My Composition

Here is a link to my own recording (cover) of the popular "Old Crow Medecine Show" song "Wagon Wheel". I played banjo, tambourine, and sang for this recording.  The guitar was played by Dan Howlett, whom I have been taking lessons from over the course of this semester.

https://soundcloud.com/tai-whelon

The 5-String Banjo

The 5-String banjo is a variation on the original banjo design.  The fifth string is usually the same gauge as the first, but starts from the fifth fret, three quarters the length of the other strings.  The short fifth string means that, unlike many string instruments, string pitches on a five-string banjo do not go in order from lowest to highest across the neck.  Instead, from low to high, they go fourth, third, second, first, and fifth.

American old-time music typically uses the five-string open back banjo.  It is played in a number of different styles, the most common being claw-hammer or frailing, characterized by the use of a downward rather than upward motion when striking the strings with a fingernail.  Frailing techniques use the thumb to catch the fifth string for a drone after each strum or twice in each action, or to pick out additional melody notes in what is known as drop-thumb.  Pete Seeger popularised a folk style by combining clawhammer with up-picking, usually without the use of fingerpicks.  Another common style of old-time banjo playing is fingerpicking banjo or classic banjo.  This style is based upon parlour-style guitar.

Bluegrass music, which uses the five-string resonator banjo almost exclusively, is played in several common styles.  These include Scruggs style, named after Earl Scruggs; melodic, or Keith style, named after Bill Keith; and the three-finger style with single string work, also called Reno style after Don Reno.  In these styles, the emphasis is on a continuous eighth-note rhythm, known as rolls.  All of these styles are typically played with fingerpicks.

The 5-String banjo has been used in classical music since before the turn of the 20^th century.  Contemporary and modern works have been written or arranged for the instrument by many different artists.

Notable Banjo Players

Winston Marshall is probably the most widely known banjo player in today's music scene.  He is part of the English folk rock group "Mumford & Sons".

Earl Scruggs was an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a three-finger banjo picking style that is a defining characterisitic of bluegrass music.

Bill Keith made a significant contribution to the stylistic development of the instrument.  In the 1960's he introduced a variation on the popular "Scruggs style" of banjo playing, which would soon become known as melodic style, or "Keith Style".

Don Reno was an American bluegrass and country musician best known as a banjo player in partnership with Red Smiley, and later with guitarist Bill Harrell

Peter Seeger is an American folk singer.  A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940's, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950's.  Peter popularized a folk style by combining "claw-hammer" with "up-picking", usually without the use of fingerpicks.

Techniques

Two techniques that are closely associated with the banjo are “rolls” and "claw-hammer".  

"Rolls" are right hand finger patterns that consist of eighth notes that divide each measure.  

Example of a "Roll" (Forward Reverse Roll):
http://www.filedropper.com/forwardreverseroll

“Claw-hammer” consists of downwards striking the four main strings while the drone (5^th string)  is played with a lifting motion of the thumb.  Melodies can be quite intricate, adding techniques such as double thumb and drop thumb. Frailing is another word often used instead of clawhammer.

Example of "Clawhammer" style: 
http://www.filedropper.com/claw-hammer

Main Parts of a 5-String Banjo

A History

The modern banjo has historical roots that can be traced back over 150 year to the late 19^th century classic banjo styles, the mid 19^th century minstrel banjo styles, and even further back to earlier African musical influences.

The idea of stretching a skin across a resonating chamber, then attaching a neck and strings originated with Western Africans, who were forcibly taken as slaves and brought to the “New World”.  These early banjos consisted of a gourd or a carved wood body with an animal skin stretched around it and simply a stick used as the neck. 

When Africans and Europeans arrived in North America, they had shared ideas and attitudes towards music, despite their massively unequal statuses.  This led to new kinds of music being formed from both groups, both separately and together.  The mid 19^th century minstrel banjo is likely one of the first creations born from the meeting of the two musical worlds.  Next to the fiddle, the banjo was the most popular instrument in African-American music in the U.S. throughout the 18^th and into the 19^th century.  In the early 1800’s, white musicians began to play the banjo, in imitation of the southern African-American’s.  By the time the mid-1800’s rolled around, professional performers had popularized the banjo across the U.S. and in England.  Because these musicians often performed with blackened faces, they became known as “blackface minstrels”.

There are a lot of negative aspects surrounding the “blackface minstrels”, due to the fact that they depicted slaves and southern life in inaccurate and degrading ways.  Nevertheless, minstrelsy was a part of America’s first nationally popular music, and it helped to popularize the banjo for both black and white populations.  Due to their popularity, the first factory-made banjos appeared in the 1840’s.  Soon after that, five-string banjo’s arrived, and were adopted as the norm, which they still are today.