Posts Tagged ‘stringed instrument’
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.
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.
Considered one of the pioneers in bluegrass banjo picking, J.D. Crowe first came to prominence as a member of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys. His personal twist on the three-finger style of Earl Scruggs during the 1950s helped define the traditional bluegrass canon on over thirty recordings with Martin. The 1960s saw the formation of Crowe’s own band, The Kentucky Mountain Boys (with whom Doyle Lawson made his recording debut); by the early 1970s The Kentucky Mountain Boys had morphed into The New South and with a stellar lineup including Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, and Jerry Douglas. Crowe artfully blended traditional bluegrass with material from such diverse sources as Fats Domino, Gordon Lightfoot, and Gram Parsons.
Born in Lexington, Kentucky on August 27, 1937, Crowe began picking the banjo at age 13. He continues to tour and record to this day with the current edition of The New South. His contribution to bluegrass music has been recognized by Gibson Musical Instruments with a signature-model Gibson banjo, the “Black Jack”, named after one of his original banjo tunes. Crowe also has his own model of the increasingly popular Blue Chip thumbpick, and has left his mark on the world of banjo bridges with his preferred slightly-wider string spacing, now known as “Crowe spacing” and offered as an option by most bridge makers.
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.
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.”