Listening to the master...
woensdag 28 december 2011
Jens playing Old Joe Clark on my banjo
The gitarist is Oliver Waitze, founder and owner of The New Acoustic Gallery in Solingen/Germany, specialisted in fine acoustic instruments and related parts.
Great workshop with Jens Kruger!
On the third day of christmas Jens Kruger gave to us... a great workshop at the New Acoustic Gallery in Solingen. It was really GREAT!
woensdag 21 december 2011
Playing the fivestring (resonator) banjo: Scruggs-style
There are different ways to play a fivestring (resonater) banjo, but the basic style in bluegrass (in other music styles also) is the three-finger style or Scruggs-style (developed by Earl Scruggs, see ‘Playing a banjo with five strings’). Playing Scruggs-style means playing rolls, specific right-hand patterns. There are a lot of rolls (variations), but they all come from a few basis patterns: the forward-roll, double thumb-roll, foggy mountainbreakdown-roll, backward-roll and forward-backward-roll (see picture for some basic examples). The melodynotes in a roll are being played louder (the thumbpick is an important melodynote-picker) and the rest of the notes serve as fill-in notes; together with hammer-ons, slides and pull-offs the rolls give the banjo a smooth, rolling sound. It’s not always easy for the listener to hear the melodyline in a banjosong, even when the melodynotes have more accent.
Example of song played in Scruggs-style
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