Banjo Escapades

Hey there everyone. How are ya? It's been a while since I posted anything here, so I thought I'd share with you some of my most recent adventures in music. This summer I decided to learn Banjo, after listening to lots and lots of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones (who I later realized I will never be able to play like). I made a couple videos of my progress and put them up on various websites. This is one of my favorites, the Ballad of Jed Clampett. You might recognize it as the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies. Enjoy!



I hope to be posting here more often. I miss chatting with this great community!

flawless to my ears. i wish i could pick up instruments so easily

Foogered! Welcome back m8 :D.

for some reason to me vid just show big white spot O_O

SWIMMIN' POOLS.....MOVIE STARS!
loved it.
Isn't the tuning on that completely diff from a six string? I'd say you are a fast learner Fooger.
Welcome home.
Phip

P.S. Sorry about that whole presidential thing....maybe next time!

Welcome back, mate. I was just looking at the members pictures the other day and noticed you had some many pictures with girls around and you were like just smiling in every one of them. I was gonna have a picture of me taken like that to post it here and make a comment about you but then I realized you weren't around anynore so it's good to have you back.

Good job with the banjo from what I hear. LOL, I don't remember Banjos sounding so... "weird". :P T'was kinda interesting.

Thanks guys, glad you enjoyed it! I recommend it to anybody who's interesting in picking up another stringed instrument and enjoys finger-style guitar. Sorry it didn't work for you, Empirism!

The tuning is indeed different, Phip. It's tuned to an open G, which looks like this:

G
D
G
B
D

There's other weird stuff too. For example, the strings are not ordered from low to high. The top-most G string is actually higher than the bottom-most D string and is used kind of as a "drone string". Also, you don't string the high G all the way to the headstock. Instead it ends 5 frets before, which really messed me up when I first started. For guitar there are certain benchmarks that you use to line up your left hand with your right hand. For example, you know you're fretting the top-most string when you can't feel any more strings above you, so that's where you play with your right hand. Well that doesn't translate to banjo, since the high G doesn't go all the way down the fretboard. So basically you're using your left hand to play 4 strings, while your right hand is playing 5 strings!

My mom has an electric banjo. I keep thinking about trying it out through some amps with effects on it just to see what would happen. If I went to a high gain setting it probably explode...or it would just feedback like crazy...yeah...that's probably what would happen. I wonder if she still has it...

You might enjoy this video, Fender Bender. It's the artist Bela Fleck that I mentioned earlier playing a rendition of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown". He does some pretty out-landish stuff with the Banjo, and his is electric as well. His music is what inspired me to start playing.

Pretty good stuff. My moms banjo is like the second one. Traditional banjo with electronics put in. The other one reminded me of a Parker Fly guitar. The sound of it. I never attempted banjo. It would take a while to get used to the tuning peg in the middle of the neck I would think. You would think, being a West Virginian, I would just know how to play one, but alas...

You played on a Parker Fly? How good are those things? And how much do they cost?

I have played one before and I didn't like it, but thats not what I was talking about here. I was saying the first banjo in this video sounded like one. The Parker was...fake feeling, ugly and I believe they are very expensive. It could have just been the one I played, but first impression was not good. I think Phil Keaggy plays one when he actually plays electric. I'm not a fan of them, but it's also been quite a while since I last played one, things do change. I still think they are ugly though!

LOL! I actually like what they look like. Yeah, they;re probably very expensive.
I asked you about them because I read that Matthew Bellamy of Muse uses them. I was expecting you'd say FAKE since they're made of composite materials... Thnx, anyway.
By the way: Did you try the piezo-electric pick up on it?

No I didn't play it plugged in. I love Hysteria by Muse. He wasn't using a Parker in that video, but that doesn't mean anything. I see a lot of really good players play them so there must be something they like.

Holy banjo!

Thanks for the input, Bender! :D