With no teacher around I learned to play from books and records back in the early 1970’s. I fooled around with some clawhammer from Seeger’s book, and tried FMB in the chapter Mike Seeger had helped Pete with,, but went on from there to these books. Did any of you buy these?
You pretty much hit every book I used back then. When I started to transition over to clawhammer styles I also used John Burkes Clawhammer book and B. Koehler & E Muellers banjo book.
I was really very fortunate to have a large library near me that had a huge collection of LPs for loan that included hundreds of New World Records, Folkways, County Records, and on and on...would get lost in there for days just listening...also close to Washington Square Park. All kinds of people there willing to show you banjo and guitar licks. Before the internet you just had to watch, listen and learn, repeat,repeat,repeat.
Edited by - Alvin Conder on 11/12/2024 12:30:43
Yep, I had those also.. I’d forgotten about them. Tried to learn Colored Aristocracy from Burke’s book, and Temperance Reel from the Muller/Koehler
Banjo Books I found most useful. Sean Ray's Kickoff and The Session Book, Jack Hatfield Backup Book. Janet Davis Splitting the Licks, Up The Neck & Backup. In that order. That said I found video instruction by Banjo Ben Clark, Murphy Henry, Geoff Hohwald taught me more than all the books combined and of these Banjo Ben was by far the best instructional lessons of all the many video sources I have studied.
I mentioned records also ,, I had these 3 in the beginning and wore them out at 16rpm on the turntable. The F&S is a budget reissue of Foggy Mountain Jamboree ,, the Kentucky Mountain Boys was actually the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers album (I only found that out a few years ago,, thought it was JD Crowe),,, and the other is by long time Canadian picker Eddie Poirier who is still active in the Maritimes.
I haven't been playing long. So far my go-to books are "You Can Teach Yourself Banjo" (J. Davis), and "Banjo Primer for Beginners- Deluxe Edition" (G. Hohwald). The Jam CD's that come with Hohwald's primer are a nice bonus.
I started with Pete Seeger book and Old Time Mtn banjo back in ‘73.
In 77 I got Wernicks’s book And began a 20 year subscription to BNL; (God bless Mike Bailey’s Beginner Corner) and an obsession was born!
We moved to Virginia Beach recently, and while packing I counted Over four dozen banjo books; plus over dozen VHS tapes other courses. As well as a couple dozen fiddle , mandolin, and guitar books.!
My first banjo book was Banjo Newsletter (1975) where I read about the books already listed.
Bluegrass Banjo was the first big book followed by Melodic and Keith.
I saw Bill play twice in the late 70s in Boston and Brockton.Then again in the 80s with Tony and Bela at Johnathon Swift's where the three of them performed the Fiddletunes for Banjo album including singing "The Muffin Man".
I was interested more in Bill's playing than Earl's.He lived a lot closer.
When I taught for Northern Kingdom we used the Hal Leonard method which was well accepted.
I have three shelves stuffed with the same books and many more. Usually I'd learn only one or two tunes per book...learned every single one outta Earl's.
The Pete Seeger, Mel Bay, Burke and K&M books were worse than useless for me. I liked Bill Knopf's and Tony Trishka's stuff.
"Clawhammer Banjo" by Krassen was my CH Bible. I learned about 80% of those tunes.
Jack Hatfield's two BG books were the easiest for me to teach out of. His "Scruggs Corner" articles were always excellent.
Some of the new books are really good. Hilary Dirlam's first two CH books are excellent.
Edited by - trapdoor2 on 11/12/2024 13:15:39
The ones that helped me the most were
I think Dan Levenson's Clawhammer From Scratch is also very helpful but I didn't apply myself to that style enough to reap the benefits.
The beef about Burke’s book is that his bar lines were difficult to understand,, his timing of notes was off, if I remember right.
Since those early days I’ve bought some Janet Davis - The Ultimate banjo book is terrific - and a Jack Hatfield , a Dennis Caplinger, the Bill Keith book by Tony T, and Tony’s Fiddle tune collection book, as well as his book of original tunes,,, also some Alan Munde’s, and the new Earl book, plus 2 Dan Levenson CH books I bought from him in Yuma , in case I can't 3 finger pick anymore. Three tunes that I’ve wanted to learn for a long time are Munde’s Peaches and Cream,, Tony Trischka’s Parson’s Duck,, & Tom Adams’ Box Elder Beetles… ah, some day , those might take while to get down
Edited by - chuckv97 on 11/12/2024 13:42:06
When I tried banjo the first time in spring of '70, I had no books or banjo recordings. I didn't know about the Scruggs book. I now have the Seeger book, but have no recollection when I got it. If I bought it that first year, I must have totally missed the few pages on Scruggs style. Mostly I tried to remember what the banjo player at the Student Union sounded like. His was the first banjo I heard up close and got to try. Needless to say, I got nowhere.
When I started lessons two years later, my first teacher used handwritten tabs I think now he might have copied from the Scruggs book. A new friend of mine had the book and I guess I looked at it some.
I bought Wernick's "Bluegrass Banjo," Trischka's "Melodic Banjo," and Knopf's "Hot Licks" when they came out, by which time I was an intermediate player. So these books helped me advance. As did Tony's own "Hot Licks" book. Every few years, I look through these books and say to myself "So that's where I got that."
I also have many years (maybe most years) of Banjo Newsletter. Looking through them several months ago when I was putting my office back together (it had been my grandson's bedroom for about 9 months) I was amazed and impressed at the level of instructional material it contained month after month. In the early years, it had a decided modern/melodic leaning. Scruggs-oriented material came later and clawhammer even later.
I started out in the early '70s with the Scruggs Book. I had about a 15 year hiatus while I raised my kids. When I came back in '94, I started off with Jack Hatfield's Beginning Bluegrass Banjo Book 1 and then 2. Then I got into Janet Davis' Back Up Banjo, Splittin' the Licks and Up the Neck. I also got Jack Hatifield's Books 3 and several others that I can't remember right now.
Then I learned to play by ear and that took care of my book learning.
I used Ken Perlman's Clawhammer Style Banjo book and accompanying DVD. I started playing about 4 years ago, and I still use it as a reference and for exercises.
Scruggs Book
Only banjo book I ever bought way back in about 1975. Still going strong, almost.....
I started out with a teacher at the local music store, a guitar guy who was self taught on banjo. He was good at teaching basic chord shapes up and down the neck, and after 18 mos. was able to play some tunes, but went to banjo camp for the first time and realized wasn't ready to make the transition to jamming.
Decided to regroup, began to take lessons from local banjo guy. Also, bought the Jack Hatfield series, can be found here (and elsewhere): https://hatfieldmusic.com/learn-banjo/
Janet Davis' Splitting The Licks, and Up The Neck also huge help.
Oh, I also bought some of the jamming DVDs from The Murphy Method, to get better jamming before daring to jam with other folks. These days, you can download them.
I would post pictures, but I've loaned/given away a lot of learning materials. Pick on!
1.You can teach yourself banjo/ Janet Davis
2. Earl Scruggs book
3.Banjo Songbook/ Tony Trischka
4.Melodic Banjo / Tony Trischka
5. Masters of the 5 string Banjo/ Wernick and Trischka
6. Key to the 5 String Banjo/ Pat Cloud
7. Banjo Hangout
Edited by - stanleytone on 11/12/2024 18:04:53
You can learn from them all. So many good resources out there, but the Jack Hatfield books were the ones that got me understanding how to really get the melody into the roll and how to bring the melody out of the roll.
Ken
I learned a lot from the Mel Bay book by Sonny Osborne. It was written in standard notation which I could already read. Most of the other books I ever saw were written in tablature which I never could get a handle on.
I bought several over the years, but the only one I really learned anything from was the Seeger book—both the yellow and red editions.
Seeger and Scruggs.
Below is the list of books I acquired. They're listed in the chronological order that I acquired them.
1. The Kingston Trio Presents An Introduction To Bluegrass 5-String Banjo 3 Finger Style By Paul Champion
2. How To Play Folk And Bluegrass Banjo By W. A. Palmer
3. Mel Bay Presents Bluegrass Banjo By Sonny Osborne
4. The 5-String Banjo Technique By Jim Smoak
5. Earl Scruggs And The 5-String Banjo
Below is an example of the tablature from the Kingston Trio book. How about that for tablature!
The first book I remember getting was from our local library in Carrollton, TX. I do not remember what the book was but I think it was an orange reddish color and had hand written numbers on lines for the "tab". I'm not sure I got anything from it.
Next was the Scruggs book. I did not know at the time that the "History" article and info was pretty much all false. I remember fussing around with it but not getting anything beyond some "roll patterns".
Shortly thereafter I obtained "Mel Bay's Complete Bluegrass Banjo Method". With this I had some results but I distinctly remember being confused about why solos like "Double Eagle" were incomplete. This was a problem with the Scruggs book too. I did not know that avoiding modulation and cutting out strains was a common theme with Bluegrass. Really I just did not get it. The whole "make up the rest by stringing together licks" thing confused me.
When I returned to the banjo, it was with Bob Flesher's tab books. Along with Weidlich's versions. With these I was able to actually do something.
It was also with Bill Evans' Dummies book that I learned Spanish Fandango.
Then there was a turning point. Upon meeting Clarke Buehling I decided to go back and start over with notation based learning. I used the Frank B. Converse method (green book) to learn the basics in A notation and followed up with other early tutors that were reprinted by Joe Ayers.
This progressed to "classic" tutors like Converse's Analytical Banjo Method and scads of others as by this time many were being digitized and made available on the internet.
After moving to New England and planning my first trip to an American Banjo Fraternity Rally I wanted to "speak the language" so I started with the Mel Bay Banjo Method by Frank C. Bradbury-- holy moly, this was a turning point in my playing. While my goal was to only learn to read in C notation (which I accomplished) I ended up starting from scratch again with this course of study and worked it methodically. The results were night and day.
I wish I was smart enough to have started with Bradbury's Method. I'm sure I ran across it in a music story when I was a teenager but likely turned my nose up at it as "there's no notes to the banjo" or some other ignorant snobbish idea I had in my youth thinking the banjo was "hillbilly" and adopting those sorts of ideas.
Most of the above. Additionally.
Alison Brown's Simple Pleasures tablature book.
As mentioned above Jim Smoak's instruction book.
l
After being out of print and sold out, Alison Brown's Simple Pleasures tab book is available again.
quote:
Originally posted by RB34. The 5-String Banjo Technique By Jim Smoak
A friend gave me his copy of the Jim Smoak book. Why he didn't want it for himself, I don't remember, since he was the learner and I was already playing.
Anyway . . .
One oddity in Jim Smoak's book is in tabs indicating capo the tab shows actual fret numbers rather than the frets relative to the capo. But, if a capoed string is played "open" (not fretted by hand) it's written as "0" -- instead of its actual fret. So, in his tab for Rocky Top, it says key B capo 4 (including capoing 5th string), then the 2-3 hammer on 2nd string is written as hammer 6-7, while 5th and 1st string in the following roll are written as open. I haven't seen this anywhere else.
