Fretted / Fretless

[Tim Twiss]

There is no clear line where fretless ends and fretted starts. I''m glad Rob is posting a lot of these on an appropriate fretted instrument fingerstyle. Comparing our versions helps clarify that line. I like all the recent ones you put up. I can respect your effort for "fingerstyle Briggs' " etc., as it kind of meets my research in the middle....approaching it from the other end.  I know I have ventured far into what is "fretted territory" with what I do. Some of it works...and some not so well, but it is worth the experiment. A lot of our banjo experiments fall into the "possible, but not the best" idea. This kind of investigation will bring out clearer lines to us on what was done in those times, and where it was just commonplace to use a fretted. On the other hand, much of the early repertoire is so obviously Stroke and frettless, although other ways are possible. We just gotta play 'em all and "be there" in time travel...then you can tell. Such a mystery is this material....as I said before, the lack of direction is a blessing AND a curse.   

[Trapdoor2]

Bless you both, dammit!

All bases now covered, SIR! Returning to work, SIR! ;-)

[Tim Twiss]

Ha!....Marc, you kill me sometimes.

Trapdoor2 said:

Bless you both, dammit!

All bases now covered, SIR! Returning to work, SIR! ;-)

[Rob MacKillop]

How much of what we do is serious research and how much is just plain fun?! I can't tell. I have a fretless Boucher on the way, and will play that mostly fingerstyle.

As for Briggs played fingerstyle, well, it started out at me loving the music but getting frustrated my stroke playing just couldn't cut it. Then it dawned on me that many guitarists during Briggs' time were coming to the banjo for employment opportunities (the banjo being way more popular during this period) and not all of them would have found stroke style easy. So there is a good chance that many of these pieces were played fingerstyle. Plus I keep thinking of Converse's description of the negro busker - the only clear description I've read of a negro banjo player from that early period - and he played up strokes with his index finger.

So we have some solid repertoire for stroke and some solid repertoire for fingerstyle, and then we have a whole bunch of material that could go either way.

This thread's subject line is fretted/fretless, but I think the issue is more stroke/fingerstyle. Buckley was advocating raised metal frets as early as 1860.

If I was starting again, I would get myself two banjos for this period. A fretless Boucher and a fretted Ashborn with a 14'' rim (as advocated by Buckley, 1860). And I think Tim's half-stroke/half-fingerstyle technique is a very useful facility. Tricky, though...

[Tim Twiss]

It must be fun...otherwise, why would we do it? Rob, you and I have the "Classical Curse" of wanting to do a good and thorough job. It's just our nature. By the way, that example of Converse bothers me...it's just a mention of one guy on the street. I'd put it in my back pocket and not make too much of it.

Rob MacKillop said:

How much of what we do is serious research and how much is just plain fun?! I can't tell. I have a fretless Boucher on the way, and will play that mostly fingerstyle.

As for Briggs played fingerstyle, well, it started out at me loving the music but getting frustrated my stroke playing just couldn't cut it. Then it dawned on me that many guitarists during Briggs' time were coming to the banjo for employment opportunities (the banjo being way more popular during this period) and not all of them would have found stroke style easy. So there is a good chance that many of these pieces were played fingerstyle. Plus I keep thinking of Converse's description of the negro busker - the only clear description I've read of a negro banjo player from that early period - and he played up strokes with his index finger.

So we have some solid repertoire for stroke and some solid repertoire for fingerstyle, and then we have a whole bunch of material that could go either way.

This thread's subject line is fretted/fretless, but I think the issue is more stroke/fingerstyle. Buckley was advocating raised metal frets as early as 1860.

If I was starting again, I would get myself two banjos for this period. A fretless Boucher and a fretted Ashborn with a 14'' rim (as advocated by Buckley, 1860). And I think Tim's half-stroke/half-fingerstyle technique is a very useful facility. Tricky, though...

[Carl Anderton]

Tim Twiss said:

By the way, that example of Converse bothers me...it's just a mention of one guy on the street. I'd put it in my back pocket and not make too much of it.



Actually, Converse maintains that most black banjo players played in this manner. Here is the whole quote--

"...I cannot say that I learned anything from his execution, which, though amusing, was limited to the thumb and first finger,--pulling or "picking" the strings with both."

"...This manner of fingering--as I learned in later years when visiting Southern plantations--was characteristic of the early colored player; an individual of rare occurrence, however, and whose banjo was of the rudest construction, often a divided gourd with a coon skin stretched over the larger part of a drum..."

This opens up a whole nuther topic; that the number of slaves strumming gourd banjos on the ante-bellum plantations and the importance of the gourd banjo to slave culture has been exaggerated...I won't pretend to have any answers to that question, though.

[Joel Hooks]

As to fretted, fretless, stroke or guitar. Many later tutors were still publishing the same old pieces, these were books teaching guitar style. Then there is Stewart publishing these pieces "Suitable for either stroke or fingerstyle."

I think that we can safely put this to rest that these were played both ways. One should also take into account that even in the late 1880s tackhead tubs could still be bought, new.

There is something to be said for banjo style and shaking the room. There is no substitute for punching out a tune and getting a audience excited.

There are no clear lines for this stuff. And I think that thimble playing late century was more common than what documentation would have us believe.

Of course, those were likely "ear players" or "simple method humbugs."

[Rob MacKillop]

'"...This manner of fingering--as I learned in later years when visiting Southern plantations--was characteristic of the early colored player''

There ye go. Characteristic.

I think we have to accept that both styles existed side by side. Some pieces sound better with one technique than the other, for sure, but that doesn't mean the other style won't do. I'm just pushing the fingerstyle as far as I can back in time, and I believe with some legitimacy. But that doesn't mean I don't like stroke style. It's all good.

[Carl Anderton]

The point that Converse was trying to make, though, was that there were very few black banjo players in the early days, and none of them was particularly good.

That sounds a bit harsh, and it may offend some players and researchers today, but I see that opinion expressed over and over in articles in The Cadenza in the 1890's and 1900's.

Could it be attributed period racism wanting to exclude blacks from the early days of the banjo, a history that the aging white guys wanted to make "their own?" I don't have a complete answer, and I'm hoping to have a discussion on this at the AEBG III.

As to fingerstyle in the 1840's and 1850's, Converse relates that none of the "champions" he studied played much fingerstyle. Typical is this comment, "His knowledge of fingerstyle was slight and limited to a few simple pieces and accompaniments." Of course he's writing this in 1902 when everyone has been playing complicated fingerstyle tunes of every description for decades.

The one exception to all of this was George Swayne Buckley--of whom Converse maintains played almost everything fingerstyle.

I think the best candidate for early tutor material that was actually played fingerstyle at the time would be the Buckley material (unless specifically marked).

Not that there shouldn't be extensive experimentation with both styles on all of the pieces--because of course we learn so much when actually hearing the pieces played.


Rob MacKillop said:

'"...This manner of fingering--as I learned in later years when visiting Southern plantations--was characteristic of the early colored player''
There ye go. Characteristic.
I think we have to accept that both styles existed side by side. Some pieces sound better with one technique than the other, for sure, but that doesn't mean the other style won't do. I'm just pushing the fingerstyle as far as I can back in time, and I believe with some legitimacy. But that doesn't mean I don't like stroke style. It's all good.

[Tim Twiss]

Thanks for the insight on G. Swaine Buckley.

[Carl Anderton]

Tim Twiss said:

Thanks for the insight on G. Swaine Buckley.

Glad to-- and on-topic here, Converse says that GS Buckley was playing a fretted banjo when he first saw him in 1852.

[Tim Twiss]

Even more...too cool. Then you look at that monster of a banjo he holds in the Carlin book. And look at his contributions to the 1860 book....Now, we know his Dad was quite literate (musically). Any mention of the skills of G. Swaine ( so far as notating his own work and such )? Was Buckley (Sr.) ever mentioned in direct connection with the Briggs' book? G. Swaine really contributed some "stretching" pieces.

[Carl Anderton]

After the story of first seeing Buckley's Serenaders in 1852 (under a canvas), and what a revelation it was--the fretted banjo, the fingerstyle execution, and the refined and "finished" nature of their performance--Converse has little to say of the Buckleys, and what he does say is either lukewarm or rather disparaging, such as this little gem--

"James Buckley, the father, eventually engaged in teaching at Pond's Music Store, then located down Broadway. He was not an expert. He, like the occasional present-day banjo hypercritic who discovers a new "specific" for the instrument, conceived the notion that the portion of the 2d fret under the first string should be separated and placed about an eight of an inch nearer the nut, a notion, I may add, he was permitted to monopolize."

As to their legacy he says this--

"In fact, though fine comedians and artists, they were in advance of the times, which may account to some extent for their comparatively brief existence as a company, as public opinion in those days regarding the status of the negro and the delineation of his character was not prepared for radical innovations...the family has "passed on" and is but a memory. Fred, the violinist, died in 1864, R. Bishop in 1867, James in 1872, and George Swayne later, date forgotten."

Is it just me, or do you read a little "disparagement" between the lines of this?

And one other point- I think Frank Converse is dead wrong when he speaks of their "comparatively brief existence as a company." They started out as the "Congo Melodists" in 1844 and continued on right up to the Civil "Waw"--at which point they went back to England and several members died soon thereafter. I'd say their existence was pretty dang long and ended of causes beyond their control.