I’m not sure what contemporary alt is, but I’ve arranged a few tunes not in the normal bluegrass catalogue. Here’s a Neil Young number.

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Originally posted by bellisamum

Do any of you fabulous banjo players have any tips and tricks on applying three finger picking to other styles of music. All music could benefit from a banjo!

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To be clear: Are you asking about (1) applying three-finger banjo to non-bluegrass/non-banjo songs and instrumentals in a non-bluegrass-sounding way, or (2) applying three-finger banjo picking to songs from other genres to "grassify" them?

Both are done. How? As the Nike tagline says: Just do it.

I'm not being sarcastic. That's really how I do it.

If you want to play a song on banjo but not have it sound bluegrass, then don't do the things that make it sound bluegrass: don't play lots of standard bluegrass licks; don't play with a bluegrass tempo, beat, or feel; keep the non-bluegrass sound of the song in mind.

If you want to grassify it, think and feel bluegrass banjo as you play it. Work in licks, play it at a bluegrass tempo with a bluegrass beat.

I realize I'm over-simplifying, but it's difficult to explain and teach. And I don't think there's any more to it than one's own ability to play their instrument in different ways and to do it intentionally to make the music they want to make. What it comes down to is: the banjo is a musical instrument that can be used to play music. The banjo is 100% genre agnostic. Genre is 100% in the player's head and hands.

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Some examples from my own experience:

Walk Away Renee was originally a 1960s "baroque rock" song by the Left Banke and later a Motown hit for the Four Tops. In the attached file, my 1980s bluegrass band plays it bluegrass style. Rhythm guitar and bass set the pace, mandolin and banjo play leads My solo is largely forward roll and Foggy Mountain Breakdown roll with melody mostly on the second string. This is an example of adapting the song to a desired style.

Somewhere from West Side Story is played here with no intent to sound like bluegrass or typical banjo music. No bluegrass banjo licks or embellishments. I'm trying to play the song the same way a solo fingerstyle guitarist would. This is an example of adapting my style of play to fit the song.

Possibly both Ken. I consider my banjo as a just a beautiful instrument (for playing any music) not just a bluegrass instrument. That way too, I can play with my buddies who have not the slightest interest in bluegrass (silly ole them).

All I can do is offer examples:

Doobie Bros cover, Listen to the Music

If you follow @fiddle_guy, you find a collection of various songs done on banjo, fiddle and guitar in various iterations.

Eagles, Take it Easy

Tom Petty, American Girl

Wichita Lineman, Johnny B. Goode, and more than I can remember. Best of Luck

I played for a spell with an Irish band, using three-finger bluegrass technique. Although the musics are related, they are not the same. It helped me to think of the banjo as a percussion, rather than as a melodic, instrument.

But that's just one style. To see where the possibilities take you, listen to a lot of Bela Fleck, Alison Brown and Noam Pikelny. All of them can play bluegrass with the best of them. They can do a lot of things well beyond that.

In that case, as I quoted Nike: Just do it.

There's one difficult situation I occasionally run into, where a tempo or beat makes the banjo too slow if it picks eighth notes in 4/4, but way too fast if it's double-timed to do rolls. This came up on two non-bluegrass songs I can think of from my last bluegrass band 15 years ago: "I'll Be There (If You Ever Need Me)" from Ray Price and "Walk of Life" from Dire Straits. I think the band leader even had me play a solo on "I'll Be There" and it was really tough because it was so fast I couldn't do much but stay on chord notes. Not very interesting. For "Walk of Life" I think I just pinched chords in the chugga-chugga rhytmh of this song.

Oh: Johnny Cash songs are tough for me to sound good on. When I lived in NYC 2013-16, there was a guy who always called Johnny Cash songs - in E - at our anything goes bluegrass jam.

Lesson: Not all songs work the way we'd like. 

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Attached here is another non-bluegrass song from my 1980s band. It's our total copy cover of Steve Goodman's arrangement of "The Dutchman." In listening to it just now, I heard one of the suggestions I made above for working banjo into a song without sounding bluegrassy. I don't play a single 2-3 third string slide or 3-2 pull-off or 2-3 second string hammer or anything else bluegrassy along those lines. Everything is chord or scale notes, apreggiated chords, or melodic style licks. It's all banjo stuff, to be sure, but with none of those banjoistic chromatic notes or blue notes it's more sweet (for want of a better word).

Here I’m playing some Bob Dylan (and Woody Guthrie)