Posts Tagged ‘Banjos’
How Many Strings Does a Banjo Have?
That’s a frequent question, and not one with a single answer since the banjo is actually a family of instruments. The five-string banjo was the original, featuring a gourd body (later modified into a drum) and a short drone string. It was brought to what is now the United States by African slaves. The finger-picked five-string banjo enjoyed immense popularity in the nineteenth century, finding acceptance in the parlors of the urban middle class. It was used to play material from the classical repertoire, and rural musicians of the southeast adapted it to the Irish-style music they enjoyed.
Shortly after the turn of the century, the prominence of new music forms such as ragtime and syncopated dances, like the tango, led to the creation of the four-string , or plectrum, banjo. The sharp, percussive sound of the instrument was preserved but the quirky short drone string was eliminated. That made the instrument more user-friendly for musicians who preferred to strum chords with a flat pick, or plectrum. The next step was the tenor banjo, with a shorter scale and tuned in fifths to make it more familiar to players of other popular instruments such as the mandolin. Banjo bands were all the rage by the 1920s and other variations included the mandolin-banjo, the guitar-banjo, and the uke-banjo, but the tenor banjo was by far the most popular, leaving its original five-string cousin to be regarded as a quaint relic. Four-string banjos remain popular in traditional Dixieland jazz as well as Irish music, but the five-string was revived in the years following World War II with the arrival of Earl Scruggs and a new musical style-bluegrass.
We banjo players have a luxury unknown to players of other stringed instruments-the sounding board of our instrument is a drum head that can be replaced easily and inexpensively. That enables us to experiment with different sounds. Once upon a time, all banjo heads were made of animal hide (usually calfskin). The warm tone of a real calfskin head is hard to beat, but their susceptibility to changes in humidity makes them very high-maintenance.
Plastic or mylar heads have been the standard since their introduction in the early 1960s. They are available with a white frosted coating which gives a traditional appearance and sound for bluegrass banjo, or in a clear, uncoated version for extra brightness and response. Synthetic calfskin heads more closely mimic the look and sound of real animal hide and are especially popular with open-back (clawhammer) banjo players. Recent years have seen more options in banjo heads with eye-catching colors now available, and even heavy mesh heads for quiet practice.
There’s a lot of metal in a quality bluegrass banjo. Plating type should be a consideration when deciding what banjo is the right one for you. The most common type of plating is nickel. Nickel looks great when new and oxidizes as it ages, taking on a slightly softer, warmer look. Gold plating is common on high-end banjos and provides plenty of visual flash, but even the best gold plating will show wear after years of heavy use. Chrome plating is less common than nickel or gold and will stay looking new with practically no maintenance, but the super-bright “in your face” look of chrome is not for everyone.
What about differences in sound? That’s a question sure to set off endless debate among banjo folks. Some maintain that the amount of metal applied in plating banjo parts is so minimal that there is no impact on tone. Others claim they hear a difference. Since nickel is most popular, that is understood to be the baseline. The most common opinion being that gold plating imparts a somewhat warmer, mellower tone to the instrument. With so many other variables involved in the construction and setup of a bluegrass banjo, this question will probably never be answered for sure.
The choice of wood type for your banjo may seem to be solely a cosmetic consideration, but it can have a big impact on the sound of your instrument as well. While it may seem counterintuitive, wood choice can have the biggest effect on tone through the neck. While bluegrass banjo rims are almost always made of maple and the veneers on the resonator have little impact on tone, the neck of your banjo is usually a solid chunk of mahogany, walnut, or maple and represents a significant proportion of the banjo’s vibrating mass.
Conventional wisdom is that mahogany, being a less-dense wood, is the warmest of the three woods and tends to accentuate the bass response of a banjo. Maple, a very dense hardwood, is considered to be at the opposite end of the scale with more “bite” and “edge” and enhanced treble response. Walnut is generally thought to fall somewhere in between mahogany and maple tonally. Keep in mind, however, that variations in setup and in individual instruments can make for a brighter mahogany banjo or a deeper-sounding maple one.
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.
The banjo is conventionally associated with bluegrass musical styles, and it’s really no wonder. Along with the fiddle, acoustic guitar and fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay in that storied musical tradition. A bluegrass picking style is accomplished by using the fingers in an up-picking motion and the thumb to pick downward. But you can throw those rules out the window if you’re playing in a clawhammer style.
The clawhammer style is much slower and more rhythmic than bluegrass, and it requires a unique grip and picking style. So named because the player must shape his hand into a claw to play correctly, this style is employed by such famous musicians as Neil Young and Eric Clapton. Interestingly, a clawhammer banjo player will sometimes finger and pick with the left hand by pulling off and picking at the top of the neck.