Tune Request

[John Cohen]

This might be a long shot, but does anybody have a tab version of Zip Coon from the 1886 Converse tutor?  The Briggs version just isn't doing much for me.

[John Cohen]

It's pretty simple.  I just played the tune slowly reading the original score, and I tabbed it out note by note.  When I'm tabbing, I write a whole measure's worth of numbers first, and then go back and add the stems.  For notes I didn't know, I just counted down (or up) to them from notes I did know.  As for the position change at the beginning of the the B-part, you can just tell that it is required, since that's the easiest way to play the tune.  After I had a rough draft, I recopied it nicely to make the final tab.  I think after I do a couple more of these, I'll be able to read the original scores well enough that I no longer have to use tab.  Thanks everyone for the advice!

[Tim Twiss]

When you get into it, study the detail of the Hammers, Combinations, and ways it is fingered for pull offs and articulation. ALL these banjo style tunes in the Analytical are a beautiful ballet of the fingers....so very well conceived.

[Andy Chase]

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but if you're comfortable with markup type languages (for example, if you've ever written an HTML document "by hand" or used LaTeX for digital typesetting) you might want to check out Lilypond, which is a free "music engraving" system. I wrote a post about it a while back here.  It can transpose and create tablature.

I have no philosophical objection to tab (I used tab for years and years for both guitar and banjo music) but the deeper I got into the early tutor books, the less practical it became; it's one thing to crack open a song book where everything's already tabbed out, but that interim step of converting these old tunes to tab gets old fast; after enough time spent staring at the notation and "hunting and pecking" for the notes on the fingerboard, I did finally start to get the hang of just reading straight from the original tutors.  It's still slow going, but getting easier all the time.

[Strumelia]

My highest goal is to slowly work out how to play a tune on my banjo from just listening, using no paper at all.  I can sometimes do that with simple tunes.  Second choice for me is to learn to read the tune from the tutor notation or other standard notation/sheet music and figure out how to play it on my banjo from that.  If all that proves too difficult I will then go to tab... but I do try to keep that as a last resort because I know I learn more by doing it the other ways.

[Leonidas (Lee) Jones]

I have the advantage of being classically trained, so I read music fleuntly in three clefs. Oddly though, I had never read banjo music in traditional notation until this year, since the things I was playing on the steel string were all in tab. I started tabbing things out using Tabledit, but I quickly realized that jusy getting used to standard notation would open up all the repertory much more quickly. I still can't sight play as well as I can in tab, but I can learn a tune faster then it would take to tab it out. While it may take longer if you ere not at all used to notation, it will be well worth it.

[John Cohen]

I'm classically trained as well, so that's one of the main reasons I'm moving towards reading the music from the original notation.  I've just never read music on a stringed instrument before, so it's a very different mindset than what I'm used to- but hey, this is how people learned to play in the 19th century, so I'd like to replicate that.

[Leonidas (Lee) Jones]

The kicker with period banjo notation is the dual nature of G-D Briggs notation, as opposed to A-E Rice and beyond. Also, you are a more advanced player then I am, and so the reading difficulties are, I am sure, magnified. Its still worth the effort, I am sure, though I would think tabbing out from notation is in and of itself a good step. As an aside, any of your people going to Red Apple Farm?

[Strumelia]

I read standard notation in a rudimentary way, though I sometimes have to work it out slowly.  But the banjo tutor notation seems to be a hybrid form of SMN to me- there are quirks in it that one doesn't find in plain standard notation for say cello or fiddle.  Such banjo quirks make it a little harder- for instance when the fifth string notes are always indicated by a double flag (wtf?)  Add this to the rather exasperating duality of the Briggs/Rice issue as Leonidas mentions...and it's a significant barrier to overcome.  I don't have nearly so many issues with reading simple fiddle tunes in standard notation as I do in the tutor 'banjo notation'.  TAB becomes an easy way to get around all that...but then one doesn't learn as much.

[Leonidas (Lee) Jones]

What makes it much easier to deal with is the nature of the banjo, in that just about everything is in the same two keys. Its almost always the same set of notes. On most instruments that vast majority of reading mistakes are key signature related, which is almost a non issue with banjo music.

[Strumelia]

Which two keys do you mean Leonidas?-  G, D, C, A, E.... ?   ;D

Leonidas Jones said:

What makes it much easier to deal with is the nature of the banjo, in that just about everything is in the same two keys.

[Leonidas (Lee) Jones]

;) Seriously though, technically, its the the2 same fingerings. Its just a matter of a step transposition, not at all difficult once you're used to it. I play on three different banjos in different tunings, switching every ten minutes or so, just to hear a different key center. It really doesn't matter what book I'm reading from. The banjo itself determines what key I'm in.

[Strumelia]

I guess it gets more complicated if you also play clawhammer in various other tunings and fingerings... ugh, my aging brain can only handle so much!- true that!