banjoists are very helpful in helping to recruit new members of the tribe.
The most important thing is the learn the basic strokes. I have been playing banjo for 25 years, and teach at Fiddle Hell, and have played at the festivals, but I still gobble up any introductory clawhammer video I can find on the internet. Practice the basic strokes, the bump diddy, the drop thumb, the double thumb.
Work on those strokes for a half hour every night, not trying to play any tune, but working your way into the way they are done before you try to do anything. That is the first thing that got me into playing properly. A great player took me over his house and gave me a bob carlin video tape (back in the day) and say practice the basic strokes here every night and come back and we will work on tunes. Since then as a historian of old time music I found this was the way many Southern banjoists learned to play,
The famous African American Fiddler Joe Thompson of Mebane NC told me he had a brother who played banjo who his father a fiddler and banjoist told to go on the back porch, and work on the strokes, not even chording the banjo, every night, and it took him a month to get the strokes. You have to do something like that with direction!
Find a teacher, practice the basic strokes. I cannot believe where you live there are not clawhammer pickers around. They will help you,
Remember, it is not the inspiration, but the perspiration that will get you there.
Edited by - writerrad on 08/29/2024 14:50:24
His youtube channel is a real gift, and a real practical approach to things, He does not bs you that you can learn to play clawhammer well without working, but provides practical scientifically based, approaches to doing the work. On the other hand, a new player really needs to have a teacher or at least someone who sees him actually play to help him. But it takes a lot of work.
The basic strokes are the key to it all. A person can go on the internet and try all sorts of fancy stuff, but as Bob Carlin told me when I was starting out, without the basic strokes you dont have nothing,
quote:
Originally posted by staceyzI would say forget about learning a song to start with, just work on the right hand getting the clawhammer pattern. I'm a guitar player who plays old finger style ragtime guitar, so I thought clawhammer would be easy. I already know the left hand stuff, but I just couldn't get the right hand, I eventually got it... but it took a few weeks!!!
I have been playing guitar since 1960 and didnt start on the banjo until around 1999, I have played mostly banjo, but I am still working away from guitar stuff. To play clawhammer you have to learn the basic strokes practices them every night until they are basic to you and dont worry about anything else until you got them. A teacher or another clawhammer player who will look at what you do will help,
This guy sounds like he did what I did. I had played a lot of guitar since the 60s and thought I knew old time and clawhammer, and got the videos etc, but what I figured out was a mess until someone sat me down and said find a teacher, work on those strokes without even trying to play a tune.
R.D. Lunceford : "Spend twice the amount of time listening as you do practicing."
100%!!!!
quote:
Originally posted by nealsotnI've been trying on-and-off for several years to learn the basics of clawhammer banjo but have been totally unsuccessful so far. I've purchased a stack of home-study books, tried following multiple youtube tutorials, even subscribed to the popular online clawhammer instruction-services seen on the Banjo Hangout- but none of them work for me.
All of these seem well-produced and well-meaning, but suffer from what might be called a mid-stream personality-switch disorder. They are very good at initial introductions and teaching some of the basic elements that seem to make perfect sense at the time, but then suddenly switch to alien, alternate forms, rhythms, and unexplained techniques the moment a song is introduced. The played song does not resemble the previous exercises or tabs in any way. This leaves the student totally befuddled... There is nothing further to do except blink a few times, stare for awhile, then put the banjo down and walk away.
To present an analogy; If one wanted to learn a new language like Spanish, one would start by learning how certain letters like "J", "X" and "LL" have different sounds from English, and how "o" and "a" suffixes generally denote gender. You would then listen to individual spoken words, parroting them repeatedly until eventually you may begin to sound a little like the instructor. The real progress begins when you learn certain commonly-used phrases and how to put them together to form primitive sentences that must sound like baby-talk to a native speaker. This is the point where the clawhammer courses switch personality. Going back to the language analogy, this is where they've started you with Spanish, then suddenly switch to German with a bit of Swahili mixed-in to really muck things up. It becomes a case of "do what I do- not what I say", (i.e., now do something COMPLETELY different and upside-down from what you've been practicing all week [or month]) which just does not work for me.
I'm certain they are not doing this intentionally. I believe the instructors are honest and very, VERY good players, but have become so experienced and conditioned by years of excellent playing that they can no longer perceive the low-level hand and finger movements and coordination from the perspective of a clumsy 10-thumbed neophyte student, so they are unable to pass along their hard-learned knowledge. I can understand this. Although I consider myself at somewhere between beginner and intermediate "skill-level" (MUCH closer to beginner), there are many things I've learned to do by muscle-memory that I cannot easily explain, and simply thinking about them while playing really screws things up.
Put another way, if one wanted to learn Foggy Mountain Breakdown, it would be much better to study and repeatedly practice variations of "foggy mountain breakdown rolls" with their hammer-ons and pull-offs instead of just simple scales and arpeggios on one or two chords.
I have a notion that spending an afternoon in-person with an experienced clawhammer player might be enlightening, but although I live near Huntsville Alabama, I just don't see that ever happening as the traditional/folk music scene is not openly embraced down here.
So, are there any recently-hatched clawhammer players out there who have successfully learned how to play this traditional form by using online/printed/video courses or tutorials?
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