The workshop in progress

Listening to the master...

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.

Jens playing my 1975 Ome Triple X

He called it a 'super bluegrassbanjo'!

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!

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

Playing a banjo with five strings

My acquaintance with the fivestring banjo goes back to the days when I was a kid, listening to some of my fathers country records. It’s a bit classic, but on one of these records I discovered a banjo instrumental called Foggy Mountain Breakdown. The song blew me away and I was hooked ever since...
I refer to the banjo as ‘fivestring banjo’ and not ‘bluegrass banjo’. Of course, this type of banjo is used in bluegrassmusic, but the fivestring banjo is not only a banjo for bluegrass. It’s used in different types of music, even in pop and rock music. It’s an instrument with unlimited possibilities.
There’s also another type of fivestring banjo without a resonator, called an oldtime or open back banjo. It’s used in the oldtime folkmusic.

The most common style of playing a fivestring resonator banjo is with a plastic thumbpick and two metal fingerpicks for the index- and middlefinger. It’s a so called three-fingerstyle that is known as Scruggsstyle, named after Earl Scruggs who developed this style of playing. Scruggstyle means playing rolls, a repeated pattern of notes. There are several basis rolls (patterns), but we will cover that later, in an another article.
There were other three-fingerstyle players in his time and before (Earl was first recorded in 1946) but the style of Scruggs was a innovative approach of the banjo and has influenced generations of fivestring banjoists.
The melodic style appeared somewhere in the 1950s, introduced by Bill Keith and Bobby Thompson (†). This style involves playing only melody notes, note for note fiddle tunes. This style is different from the Scruggsstyle (a roll has only a few melody notes, the rest of the notes are ‘fill-inn’ notes to add drive to the music).
A third style is the single stringstyle: this style is similar to flat-picking lead guitar, but instead of using a flat pick you alternate right hand fingers on individual strings.

The Eastbound Cityliners at Radio Slingeland FM

Fred Hissink (banjo, harmonica's and dobro),
Marius Duurland (upright bass, guitar and vocals),
Frans van Steenveldt (mandolin, guitar and vocals),
Pauline Duurland (fiddle, accordeon and vocals).

Picture on the left, at the bottom: Harrie, the stationmanager.