The Irish Tenor Banjo - Blarney Star
The Irish Tenor Banjoby Don MeadeThe tenor banjo is only about a century old andwas not widely played in Ireland before the1960s. Until recently, in fact, the instrument hada fairly poor reputation among traditional musiccognoscenti. Times (and banjo players) havechanged, however, and the oft-maligned“bodhrán on a stick” is now one of the mostpopular “traditional” instruments in Irish music.According to banjo virtuoso Mick Moloney,Irish banjo maker Tom Cussen’s contact list ofIrish tenor players now includes some 7,000names! There are now more people playing Irishdance music on the tenor banjo than are usingthe instrument for anything else. Before goinginto details of Irish banjo style, a bit of a historylesson is required to explain this development.Early banjos were not standardized instrumentsbut typically had a soundbox made from a driedgourd with one end cut off. A small drumheadmade from the skin of a raccoon, groundhog orother animal was tied or tacked in place over thisopening. The neck was fretless, sometimes littlemore than a stick thrust through the gourd body.Strings might be made from braided horse hair,thread, gut, hemp or any other tough fiber.Unlike African lutes, on which the strings areattached to sliding tuning rings set around theneck, American banjos were, from an early pointin their evolution, tuned with violin-style pegs.The banjo in its classic form has a short, highpitched string (“chanterelle”) that terminates at apeg on the side of the neck, as well as severalfull-length strings. The high string is the oneclosest to the player’s thumb, which strikes it asan unstopped drone. In the oldest banjo styles,the remaining strings are played with downwardstrokes of the index or middle finger. Both thehigh thumb drone string and the down-strokestyle were carried over from African traditions.On modern banjos, the short drone is the fifth offive strings, but surviving 18th-century banjos, aswell those in shown old illustrations, have achanterelle and just three full-length strings.2African RootsTo music scholars, the banjo is a “folk lute,” oneof many such instruments with a drum-likesoundbox. Others of the breed include thePersian tar and the Japanese shamisen. Thebanjo’s origins, however, are in the Americansouth, where slaves crafted instruments likethose they remembered from their native Africa.The origin of the word “banjo” is still debated. Ithas been suggested that it derives from thePortuguese bandurra or from similarly namedEuropean or Arab stringed instruments. Othersthink it no coincidence that bangoe is theMandinka word for the bamboo stalk used tomake the neck of the akonting, a banjo-likeinstrument still played in Gambia and Senegal.A now-extinct Senegalese folk lute was calledthe bania, and mbanza was also the word for asimilar instrument in the Kimbundu andTshiluba languages of Angola and the Congo.All these words sound like the “banza,”“banshaw” and “banjar” mentioned by 18thcentury writers who attempted to transcribe thename applied to the instrument by the slavesthemselves.1Before the Civil War, the banjo was regarded asthe quintessential African-American instrument.By the late 19th century, however, blackPestcoe’s website www.shlomomusic.com2 See: Philip F. Gura and James F. Bollman,America's Instrument: The Banjo in the NineteenthCentury (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1999; Robert Lloyd Webb, Ringthe Banjar!: The Banjo in America from Folkloreto Factory (Anaheim Hills, CA: CenterstreamPublishing, 1984); and Leo G. Mazow, Picturingthe Banjo (University Park, PA: Penn StateUniversity Press, 2005). Another excellent sourceis Karen Linn, That Half-Barbaric Twang: TheBanjo In American Popular Culture (Urbana andChicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994).1 For more information on west African lutes andbanjo history, see musician and historian Shlomo1
musicians had largely abandoned it. In part thiswas because the guitar was better suited toragtime and other popular string-band styles ofthe day. Another reason, however, was thebanjo's close association with the noxious racialstereotypes of the blackface minstrel show.arrangements of classical music favorites andborrowed finger-picking techniques fromclassical guitarists. Banjo makers put frets on thefingerboard for better intonation and introducedother alterations that transformed the plunky,low-volume banjo of the minstrel era into a loud,brilliant-sounding instrument better suited to thevariety theatre or concert stage. Theseimprovements included shorter necks, higherpitched wire strings, a “resonator” back toproject the sound forward and a metal "tonering" for extra volume and a brighter timbre.As offensive as it now seems, blackfaceminstrelsy was extremely popular on both sidesof the Atlantic for more than a century.Minstrelsy melded African rhythms (howeverpoorly understood) and European musical forms,a fusion crucial to the development of trulyAmerican popular music. And whether we like itor not, the banjo as we know it today wasadapted from African-American folkinstruments by white minstrel performers andthe instrument builders who catered to them.From Dixie to DublinThe first banjos seen in Ireland arrived in 1844when the Virginia Minstrels performed inDublin, Belfast and Cork. This pioneer quartetof “blacked-up” white entertainers included fivestring banjo ace Joe Sweeney and Dan Emmett,an Ohio-born fiddler, banjoist and singercredited with composing the southern anthem“Dixie.”4Virginia native Joel Walker “Joe” Sweeney wasthe most famous banjoist of the early minstrelera. Sweeney has often been falsely creditedwith inventing the modern banjo by substitutinga round wooden rim for the traditional gourd andadding the drone fifth string. In fact, he didneither, but Sweeney was the first whiteperformer to popularize the banjo, which heplayed in circuses and theaters in America andBritain.3 Sweeney’s success encouraged theproduction of five-string banjos by instrumentmakers of the 1850s, notably Baltimore drummaker William Boucher, whose design includeddrum-style adjustable tension screws, a greatimprovement over primitive tacked-head banjos.Minstrel entertainers like Sweeney and Emmettstyled themselves “Ethiopian delineators” andclaimed to play the authentic music of theplantation slaves. Underneath the burnt corkmakeup, however, they were most often Irish orof Irish descent. The music they played, asdocumented in period sheet music, was moreIrish than African – reels, flings and hornpipesplayed with a syncopated rhythmic accent.The Irish influence in minstrelsy can also beseen in the fact that minstrel dance tunes weregenerically referred to as “jigs” regardless of theactual time signature. Minstrel “jig dancing”blended Irish steps, English clogging andAfrican-American dance elements into aneclectic amalgam that gave rise to modernAmerican tap and soft-shoe stage dancing.White southerners, many descended from Irishor “Scotch Irish” (Ulster Protestant) immigrants,After the Civil War, the five-string banjo waselevated from a minstrel show prop to a popularparlor instrument in middle- and upper-classhouseholds. Once associated only with clownishblackface performers, the banjo was taken up byproper young ladies in frilly dresses and collegemen who formed banjo clubs and posed forgroup photos in formal wear.Professional banjo players performed4 Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and the Rise of EarlyNegro Minstrelsy (Norman, OK: University ofOklahoma Press, 1962). Some writers maintainthat the credit really belongs to the Snowdenfamily, a group of black Ohio entertainers.3 Bob Carlin, The Birth of the Banjo: Joel WalkerSweeney and Early Minstrelsy (Jefferson NC andLondon: McFarland & Co., 2007)2
also took up the slaves' instrument and createdtheir own Afro-Celtic sound. Appalachian“claw-hammer” banjo playing is a directdescendant of the old down-stroke, minstrel-erastyle.outside the core musical tradition until the mid20th century. Five-string banjos were played inIreland before that time by street musicians andblackface music hall performers. One of thelatter was Percy French, now more famous asthe composer of "The Mountains of Mourne,""The Darling Girl From Clare" and otherenduringly popular Irish songs.Fainter Hibernian echoes can be heard inbluegrass, a post-World War II idiom thatborrowed from many musical styles, includingblues, old-time fiddle tunes, minstrel songs andgospel harmony. The sophisticated three-fingerpicking of bluegrass banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs,which has its roots in the guitar-influenced“classical” banjo style of the late 19th-century,helped bring the five-string banjo to new heightsof popularity in the 1950s and '60s.The illustration above, taken from FrancisO'Neill's fascinating 1913 book Irish Minstrelsand Musicians, depicts John Dunne, an Irishfive-string banjo player, with uilleann piper DickStephenson, but such collaborations were notcommon.5 The banjo that eventually came to beplayed by Irish traditional musicians was not thefive-string version favored by hillbilly andminstrel pickers but the four-string tenor model.If American banjo music has significant Irishinfluences, in Ireland itself the banjo remainedFour Strings Good, Five Strings BadThe tenor banjo was one of a number of newbanjo types created in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. Some, like the guitar banjo and theukulele banjo (introduced in 1917 by the Englishmusic hall duo of Alvin and Kelvin Keech),were hybrids that used a banjo “pot” to amplifyanother type of stringed instrument. The tenorbanjo, however, is one of a family of four-coursebanjos based on pre-existing five-stringinstruments. All the various sizes of five-stringbanjos made for the banjo clubs and orchestrasof the 1880s and ‘90s were, early in the newcentury, re-made in four-course versions.Of all the four-course banjos, the tenor becamethe most popular. It was rivaled (and preceded),however, by the “plectrum banjo,” which isreally just a normal five-string banjo without thefifth string. It has the same body, same 22 fretsand same 26- to 28-inch scale length of a regularfive-string, and was originally tuned CGBD(from low to high), which is five-string “Ctuning” without the high drone string. Somelater players tuned it DGBE (“Chicago style”)like the highest four strings of the guitar. Thefirst plectrum banjos were played by minstrel5 Francis O’Neill, Irish Minstrels and Musicians(Chicago: Regan, 1913).3
show strummers who adopted a plectrum-basedstyle. They didn’t need the thumb string andtook it off. There were eventually enough suchplayers that banjo makers in the early years ofthe 20th century began to build instruments withfour-string necks. The plectrum banjo was usedas an alternative to the tenor in the rhythmsection of 1920s dance bands, and waschampioned as a solo instrument by virtuosopickers Harry Reser (who also played tenor) andEddie Peabody.in soprano, alto, tenor and bass versions.6 Thesoprano model had a mandola-length 16!” scaleand a 25-fret fingerboard that extended over thetop of the head. Meant to be played with a“shell,” i.e., a tortoise shell pick, it was tunedGDAE like a mandolin. It is possible that hislonger models were tuned CGDA like later tenorbanjos but it is not clear that he really mademany of these. The dearth of surviving examplessuggests that the time for such an instrument hadnot yet arrived.The plectrum itself was preceded by the “banjothimble,” a short metal cylinder placed on theindex finger that was introduced in 1848 byminstrel banjoist Tom Briggs to amplify strokestyle minstrel playing. The thimble was lateradapted for plectrum-style playing. That usageseems to have died out in the U.S., but it wastaken up by itinerant Irish musicians. The lateJohnny Keenan and Tony “Sully” Sullivan ofManchester are the best known Irish thimbleplayers of recent decades.After Farris’ false start, the tenor banjo reallytook off in the first decade of the 20th centurywhen instrument makers started putting a fourstring neck on the “banjorine” (or banjeaurine),a scaled-down five-string tuned a fourth higherthan a standard banjo. The first to do this seemsto have been J.B. Schall of Chicago who,sometime before he died in 1907, advertised (seebelow) a four-string banjorine that wasessentially the first modern tenor.Many early tenor banjoists were violinists ormandolinists who began doubling on the banjomandolin when that instrument was adopted bydance bands but later switched to the longerfour-string instrument. Schall’s four-stringbanjorine design was suggested by LouisStepner, a California violinist and mandolinistwho, according to an interview with five-stringvirtuoso Fred Van Eps, got the idea fromautomated banjos operated, like player pianos,by perforated paper rolls. These instrumentswere tuned in fifths, which inspired Stepner toask Schall for a four-string, mandolin-tunedversion of the company’s five-string banjorine.7Other makers soon followed. In 1912, forexample, New York wholesaler C.F. Brunoadvertised a GDAE-tuned “banjorine mandolin”very much like the Schall/Stepner model.8The banjo mandolin, first patented in 1882 by aBenjamin Bradbury of Brooklyn, has a mandolinneck attached to the body of a “piccolo banjo,”which was a five-string model tuned an octaveabove a full-length banjo. Once produced inboth eight- and four-string (“melody banjo”)versions, the banjo mandolin is rackety littlenoisemaker that could really cut through thesound of an early 20th century dance band, whichmade it the most popular four-course banjobefore the tenor boom of the 1920s. Instrumentmakers also tried, without much success, toinspire the creation of four-string banjoorchestras by complementing the banjomandolin with four-course versions of fivestring cello and bass banjos.John Farris (1826-1911) of Hartford,Connecticut is often credited with making thefirst tenor banjo. Farris actually invented awhole family of four-course “banjolins” around1885. His patent drawing and earliest advertisingshowed an eight-string model but he soonconverted it to a four-string instrument available6 Ads in The Hartford County Directory for 188586, Briggs & Co.: Boston, p. X and The YaleBanner, vol. 47, 1888, Yale University: NewHaven, p. 78. Both books are available online viaGoogle Books7 wfmu.org/playlists/shows/93928 1912-1913 Bruno catalog4
www.mugwumps.com/schall 1.gif and www.mugwumps.com/farris 1.gif5
Unless these GDAE-tuned banjorines wereactually tuned an octave below a mandolin (as isthe case with modern “Irish” tuning), the hightension required to get them up to the requiredpitch would have made it very difficult to stringthem. Farris, in an attempt to keep the stringtension from driving the bridge into the head ofhis banjolins, had a bridge wider than the headitself, as well as a support post under the head.The tension problem may also have influencedhis decision to change what was originally aneight-string instrument to a four-string model.“Tenor Banjo-Mandola” on the same catalogpage as their five-string “banjeaurine” and eightstring banjo mandolin. But the instrument wasstill a niche item at that stage and was not evenpictured.11 Rettberg & Lange’s early Orpheummodels used the same body with a mandolin,five-string or four-string “tango tenor” neck, butthe banjo-mandolin version was the mostpopular at first, and was the one featured inillustrations in trade journals as late as 1916.12Early 20th-century tenor banjos had open backs,a scale length of 19" - 21" inches and afingerboard that extended over the head with 15or 16 frets free of the body and five or six moreover the head. Sometimes called “cello” banjosbecause of the CGDA tuning (though true cellobanjos are pitched an octave lower), they wereadvertised as “tango” banjos to appeal tomusicians playing for the Argentine dance crazeof the pre-World War I years. Whatever theywere called, these instruments gradually took theplace of the banjo mandolin as a high melodyinstrument in dance bands. A November, 1916article in the music journal Crescendo asserted:“Without doubt the tenor-banjo is nowconsidered the best instrument of the banjofamily for playing lead in dance orchestras.” 13Lowering the pitch of the strings to CGDA wasa better solution. It is a lot easier to mountmandola-tuned strings on a banjorine-lengthneck than it is to get such an instrument up tomandolin pitch. Just as the plectrum banjo wasforeshadowed by five-string players whoremoved their thumb strings, the modern tenorbanjo may have been suggested by plectrumwielding banjorine players who removed thefifth string from their instruments. In 1929,banjo ace Charles McNeil wrote:In about the year 1900 I heard an old timemandolinist play a banjourine [sic] tuned infifths, CGDA (reading from the lowestpitched strings to the highest). He hadeliminated the fifth string as beingunnecessary.9Notwithstanding its success with tango bands,the tenor banjo only became really widelypopular when it was adopted for strummedaccompaniment by Dixeland jazz groups. Asearly as 1917, a music business writer told hisreaders that “A jazz band consists of a clarinet,cornet, tango banjo, saxophone, slide trombone,piano, drums and traps [drumset] ” 14 Thewriter was still calling it a “tango” banjo, but asthe tango fad faded in the jazz age, “tenor banjo”McNeil also wrote that he ordered, but neverreceived, a 21-inch-scale “Cello banjo” fromSchall, and had gotten his first tenor banjo“about 23 years ago” (i.e., about 1906) from anunnamed maker.According to banjo historian James Bollman,Vega started making tenor banjos around 1908,but it took a while for the instrument to becomepopular enough for major banjo makers toadvertise and market them.10 In 1913, the BaconManufacturing Company (which at the time soldsome banjos produced by other firms) listed a11 “The Bacon Professional Banjo,”1913.12 Music Trade Review, Vol LXIII, no 23,December 2, 191613 “The Tenor Banjo, a Fixture,” cited in GeorgeGruhn and Walter Carter, Acoustic Guitars andOther Fretted Instruments: A PhotographicHistory, San Francisco: GPI Books, MillerFreeman, Inc., 1993.14 “What is Jazz?,” Music Trade Review, August18,19179 “The Ludwig Banjoist,” Fall 192910 Hoft, John, “The Birth of the Tenor Banjo inAmerica,” AllFrets, March/April, 2010.6
was universally adopted as the standard name ofthe instrument.of the 1920s, they often included a tenor banjoplayer. English dance bands emulated theAmerican groups, and banjos from the U.S. andBritain began to appear in Ireland as well.Most early Irish tenor banjoists, like most jazzband players, were content to strum chords instrict tempo. In 1916, New York resident JamesWheeler, about whom little else is known,became the first Irish tenor banjo recording artistwhen he accompanied button accordionist EddieHerborn on the earliest Irish traditional musicdisc ever made.In a 1928 article, Louis Calabrese, a prominentjazz-age banjoist, described the evolution oftenor banjo style during his career:Years ago, when mandolin banjos were usedin orchestras, the musicians catered more tolead and melody playing . The developedbanjo, the instrument with the longer neckand the larger body, brought with it a changein the attitude of the players. Striving forleads and melody effects became supplantedby the desire and strife for rhythmic effectsand chord production.15Some 1920s Irish banjo players did pick out themelodies of jigs, reels and hornpipes, decoratingthe tunes with snappy triplet ornaments. Far andaway the most important Irish banjo player ofthe 78-rpm era was Mike Flanagan of the NewYork-based Flanagan Brothers, one of the mostpopular Irish-American groups of the day. Mikemade dozens of recordings with his brothers Joeon the accordion and Louis on the harp guitar.These discs sold well in both America andIreland, and Mike's brilliant and innovativeplaying inspired many Irish musicians to take upthe tenor banjo.Calabrese attributed the changing playing styleto the change in banjo construction, butinstrument makers were themselves reacting tothe demand from jazz banjo players who foundthe old short-neck tango banjos inadequate forloud chordal accompaniment. As tenor banjoiststook on this new role in the rhythm section,banjo makers adapted the instrument to suit theirneeds.By the early ‘20s, the extended, over-the-headfingerboard disappeared and the 17-fret neck /21-inch scale length adopted by Vega andOrpheum briefly became the industry standard.Orpheum designer William L. Lange pioneereda new style of instrument with his Paramountline, which featured a longer neck, a louder tonering and a “resonator” back to project the soundforward. Lange’s innovations were soon adoptedby other leading makers and by the mid-1920s,the tenor had reached its final evolutionary formas a loud, resonator-backed rhythm instrumentwith a 19-fret neck and 23-inch scale length.Other influential Irish tenor banjo or banjomandolin players of the pre-World War II yearsincluded Neil Nolan, a Prince Edward Islandnative who recorded with Dan Sullivan'sShamrock Band in Boston, and Jimmy McDade,who recorded with the Four Provinces Orchestrain Philadelphia. Michael Gaffney cut discs inNew York on tenor banjo and banjo mandolin,including duets with flute player and fellowLeitrim native John McKenna. Back in Ireland,Bill Whelan played banjo mandolin over RadioÉireann Athlone with the Moate Ceili Band.Changing musical tastes and the development ofarch-top (and eventually electrified) guitarsmade the tenor banjo obsolete in Americanpopular music by the mid-1930s. A dwindlingcorps of tenor and plectrum banjoists carried ontheir ragtime and Dixieland specialties, but mostfour-string banjos ended up in attics and pawnshops. Just as Irish traditional musicians tookadvantage of the supply of cast-off woodenIrish TenorsThe Irish dance halls of New York and otherAmerican cities were the route by which thetenor banjo entered the Irish tradition. The bandsthat played these halls had to perform Americanas well as Irish music, so like most dance bands15 Music Trade Review, March 26, 19287
flutes created when classical players switched tometal instruments, discarded American andEnglish banjos soon found their way into thehands of musicians in Irish rural dance halls.impressive note-for-note duets with fiddle greatSeán McGuire and his Four Star Quartet.From the Dance Hall to the PubCeili bands reached their peak of popularity inthe 1940s and ‘50s, after which more versatile“show bands” playing a blend of American popand country music came to the fore in rural Irishdance halls. In the 1960s, the focus of traditionalmusic making shifted from the dance hall to thepub, but the popularity of the tenor banjosurvived the change of venue. Like theaccordion, the banjo is well suited to a noisy pubsession. The banjo was also given a boost by theU.S. folk music revival, in which the success ofthe New York-based Clancy Brothers andTommy Makem led to a proliferation of guitarand banjo-strumming Irish “ballad” groups.In some areas, the Public Dance Hall Act of1935 led to a ban on house dances, which theclergy viewed as “occasions of sin.” Partly forthis reason, but probably also in imitation ofEnglish and American dance halls and dancebands, traditional dancing in Ireland moved inthis era from crossroads and cottage kitchensinto village or parochial halls. The need for anensemble loud enough to be heard in the newenvironment led to the rise of “ceili bands” witha lineup that added accordion, piano, drums,banjo and the occasional piccolo, clarinet orsaxophone to the more traditional fiddles, pipesand flutes.The Pete Seeger-style five-string was the banjoof choice during the ballad boom, but the tenorversion had an influential champion in BarneyMcKenna of the Dubliners, a group thatpioneered the now common practice of mixingjigs and reels with guitar-backed vocals.McKenna is undoubtedly the most influentialIrish banjo player of the post-World War II era.With few exceptions, today’s Irish tenor playershave followed his lead by tuning to GDAE, anoctave below the fiddle or mandolin. While notas bright-sounding as the standard CGDA tenortuning, Barney’s lower-pitched setup made iteasier to play Irish dance tunes in the keyspreferred by pipers, fiddlers and flute players.The appeal of the banjo had a lot to do with thefact that it was loud. Like the accordion (anotherrelative newcomer to Irish traditional music), thetenor banjo was strident enough to cut throughthe noise of a big dance hall in the days beforeamplification. It was favored for the same reasonby street performers, including the famed DunneBrothers of Limerick (relatives of the JohnDunne pictured above), traveling musicians whoperformed for decades at race meetings andfairs.Few recordings of Irish tenor banjo players weremade in the 1950s and ‘60s, but noted playersactive in those years included Offaly’s OwenHackett, Clareman Des Mulkere (a son ofAughrim Slopes Ceili Band fiddler JackMulkere), and Wexford hurling star Tim Flood.Tyrone native Liam Farrell made a name forhimself as the top Irish banjo player in London.Prominent ceili band banjo players of the periodincluded Jimmy Ward of the Kilfenora, DanTracey of the Aughrim Slopes and SeamusCooley (better known as a flute player) with theTulla Ceili Band. The banjo-mandolin was stillpopular in this period, especially in ceili bands.Prominent players of the smaller instrumentincluded Anna Boyle, Noel Strange and WilliamPower, this last a Wexford man who recordedAs the traditional music revival gathered pace inthe 1970s, the tenor banjo became more popularthan ever and many a guitar-strumming folkiediscovered that his or her picking skillstranslated easily to the instrument. Many playerswere inspired to take up the instrument throughrecordings made by Charlie Piggott of DeDannan, Kieran Hanrahan of Stockton’s Wing,Mick Moloney, Gerry O’Connor, Seamus Eganand Cathal Hayden, all of whom were raising thereputation of the tenor banjo in the 1970s and‘80s. As the demand for tenor banjos in Irelandbegan to outstrip the supply of importedinstruments, a market was created for Irish banjo8
makers, most notably Tom Cussen of Galwayand Dave Boyle of Kildare.only Irish musicians, Dixieland jazz players andbanjo band strummers want them now, pricesare lower than for other fretted instruments ofsimilar age and quality. Many top qualityvintage tenor banjos sell for well under 1000.Some of the rarest and most elaboratelydecorated banjos are priced for collectors ratherthan players. Pre-World War II GibsonMastertone models are disproportionatelyexpensive because they are coveted by bluegrassbanjoists who want a pre-war five-string likethose played by Earl Scruggs and Ralph Stanley.As Gibson made many more tenor banjos inthose years, modern bluegrass players seek outold Gibson tenor models and put five-stringnecks on them.There are still a few fussy purists who dismissthe tenor banjo as a noisy nuisance taken up bythose without the talent or taste to play a “real”instrument. But the standard of Irish banjoplaying has soared in recent decades and today’sIrish banjoists have brought their instrument tothe very forefront of the contemporarytraditional music scene. The Irish tenor banjohas truly come of age.How to Learn the Tenor BanjoIf you can hum, lilt or whistle an Irish tune, youcan learn to play it on the banjo or any otherinstrument. The music has to be in your head,however, before it can get it to your fingers. Therest is just a matter of practice. Instrumentaltechnique is important, but it's not the key toplaying Irish music. Anyone who has ever hearda classical violinist stiffly bow through an Irishtune understands that technical competence is nosubstitute for an understanding of traditionalstyle. That understanding can only be acquiredby listening to and emulating good traditionalplayers. If you want to play Irish music, youshould listen to as much of it as possible, andnot just banjo music! Listen especially to theuilleann pipes, fiddle and flute, the instrumentson which the style and repertoire of Irishtraditional music were largely created.In addition to Gibson, then based in Kalamazoo,Michigan, more than twenty “golden age” firmsmade tenor banjos, many of them as good as anyGibson but with different tonal qualities thatnon-bluegrass players might prefer. Gibsonactually borrowed many innovations fromWillliam L. Lange, designer of the Orpheum,Paramount and Langstile models made in NewYork. Other New York banjo makers includedthe House of Stathopoulo (Epiphone), Iucci,Majestic and Gretsch. Wholesalers Bruno andS.S. Stewart (a famous name in 19th-centurybanjos) distributed cheaper instruments, and theOscar Schmidt company made La Scala andStella brand banjos in Jersey City, New Jersey.The Bacon Banjo Company led by five-stringvirtuoso Fred Bacon and businessman DavidDay made the famous “Silverbell” and otherBacon & Day models in Groton, Connecticut.Weymann made superb banjos in Philadelphia.Vega (one of the few banjo makers to survivethe depression) made banjos in Boston, as didthe lesser-known Stromberg company. Lyon &Healy manufactured the Washburn line ofbanjos in Chicago. Drum manufacturers Ludwigand Slingerland (makers of the May Bell line)made fine banjos in Chicago, as did the Leedydrum company in Indiana. Many good banjoswere made in England by John Grey and theClifford Essex company. Players in Ireland haveoften favored these, especially the high-endLessons can be helpful in establishing goodtechnique, but many people have learned to playIrish music without formal instruction. Trial anderror is the best teacher. Once a tune is in yourhead, just try to play it. The more you play, themore you learn about the structure of Irish tunes.The more tunes you learn, the easier it becomesto learn new ones. Guitarist and fiddler MarkSimos put it this way: at first Irish music allsounds the same, but after a while you re
The tenor banjo was one of a number of new banjo types created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some, like the guitar banjo and the ukulele banjo (introduced in 1917 by the English music hall duo of Alvin and Kelvin Keech), were hybrids that used a banjo “pot” to amplify another type of stringed instrument. The tenorFile Size: 1MB
Cut capo 2002 for CGDA tenor banjo, tenor guitar or mandola Czech Hymnbook for fingerpicking CGDA Tenor Guitar Czech Renaissance folk songs for CGDA Mandola or Tenor Banjo Jewish songs for CGDA Mandola or Tenor Banjo Songs from old Prague for CGDA Mandola or Tenor Banjo Irish tunes for CGDA Tenor Banjo or
May 02, 2018 · D. Program Evaluation ͟The organization has provided a description of the framework for how each program will be evaluated. The framework should include all the elements below: ͟The evaluation methods are cost-effective for the organization ͟Quantitative and qualitative data is being collected (at Basics tier, data collection must have begun)
Silat is a combative art of self-defense and survival rooted from Matay archipelago. It was traced at thé early of Langkasuka Kingdom (2nd century CE) till thé reign of Melaka (Malaysia) Sultanate era (13th century). Silat has now evolved to become part of social culture and tradition with thé appearance of a fine physical and spiritual .
BANJO CHORD FINDER EASY-TO-USE GUIDE TO OVER 2,800 BANJO CHORDS The Banjo ChordFinder is an extensive reference guide to over 2,800 banjo chords, . BANJO 857 5-STRING BANJO CHORD CHART by Ron Middlebrook Centerstream Publications The only chart showing the open and moveable cord positions. Explains the two
Below is the tab of Cripple Creek in bluegrass style – actually two tabs in one. For the demonstration purposes I show the 5-string banjo tab and my tenor banjo tab next to each other. You can see how I have altered some measures of tenor banjo tab. The first half of the th
Chords and More Chords for DGdg Tenor Banjo Mirek Tim Patek This tenth article about the fingerstyle tenor banjo in DGdg tuning will be focused on banjo accompaniment, i.e. on playing chords. The goal is to play basic chord progressions for the favorite songs in various keys (you know, summer campfire season is coming) in the oom-pah-oom-pah
Tenor Banjo Modal Scales and Arpeggios: by Ron Hinkle I’ve long advocated the learning and use of the modes for the plectrum banjo; now I’ll turn my focus to the tenor banjo. . Each scale simply starts on the next note of the C scale, and goes one octave (eight notes).
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