Posts Tagged ‘Instruments’
The five-string banjo presents a unique problem when using a capo. Since the fifth string doesn’t start until the fifth fret, capoing the four long strings at the most common frets (two, three, or four) leaves the fifth string unaltered. A number of solutions have been devised over the years. Simply re-tuning the fifth string is always an option, but tightening and stretching the string beyond its intended range repeatedly can cause it to break. Plus, the fifth string won’t note correctly when fretted. Fifth-string capos are available; some attach permanently to the side of the neck and some clip temporarily onto the string.
Earl Scruggs solved this problem by hammering a couple of his wife’s bobby pins into the fingerboard at the desired frets, leaving a small length of pin sticking out of the fingerboard and bent over so that the fifth string could be slipped under it. Pete Seeger illustrated the same idea in his pioneering book “How to Play the 5-String Banjo”, using a screw placed in the fingerboard. In more recent years, players have turned to less-obtrusive HO-gauge model railroad spikes to provide a simple and reliable way to capo the fifth string.
No brand name looms larger in the bluegrass banjo world than Gibson. The company’s story goes back to the late 1800s when a young man named Orville Gibson, son of an English immigrant, moved from his native New York to the rapidly-growing industrial town of Kalamazoo, Michigan (“Yes”, said the Kalamazoo Chamber of Commerce in a 1980s publicity campaign, “There Really Is a Kalamazoo”). Although Orville worked a variety of odd jobs to support himself, he was a musician and luthier with radical ideas about instrument construction. The mandolin was the most popular fretted instrument of the day, and Orville’s vision was to apply the same principles of carving and top graduation to the mandolin that Stradivarius and his contemporaries had employed in building their legendary violins.
Orville’s creations were a dramatic departure from the round-back “tater bug” mandolin, with its flat top and its back formed out of narrow strips of bent wood. A group of Kalamazoo investors saw money to be made in marketing Orville’s designs to the mandolin-buying public and the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company was formed in 1902. Always an enigmatic figure, Orville appears to have had limited involvement with the Gibson company after its first few years. The Gibson company refined and built on Orville’s ideas and responded to the increasing popularity of the tenor banjo by producing its first banjo in 1918—the same year that Orville died back home in New York.
After some initial stumbling in search of the right design, by the late 1920s Gibson was a dominant force in the 4-string tenor banjo market. The company also made a precious few “old-timey” 5-string banjos, primarily for the rural Southern market; it was one of these banjos that Earl Scruggs would use in the years immediately following World War II to develop a new style of picking for bluegrass music. Despite changes in ownership and a relocation from Kalamazoo to Nashville, Tennessee, Gibson banjo production has continued to the current day. Since the late 1980s, the company’s banjo output has consisted largely of reissues of its classic models of the 1920s and 1930s.
Many people—myself included—think of the banjo as being a traditional instrument that has seen little modification over the years. Just as with guitars, there are several different options for the number of strings that are on your instrument, but this is usually where the deviation in banjo designs ceases. While it is true that the basic design has changed little in recent decades, there have been significant advances in banjo technology.
One of the most revolutionary renovations has been the advent of the electric banjo. These models may feature a slightly more modern design, but, obviously, the main development is the addition of electricity to amplify the sound. This allows you to get the power of an electric guitar while preserving the distinct banjo sound.
There are lots of banjo-player jokes. One goes “You can drop a shoe on the banjo and make music,” due to the “open G” tuning that is standard among bluegrass banjoists. Unlike a guitar or mandolin, which must be fretted to make a proper chord, merely strumming the open strings of a banjo (or dropping a shoe on it) will produce a G major chord. This tuning of D-B-G-D-g (from first to fifth string) provides two G notes an octave apart, two D notes an octave apart, and one B note, thus filling in the three notes of a G major triad. While the vast majority of bluegrass banjo work is performed with this tuning, alternate tunings are sometimes employed. The “drop C” tuning of D-B-G-C-g was considered the standard tuning in the classical banjo era around 1900 and is sometimes used by bluegrass players to provide a low root note when playing in the C position. Bluegrass banjo standards traditionally performed in C tuning include Home Sweet Home and Farewell Blues as recorded by Earl Scruggs.
The next most-common tuning for bluegrass banjo is open D, either D-A-F#-D-F# or D-A-F#-D-a (the fifth string can either be tuned down one fret from G to provide the third note of the D major triad, or tuned up two frets to provide the fifth note). Reuben and John Henry are traditionally played in this tuning, and Ron Block has used it to great advantage in his work with Alison Krauss and Union Station. Rare alternate tunings include G minor (D-Bb-G-D-g) as used by Ben Eldridge in his original instrumental Appalachian Rain recorded with The Seldom Scene, and D minor (aDFAD) as featured by Earl Scruggs in Nashville Blues.
The world of old-time clawhammer banjo makes use of a much greater variety of tunings including “double C” (D-C-D-Cg) and open C (E-C-D-C-g), to name just two. . . but that’s a subject for another post!
Virginia native Eddie Adcock first came to prominence as the banjo player with the groundbreaking Washington-D.C.-based Country Gentlemen during the 1960s. His overwhelming technical ability and blending of Scruggs, single-string, and Travis style were essential ingredients in the Gentlemen’s sound, and seminal recordings such as Sunrise and Pallet on the Floor earned the Country Gentlemen the reputation of being the first progressive bluegrass band, the progenitor of “newgrass” and “jamgrass” bands such as New Grass Revival, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers.
Since the 1970s Adcock has been performing and recording with his wife Martha and has recently performed a series of Country Gentlemen reunion concerts with fellow alums Jimmy Gaudreau and Tom Gray. An endorser of Deering banjos, Adcock became known as the “bionic banjo player” in 2008 when he underwent deep brain stimulation surgery to correct a tremor that had developed in his right hand. Adcock not only remained conscious during the procedure at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but actually played the banjo as surgeons worked so that the placement of the brain implant could be adjusted for maximum effectiveness. A week later, he was back on stage at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s yearly convention in Nashville.
This is the first in a mini-series devoted to parts and setup of a modern five-string bluegrass banjo. In this post, we define the major assemblies of the banjo and each component within those assemblies. In future posts we will expand on each of these and on the role each part plays in the setup process.
Pot Assembly:
- Rim – a hoop made of wood or metal that all other parts attach to. Three-ply maple is preferred on high-end banjos.
- Tone Ring – usually constructed of metal, preferably bell-bronze; this part rests on top of the rim and amplifies string vibration.
- Flange – usually constructed of metal (brass or pot metal); this part surrounds the rim and serves as the bottom support for tensioning the head as well as for attachment of the resonator.
- Coordinating Rods – these metal rods span from the bottom to the top of the rim and serve to attach the neck to the pot assembly.
- Head – originally made of calf skin, modern heads are made of mylar. This sits on top of the tone ring and serves as the soundboard of the banjo.
- Tension Hoop – usually made of metal, this sits on top of the head and evenly distributes tension to the head when tightened properly.
- Bracket Hooks – these are individual hooks that span the space between the tension hoop and the flange. These are used to adjust head tension.
- Tailpiece – located at the end of the banjo, on the pot assembly; this serves as a place to attach strings and is adjusted for down pressure on the bridge.
- Bridge – usually made of maple with an ebony top; the main purpose is to transfer string vibration to the head. It also holds the strings in place and can be moved to adjust intonation.
Resonator:
- Usually made of wood; the resonator is a bowl-shaped device that attaches to the back side of the banjo and projects sound forward.
- Wall Lugs – made of metal; these attach to the inside wall of the resonator and serve as a nut to receive the resonator thumb screws
- L-Bracket – these are actually L-shaped metal brackets that are mounted under the flange and attached to the rim. This is the attachment hardware that holds the resonator to the pot assembly.
- Resonator Thumb Screws – made of metal; these pass through the flange and L-bracket to secure the pot assembly to the resonator.
Neck:
- The neck and resonator are usually made from the same type of wood. The neck serves as a playing surface.
- Lag Bolts – these are threaded into the wooden heel of the neck, pass through the rim and connect to the coordinating rods that attach the neck to the pot assembly.
- Truss Rod – this is built into the interior of the neck, spanning the length of the neck and located in a routed channel under the fretboard. The truss rod applies pressure to counteract the pull of the strings.
- Fingerboard – a piece of wood laminted to the front of the neck that holds the frets and decorative inlay. This is the part of the neck that is in contact with the fingertips of the fretting hand.
- Frets – these are the metal bars typically made of nickel-silver and inlaid crossways into the fingerboard. They serve to stop the vibration of the string at the desired note.
- Nut – usually made of bone (plastic on entry-level banjos). This separates the strings a specific width and holds the strings a specific height above the fingerboard.
- Peghead – often shaped like a fiddle body; located at the opposite end of the neck from the pot, the peghead is a part of the neck and serves as a place to mount tuning pegs.
- Tuning pegs – usually geared, tuning pegs serve to tighten the strings to pitch. Guitar-style tuning pegs have tuning knobs on the sides of the peghead, and planetary tuning pegs go straight out the back.
- Inlay – decorative designs typically cut from mother-of-pearl or abalone which ornament the peghead and fingerboard and serve as position markers.
- Binding – decorative strips, usually of plastic, running along the sides of the neck and resonator.
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.
While it is commonly believed to be a specific instrument, fiddles can be any bowed string instrument. A violin, viola and cello, all a part of the violin family, may sometimes be referred to by their players as a fiddle.
Over the years, there have been a number of clichés used to describe the differences between a fiddle and a violin. Three of those clichés include: “When you are buying it, it’s a fiddle. When you are selling it, it’s a violin.” “What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle? About $10,000.” “A violin uses strings and a fiddle uses strangs.”