Classic style (a genre by itself); Charlie Poole style (search for Pete Peterson); 3-finger (not bluegrass—multiple approaches). You can find plenty of examples on YouTube. Tom Hanway has the Irish thing down; hard to find, but worth the listening.

3 finger playing isn't relegated to just playing rolls.
I play lots of fiddletune melodies with fiddle players and I use 2 fingerpicks and a thumbpick.
I also play piano bar songs from the 40s and 50s.
Rolls can be fit in,but I also enjoy chord melodies and harmonies wearing picks.
Any kind of music can be played with 3 picks.

I don't know how or if anyone else does this, but you learn to change the accent to each different finger.
For instance, a Waltz comes to mind. Or to get real nuts with a Samba.
I may do a full strum at the chord change so the timing fits, but I never clawhammer. Good Luck!

three finger irish won't happen over night--First of all you will have to find your strongest ways of stating passages--be it single string or melodic----clawhammer should get feet moving

quote:

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Originally posted by msv133

Hello!
Can somebody send me some links of different styles/sounds within playing 3-finger? Or is it really all bluegrass? I understand it's MAINLY bluegrass, but there has to be people out there doing other stuff with it.

My motivation for asking this question is that I've been working on getting ready for a local Irish jam session where they play Jigs and reels. I play clawhammer, and learning to play melody has been really good for my development as a musician. That being said, I started scratching my head wondering why If I'm just playing note for note melody why I wouldn't try using the 3 finger style. And yes, I realize both clawhammer and 3-finger are suboptimal for playing jigs and reels, but I'm having fun and definitely improving my overall banjo skills

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It can definitely be done. 

Once I learned a few Irish/Canadian fiddletunes I found many repeating passages in the keys of A and D that helped each new piece.New habits learned.

Here’s a couple

Don't Reno played several different styles/sounds within 3 finger. Rolls, triplets, brush strokes, single string. Country, bluegrass jazz, pop tunes, show tunes.

Melodic style is sometimes used to play fiddle tunes.

You can play virtually anything with 3-fingers, picks or no picks. Alternate picking (which today people call single-string picking) was a mainstay of popular banjo playing long before bluegrass existed. This and "melodic style" (the basics of which also predate bluegrass) are two ways of rendering melodic lines. IMO melodic style not suited to Irish session music due to it's "runny" sound and reliance on open strings, which for some tunes may not be in the right key.

That all being said... Playing session tunes up to speed with 3 fingers is going to take some serious practice, and in the initial stages, you will have to work out all the string crossings in advance. 

The easier and musically more convincing option is to play your gDGBD-tuned five-string with a flatpick (also nothing new). DUDU for reels and DUD-DUD for jigs. There are some good explanations of flatpick technique online from Enda Scahill and others. 

Learning tabs of Irish (or any other type of music) will plant ideas in your head that will carry over into other music.

Literally anything can be played on the banjo...although this video isn't Irish it shows what can be done..these guys are awesome!!
youtube.com/watch?v=9w7EyU7kpzg

I never knew what the next song was going to be for 15 years when I played banjo with a piano-bar man.
It could be from Bill Monroe,Sarah Vaughn,Vaughn Monroe,Buddy Holley or The Eagles.
In many cases I'd never heard the piece,before.
I had a ball.Very exciting to figure out stuff in the moment.

youtube.com/shorts/1nndI43_HMI...z4leRAJPT

Well sure! This is Wild Mountain Thyme. On m' banjer, if we're yielding to the craic.

quote:

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Originally posted by steve davis

I never knew what the next song was going to be for 15 years when I played banjo with a piano-bar man.
It could be from Bill Monroe,Sarah Vaughn,Vaughn Monroe,Buddy Holley or The Eagles.
In many cases I'd never heard the piece,before.
I had a ball.Very exciting to figure out stuff in the moment.

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One of my most favorite things to do, too. 

I played with four guitars and a dobro yesterday and 90% of our songs were Country pieces.
I grew up on playing classic Country with my folks and fell right at home yesterday.
One of them said "You know Country pretty good" and I said "Dad played pedal steel to Mom's piano and we played Country and Western music."

We played over 2 hours and had a lot of fun.
I played a lot of chord melodies and tenors always paying attention to fitting in and when to just play "drum" syncopations on muted strings.