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Jan 19, 2025 - 12:12:52 PM
195 posts since 4/19/2024
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I’m a beginner with about 11 months of experience. I practice a lot. That’s all background


I have been learning a song where there is a bum ditty then drop thumb dirty at strings 1 and 2.

I completely and totally understand the way a drop thumb is played and I can incorporate it into songs and playing.

I’m actually asking about the mechanics of it. I notice that in about 30% of my playing this bum ditty - drop thumb ditty the thumb catches slightly on string three.


As I mention, I practice a lot with repeats of one or two measures hundreds or thousands of times with a metronome.

Somehow either my hand positioning or thumb angle of approach to the second string isn’t reproducible. Out of 2000 repeats I roughly counted about 600 that either cauvht slightly on string 3 or skimmed over the top of string 2.

I continue to practice but I know that when i was first leaning to percussive strike strings 3 and 4 it wasn’t until i watched Tom Collin’s playing and slowed down the video and put an artificial protractor on the screen that i could finally see the right approach and angle to hit the individual strings.

Has anyone run into this phenomenon with drop thumb and is there a way to approach the movement that eliminates the miss strokes so that the reproducible drop thumb be comes more uniform?

Thanks so much for any technical suggestions.

Jsj

Jan 19, 2025 - 12:16:53 PM
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lapsteel

Canada

1035 posts since 8/13/2015

There is no angle. Just slow it down.

Jan 19, 2025 - 4:29:22 PM
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304 posts since 9/5/2013

You can try arching your wrist slightly to help your thumb clear the third string.
But once you're able to do it, you can do it with your wrist arched or flat.
It's all about the "P" word -- "persistence."
It's just a banjo -- never surrender!

Jan 19, 2025 - 4:47:52 PM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
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I’ll video the next 1000 and analyze it some and see where I need to ensure that I come in. That approach eased weeks of frustration I had with hitting the third and fourth strings. There should be an approach angle and movement like a golf swing or shooting a basketball

Jan 19, 2025 - 4:51:15 PM
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1394 posts since 10/23/2003

There is no trick to learning the clawhammer banjo. It just takes a lot of work. The problem is that everyone is taught the first stroke by itself and spends too much time practicing it. That makes it hard to learn the other strokes. Teachers should teach all the strokes at the same time. That way, you might stumble a bit at first, but it won't be as awkward in the end.

Jan 19, 2025 - 4:57:10 PM
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10112 posts since 8/30/2004

Right you are Tony. I have no problem teaching the correct drop thumb/clawhammer technique to students. They learn it fairly quickly after I show them in super (detailed) slow motion...Jack

Edited by - Jack Baker on 01/19/2025 16:58:34

Jan 19, 2025 - 6:10:04 PM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
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I never suggested there was a trick. When I started working on Olympic weightlifting, a very technique driven activity, there is a book by Rippetoe called “Starting strength”. It is a tome and the first part decomposes nearly 100 pages of angles, movement prep, approach, hand placement, foot placement, bar path, buttock, hip, shin, ankle, head and every other movement to perform the simple exercise of deadlift. Angles, technical drawings, timing all go just grab a bar and stand up. Rather than floundering with “just learn it” I learn much better with this type of help. I spent weeks messing with terrible success on trying to hit the middle strings yet when presented with a video shown from the inside of a clear banjo head and then slowing the video down frame by frame I picked up the technique in seconds. This isn’t a trick of course. It’s the breakdown of the movement so that one’s practice is proper and technique driven.

Telling someone to “just keep trying until you get it” is akin to saying “just point your skis downhill, you’ll get it eventually” in learning to ski instead of teach in the snowplow, edge control and eventual movement across the fall line to develop the natural movement.

To learn what had take me months in a few minutes of determininf the percussive movement of the claw hammer stroke I put an on screen protractor against the strings and the plane of the head in a video and calculated the angle and timing and then I was able to get it in seconds. I still had to practice but the movement that worked was the starting point rather than a random guess.

I understand there is no trick to drop thumb but to start a person has to physically move the bones of the hand downward then engage the thumb into the string and an angle of approach has to occur and a apeed has to take place. It can’t happen without physics and an approach occurring. In 30 percent of my approaches I miss and bonk into the string above or miss the sting entirely and that’s out of about 12000 attempts over the last .#m weeks. So there is something I’m missing because I can’t guess that this is the best way to learn it. I do 500 repeats in the morning and 500 in the evening but over the last 5 days I haven’t noticed much improvement telling me it’s random which means that I’m not sure how to improve because I should be showing some slight improvement each day with a technique.

So I was curious how the movement might be broken down.

Jan 19, 2025 - 6:31:38 PM
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dbrooks

USA

4831 posts since 3/11/2004
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As Tom Collins and other fine teachers suggest, planting the thumb on its target string, whether the 5th string or an interior string, is a key move to learn drop thumb.  Even if the thumb is silent on the 5th string. Angle of attack may take care of itself.

David

Jan 19, 2025 - 7:40:22 PM

10112 posts since 8/30/2004

Yes David,
I agree 100 percent....that is how it should be done in my opinion...thanks David...Jack

Jan 20, 2025 - 5:51:13 AM
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carlb

USA

2654 posts since 12/16/2007

Some of us play with a bent thumb and some play with a straight thumb. Experiment and see if it solves your problem.

Jan 20, 2025 - 5:15:27 PM
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6382 posts since 3/11/2006

quote:
Originally posted by writerrad

There is no trick to learning the clawhammer banjo. It just takes a lot of work. The problem is that everyone is taught the first stroke by itself and spends too much time practicing it. That makes it hard to learn the other strokes. Teachers should teach all the strokes at the same time. That way, you might stumble a bit at first, but it won't be as awkward in the end.


Agree 100%.  The drop-thumb is often presented as an advanced technique and the teaching of it is delayed for far too long.  Additionally, by taking this approach, the student often develops a psychological block towards it.

Sourwood Mountain, the second tune I learned included drop-thumbing.

Jan 20, 2025 - 6:11:29 PM
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6382 posts since 3/11/2006

Wider string spacing may help.  Different makes of banjo vary in the nut width, and a Crowe-spaced bridge might be an idea.

It is common to play over the fingerboard nearly to a default these days, but the closer you play to the bridge the wider the string spacing.

Jan 20, 2025 - 7:20:58 PM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
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I think it actually has to do with the impact of the thumb pad in the string. On the fifth string it’s the entire thumb pad for me at the center of the pad. If my right thumb is divided from left to right it then the rest point of the ditty takes up about half of the thumb pad. If I rest it the same way on the second or third string then both the time to hit and the depth of the thumb into the strings is too great. If I make the drop thumb just take up 10-15 percent of the thumb pad from outside in and I focus all of my effort on hitting that then the strike is both faster much less likely to hit the higher number string above the target string. I tried this another 500 times slowly and it took my misses down to less than 5 percent. So it was all a matter of the amount of my thumb I was using. Now I just need to get this into muscle memory.

Jan 20, 2025 - 7:25:48 PM
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1394 posts since 10/23/2003

In one of ken Perlman's books, he has an exercise where you do all the strokes one after the other, 4 bars of bud diddy or the basic stroke, four bars of double thumb, four bars of drop thumb, etc. one after the other, instead of practicing one stroke for hours. Going through that will help a person. Every person is going to have a different attack based on their hand and arms difference and their musical preferences.

Jan 21, 2025 - 5:15:48 AM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
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quote:
Originally posted by writerrad

In one of ken Perlman's books, he has an exercise where you do all the strokes one after the other, 4 bars of bud diddy or the basic stroke, four bars of double thumb, four bars of drop thumb, etc. one after the other, instead of practicing one stroke for hours.


I actually do this!   I haven't read that book but I have daily practice of stretching and warming up my hands and fingers then I go through what I call my "BHanon" exercises which are my version of Hanon exercise for piano shifted to banjo.  I pick a key and move through a series of claw hammer strokes, bum ditty's, hammer on's, pull offs, slides, drop thumbs across all the strings and up and down the neck chords.  I had to sort of make up the patterns myself as I learned all of the chords in a given key.  I make myself say each note at each fret while I'm playing.   
 

the piano exercises of Hanon look like the attachment and are a set of page after page page of practice for a pianist to get their fingers moving through common stretches, patterns, runs and ups and downs.   
 

I usually take 30 min in the mornings right after workout to do that exercise for myself.

But I found my weakness with the drop thumbs across catching while I was practicing the song called cripple creek that my teacher assigned.   I've only learned four songs and this is the fifth and for each song I break down every measure and practice it hundreds of times.  This problem I was noticing happens in the first two measures where the first "bum ditty" then goes to a "drop thumb ditty".   After several thousand practices of it I was noticing pretty consistent mis-catches of the drop thumb stroke.   
 

I'm kind of nerdy about practice as it's my favorite part of playing.  I track everything and plot it and keep a log of all the activities and progress with lots of graphs and charts.   I actually noticed this in the data of misses that I was counting in groups of 200 drop thumb ditty practices.   that's why I was asking the question of the angle and approach for the thumb strike and rest.   I think I have it figured out as I just did another 500 of the bum ditty drop thumb ditty after my exercises and it seems to have nailed it better than 90 percent.

 

have a great day everyone!


 

Edited by - jsinjin on 01/21/2025 05:18:06

Jan 23, 2025 - 4:54:38 PM

98 posts since 5/24/2013

Tony has the best advice. The minutiae of details on some of this is amazing. It makes my head spin.

Jan 23, 2025 - 5:15:44 PM

pinenut

USA

175 posts since 10/2/2007

I must keep the outside edge of my thumbnail trimmed/filed pretty close to keep it from hooking.
If the nail gets long and starts hooking; overshooting and clipping strings happens with greater frequency.


Be patient with yourself. Find joy in the process and pursue it.

Jan 23, 2025 - 5:21:06 PM

Owen

Canada

16486 posts since 6/5/2011

quote:
Originally posted by charles grimm

Tony has the best advice. The minutiae of details on some of this is amazing. It makes my head spin.


Well, when you need a change, you can check this one out ... https://www.banjohangout.org/topic/401532  With any luck maybe it'll produce a counter rotation. devil

Feb 7, 2025 - 9:00:26 AM

9 posts since 1/1/2022

quote: I learned drop thumbing from the best, Stu Jamieson, and never miss the second string. The first string I will play on the way up with the back of the thumb nail. In the early days I was taught to hold a toilet paper roll, sized so the thumb and index fingers can just come together then separating the thumb so that the distance between the index and thumb becomes calibrated to drop thumb to any string. The four fingers curled up around the roll remain stiff and the wrist stiff also. The motion comes by bending at the elbow. If the wrist is loose then it becomes a variable in the distance between the thumb and index when drop thumbing. John
Originally posted by jsinjin

I’m a beginner with about 11 months of experience. I practice a lot. That’s all background


I have been learning a song where there is a bum ditty then drop thumb dirty at strings 1 and 2.

I completely and totally understand the way a drop thumb is played and I can incorporate it into songs and playing.

I’m actually asking about the mechanics of it. I notice that in about 30% of my playing this bum ditty - drop thumb ditty the thumb catches slightly on string three.


As I mention, I practice a lot with repeats of one or two measures hundreds or thousands of times with a metronome.

Somehow either my hand positioning or thumb angle of approach to the second string isn’t reproducible. Out of 2000 repeats I roughly counted about 600 that either cauvht slightly on string 3 or skimmed over the top of string 2.

I continue to practice but I know that when i was first leaning to percussive strike strings 3 and 4 it wasn’t until i watched Tom Collin’s playing and slowed down the video and put an artificial protractor on the screen that i could finally see the right approach and angle to hit the individual strings.

Has anyone run into this phenomenon with drop thumb and is there a way to approach the movement that eliminates the miss strokes so that the reproducible drop thumb be comes more uniform?

Thanks so much for any technical suggestions.

Jsj


Feb 7, 2025 - 9:31:41 AM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
Online Now

quote:
Originally posted by degreesf
quote: I learned drop thumbing from the best, Stu Jamieson, and never miss the second string. The first string I will play on the way up with the back of the thumb nail. In the early days I was taught to hold a toilet paper roll, sized so the thumb and index fingers can just come together then separating the thumb so that the distance between the index and thumb becomes calibrated to drop thumb to any string. The four fingers curled up around the roll remain stiff and the wrist stiff also. The motion comes by bending at the elbow. If the wrist is loose then it becomes a variable in the distance between the thumb and index when drop thumbing. John

 


This is the kind of mechanics discussion I was hoping for!  Thanks.  My teacher also explained the timing in drop thumbing in that the thumb should be following the initial percussive strike and not coming later down which was what I was doing initially.   That timing explanation helped a lot.

 

i think that sometimes a tendency is to explain that the mechanics of clawhammer are wide open meaning anything goes which is absolutely true.  It does help a beginner to see a "best option for a beginner". 
 

I often point to weightlifting in this example.   A famous book about weightlifting called starting "strength by mark rippetoe" is about the mechanics of each lift.  The deadlift is first in the book and takes up 50 pages of diagrams about how to do it.   Every angle, engagement of movement, muscle and vector is defined.   Mark later took questions about the variability of the technique and he said "this isn't the only way to do it, it's the best way to learn to do it without any injury".  He then went on to detail a lifter who had at that time set a world record of a 945 lb deadlift.   He said the form is radically different, there was rounding of the shoulders and a much earlier engagement of different muscles.  But he also said that the guy who did that was such an expert that his training likely included the best ways to do deadlift far before he lifted over 900 lbs.  

 

clawhammer too probably has hundreds of experts and 10 or so super experts with flawless and unique styles.    But to a beginner there is likely a "best option" to each movement including angles, timing and position of the hand.

 

 

thanks so much for your concept and explanation!

Feb 7, 2025 - 9:55:34 AM

Owen

Canada

16486 posts since 6/5/2011

Re. "I’ll video the next 1000 and analyze it some and see where I need to ensure that I come in." .... what angle did your analysis come up with?

Fwiw,  While there might well be a "best option" for each individual, I tend to look for some sort of "standard approach" with allowances being made for individual differences, IMNSHumbleO.   The "movement at the elbow" and curling the fingers seems pretty standard for the advice I've seen .... although I think I more often see to emulate holding a hammer handle or a credit card rather than a toilet paper roll .... toe-may-toe / toe-mah-toe??

Feb 7, 2025 - 11:42:32 AM

9 posts since 1/1/2022

Here is a recording that Uncle Stu made in 1946 of Rufis Crisp playing 'the Blue Goose' in his claw hammer style, lots of drop thumbing, hammer on's picks off's and scrolls where the hand opens up in a strum. He was old at the time and had been playing for 60 years (said he was a little rusty).

youtube.com/watch?v=vEW3y4FZl9Y

John

Feb 8, 2025 - 9:03:32 AM

Owen

Canada

16486 posts since 6/5/2011

Around 45:50 - 47:10 on this video there's an explanation re. the "claw" part of clawhammer.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF0DUFwCbO4&t=915s

Edit: .... around 49:30 he also explains (?) the diff between old-tyme and bluegrass.   [..... and his banjo neck is parallel to the floor!!!  wink ]

Edited by - Owen on 02/08/2025 09:09:24

Feb 8, 2025 - 10:40:49 AM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
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quote:
Originally posted by Owen

Re. "I’ll video the next 1000 and analyze it some and see where I need to ensure that I come in." .... what angle did your analysis come up with?

Fwiw,  While there might well be a "best option" for each individual, I tend to look for some sort of "standard approach" with allowances being made for individual differences, IMNSHumbleO.   The "movement at the elbow" and curling the fingers seems pretty standard for the advice I've seen .... although I think I more often see to emulate holding a hammer handle or a credit card rather than a toilet paper roll .... toe-may-toe / toe-mah-toe??


Let me try and sketch it later today.  I do a lot of sketching and I'll put together what I know.  Here is the type of image and breakdown of movement for exercise that is part of a book that describes movement for weightlifting.   This book was written by a professor of exercise physiology and while it does not break down every use case for every individual it does go through hundreds of pages of what the movement is trying to accomplish.  Even if every single movement is possible and anyone can do anything there does have to be a technique that would be best to teach a beginner.


Feb 8, 2025 - 10:45:32 AM

Owen

Canada

16486 posts since 6/5/2011

Nope ... it's because everybody can't do everything that there is no all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all,  "best."   IMNSHumbleO, of course.

Edit: Isn't that how this all started... the advice that was "best" for everybody (?) wasn't working for you?

Edited by - Owen on 02/08/2025 10:52:28

Feb 8, 2025 - 12:10:10 PM

195 posts since 4/19/2024
Online Now

quote:
Originally posted by Owen

Nope ... it's because everybody can't do everything that there is no all-encompassing, one-size-fits-all,  "best."   IMNSHumbleO, of course.

Edit: Isn't that how this all started... the advice that was "best" for everybody (?) wasn't working for you?


The discussion of playing in groups and listening definitely wasn't working for me.  it was one of the worst experiences of my life and not one I'd like to repeat.   So yes that one did not work for me as a best practice.

 

but my questions about mechanics have been met mostly with comments of "just keep trying you'll get it"

 

that experience doesn't work for me.

 

lets talk fly fishing, an activity with very precise technical movement.   There are many ways to do that but imagine teaching a class of 25 beginners how to perform the mechanics.   There is an introduction rather than a "just keep trying" approach.   Holding the rod at a specific angle, a movement that is similar to answering the phone where the arm and not the wrist is moved to 90 degrees from the ground and halted for a count of two while the line spools back then forward to aim at the target.  Following this the addition of the shake the feather the landing.   This is how to teach a novice fly casting.  Yes there are needs for heavy brush or very long casts or rolls or more but one has to start.

 

So let's approach a percussive down stroke for the clawhammer.  Yes there is value in watching someone play at a hundred notes per second at a major jam when you know no songs but does that break down the mechanics?  Probably not at least for me.   So imagine a diagram for a person who has never listened to a single banjo song of any type and has never played a guitar or any instrument with zero knowledge of mechanics. 
 

After about four months of flailing trying to "get it to work" by watching my teacher took a look at my playing a bum ditty and said "let's fix some bad habits"

let's set a reference frame of the neck with the strings forming a parallel plane over the frets.   Assuming that most banjos have this plane parallel to the head of the banjo we have to decide how a brand new never played any instrument before player should angle the instrument.  
 

The first axis we consider is the angle the plane should make to the ground.  We can range that from below parallel to straight up and there could be players that do strange things with the angle beyond a 90 degree incidence but again to a beginner it's unlikely this is the optimum introductory teaching reference frame.   So let's say the easiest to teach is 45 degrees from the normal of parallel to the floor.  Then we could show in the banjo drawing that the resting pot can sit with or without a strap to angle the neck at 45 degrees.

 

the next angle we could consider is the plane of the fretboard and strings.   If we measured 1000 people and took a look at the average angel of the fretboard to the floor depending on the best way for a hand to reach the strings with the wrist in a "normal"'position to allow one to make hammer ons or basic chords easy, that angle to the floor might tilt anywhere from 250 to 275 degrees (assuming the floor is reference and we are going clockwise with a right handed banjo).  
 

so now we have two drawings showing the easiest way for a new player to hold the instrument.

 

i spent three months bashing the strings missing everything in the middle strings before watching an 8 minute video by Tom Collins that described the angle of incidence of the hand progression at specifically 90 degrees to the strings suddenly had the hitting of the strings perfectly every time.  Although I might have eventually learned it, that breakdown with video inside and along the strings taught me more than any videos of watching people play ever did.   the movement was broken down.

so imagine we sketch that angle moving across the strings as the plane that. The middle or index finger travels in.  We already have many drawings and examples of how to hold the hand but then imagine we have shown the exact angle that the metacarpals of the finger should take as the nail pulls up, moves back then the wrist is used to percussively strike that down and then retract while the exact width of the thumb pad is shown landing into the fifth string and the rough timing of that.

 

and all of this is in a book that one can pick up without being concerned about a song.

 

similar to the mechanics of scales on piano or starting strength on weightlifting or learning to cast before fishing.   
 

That's what I was looking for in the how to.   Clawhammer banjo mechanics with diagrams, physics and specific movement broken down.

 

there are benefits to those people who have learned everything by trying out but going back to my akateboard example on other replies here, Tony Hawk first landed a 900 in an awe inspiring x games finish after years of trying and failing.   An X games 8years later showed an 11 year old landing a 900 then 1080 in succession on the mega ramp and that kids coach said that they had analyzed the movement frame by frame and broke it down into steps on trampolines and in foam pits.  I believe there is always a best way to teach a movement and that's what I was looking for in drop thumb angle and timing.
 


 

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