"Just gorgeous Mark. And you really have me thinking now! I have a few books of colonial dance tunes (minuets, bouree, gigue, etc) and it seems very reasononable that plantation musicians would have picked up a few of them. Right? Maybe? Sure!…"

"This one is better......in landscape like the original.Briggs%27%20Revised%20Notation%20Book.pdf"

"Yes one can definitely play in whatever pitch/key one wants to if playing solo."

"Tune it to any pitch you want. What we are really discussing is a  standard for reading notation. Why let one book written differently ruin your day? If Briggs' is written in A, then it is in line with every other banjo notation from that…"

"According to Albert Baur, who knew Frank Converse, the pitch of the banjo was in A by the time or just after Converse wrote/edited the Briggs Banjo Instructor.  Pretty much all other books and music for the banjo published after Briggs up to…"

"Nice one, Mark. Another one to add to my Aird repertoire..."

"Strumelia, Tim did it for those of us who only know how (or prefer) to read standard notation in A/E, as in the Converse books. For context, look at the recent thread started by M’Lou..."

"You can play in any key you want based upon the tuning of your banjo. This has to do with consistency and ease of reading......keeping all banjo specific arrangements to have the flagged 5th at E. "

"Tim, I'm a little confused.  Can you explain the advantage or purpose of changing the Briggs tunes to the keys of A and E from their normal G and A ?  Is there a movement afoot to raise the keys higher across the board for minstrel…"

"Wonderful!  Now I know what I am going to do today!"

"Briggs%27%20with%20Revised%20Notation.pdf This is it."

"Terry Bell sprayed the heads of the two tack head banjos he made for me. He used Aquanet and it works fine. It has to be heavy humidity before I need to worry about having to make adjustments or not play my banjo at all. I like the popsicle trick as…"

"I'm just gathering them right now. I may try to format it in landscape."

"You. Da. Man."