Archive for the ‘Beginner Banjos’ Category
Methods to Learn Banjo
If you’re looking to learn a skill that is entertaining, soothing, and expands your mind, you can learn to play banjo. Learning to play banjo stimulates your mind and encourages you to come up with new songs, fostering endless creativity. Banjos for kids are the perfect way to get your child interested in the arts and develop valuable math skills. All you really need is a banjo and a way to learn. You can try to teach yourself, but you’ll learn much more quickly and efficiently if you use one of the following methods.
A banjo teacher is the best way for many people to learn to play banjo. A trained teacher has an organized way to teach the skill, and they can help you avoid bad playing habits before they form. You can also have a friend or family member teach you, and this is even more beneficial if they have learned from a teacher or if they have taught before. You can also learn from banjo books or banjo instructions online, but you really need to focus on this self-driven method. You also lack the advantage of getting personalized feedback and correction from a real person. The final method is to learn from a DVD, which can almost be like having a real teacher with you, without the real-time mistake correction. This is a great option for those who are visual learners.
Earl Scruggs learned to play the 5-string banjo on an instrument that belonged to his older brother Junie. The banjo did not always stay in tune well, and the young virtuoso found himself having to retune mid-song. Scruggs’s musical inventiveness took it from there, and he soon adapted that mid-song tuning sound into his developing style. After recording his first tuner instrumental Earl’s Breakdown in 1951, Scruggs decided a little mechanical help would make playing a lot easier. He installed a pair of cams onto his banjo peghead that raised and lowered the second and third strings to preset pitches. The most common settings are for the second string to lower from B to A and the third string to lower from G to F#, moving the banjo from G tuning to D tuning and giving the devices the common name “D-tuners”.
Scruggs’s new innovation was soon featured in such instrumentals as Flint Hill Special, Foggy Mountain Chimes, and Randy Lynn Rag. D-tuners soon became required equipment for any aspiring bluegrass banjoist. Melodic banjo pioneer Bill Keith took things the next step with a design that incorporated conventional second- and third-string tuners and the stop-setting mechanism in one unit, making it no longer necessary to drill extra holes in the peghead. Keith tuners became the standard in the banjo world with over 30,000 sold to date and are still manufactured by Bill Keith in Woodstock, New York. Players seeking the unique feel and sound of traditional cam-type tuners now have another option available in a new product called Cheat-A-Keys, which use the cam mechanism but are easily interchangeable between banjos and don’t require alteration of the peghead.
Even though I grew up in the north, my family always admired musicians from the hill country of Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia. Not a weekend would go by when my dad didn’t bring out an Earl Scruggs or Bill Monroe record and encourage his kids to dance around the living room. As I got a bit older, I learned to appreciate the intricate finger-picking style that was such an inherent part of bluegrass.
It wasn’t long before I saved up enough money to go shopping for beginner banjos. In those days the pickings were slim in my part of the country, so I went to a secondhand store and found a beat-up but still functioning model. Kids today are lucky in that they can find a banjo for any skill level without even leaving the comfort of home. Luckily it’s not too late for me to indulge in a little online instrument shopping myself.