Minstrel Banjo

For enthusiasts of early banjo

My take on an old tune in gCDCD tuning.

Views: 100

Comment by Baby Bear Lo-Fi on December 13, 2013 at 12:30pm

I'm new! I don't have a minstrel banjo, but I want to get one soon!

Comment by Strumelia on December 13, 2013 at 2:28pm

Hi Baby Bear, and welcome to MinstrelBanjo!

Gotta love those GoodTime banjers- they always sound great, play smooth, and are such a good value too.

You've got some good clawhammer chops going on there- real natural right hand rhythm.

Having come from clawhammer playing into newly exploring minstrel/stroke style myself only a couple years ago, I can relate to some of the issues one encounters when the two playing styles meet.  At first it seemed to me that stroke style wasn't really any different than clawhammer, and I thought it'd be sooo easy for me to frail my way right through it.  But I quickly learned that it was not as breezy as it seemed...   =8-*   I had to wrestle my right hand and thumb away from their comfy 'autopilot' setting, because both hands were being asked to do slightly different tasks and patterns.  It really messed with my head!  I had to start from zero again and struggle with the new fingering/rhythm patterns which were just ever-so-slightly different from CH...but different enough to drive me batty.  =8-\   One thing was that the thumb is used a lot more to play melody notes, and also there is more single-note playing, less brushing and less bass string use.  Don't even ask me about triplets.  lolol

If you look at the early videos of Valerie here, and of mine, you'll see us utilizing non-minstrel banjos to start out with before we got our first actual minstrel banjos.  (Valerie has been using a bluegrass banjo, I used a fretless regular openback)  We just put them in Briggs tuning and made do for a while. Many others here have done the same when starting out.

I began with the ulitmate easy tune Juba, because I needed to build my stroke style playing from the ground up slowly. Otherwise, i found I kept reverting to familiar clawhammer playing patterns.  I knew that playing more complex tunes in the minstrel repertoire later on would be difficult if I wasn't comfortable with the typical stroke moves.  And I felt that playing the minstrel repertoire in clawhammer style would be kinda pointless and miss the real flavor of that period of time in banjo playing. 

I'm still in the beginner phase of stroke style, but at least I have a small repertoire of a dozen or so minstrel tunes that I can play at slow-moderate speed now in actual stroke style- I worked for about two years to get to this point(!)-- but you are young, super talented, and can likely speed along to the same point much faster than I.

I think you'll find everyone here to be very helpful in your minstrel banjo journey.   :)

Comment by Baby Bear Lo-Fi on December 13, 2013 at 9:28pm
Thanks! I try to be aware of switching into auto pilot. I've been drawn to minstrel tunes because I already do a lot of melody with a drop thumb style and the stoke-style seems to lean that way too.
I am hoping to get a fretless with gut strings for xmas, but we'll see.
Comment by Nicholas A Bechtel on December 21, 2013 at 3:19pm

Welcome  a board buddy!

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