The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This year is shaping up to be a big one for anniversaries. Not only has it been five years that I've been playing the fiddle , but Saturday marked 10 years since I got my first banjo . Yes, I know I've told this story before , but sometimes I still can't believe how naive I was when I decided to start playing banjo. When I sought advice on what instrument to buy, people asked what style of banjo I wanted to play. I was listening to a lot of Old Crow Medicine Show, Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Avett Brothers, and I was just starting to get into people like Earl Scruggs, Roscoe Holcomb and Dock Boggs. I wanted to sound like all those guys! I think I told someone I wanted to play like Old Crow and Scruggs, because I thought those were names that would be the easiest to define, and so I was steered toward a resonator banjo better suited to bluegrass. I had no idea what old-time was or that there was any other way to play the banjo besides that rolling three-finger pic...

Listening to Ken Perlman fly through a set of dance tunes provides a masterclass on the melodic possibilities not often explored on the five-string banjo. Perlman is, of course, a pioneer in melodic clawhammer banjo playing. He has released dozens of albums and two classic instructional books. His latest album, Frails & Frolics , is a collection of fiddle tunes from Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton and elsewhere. The album is Perlman’s first solo album since 2001, and his first devoted solely to the banjo. The 17 tracks present 46 tunes, mostly arranged as medleys or “sets.” The tunes showcase Perlman’s immaculate playing style. It’s truly a marvel how he can manage to sound all notes of a fiddle. His triplets and trills are masterful. The packaging isn’t flashy, but a simple eight-page booklet gives in-depth background about each tune and its source, as well as notes on Perlman’s arrangements. It’s clear from the liner notes that Perlman has done extensive research into the o...

Considering more than a thousand people viewed my last post in the span of a few days, it seems Tom Collins is a popular guy. He provided some great answers to my questions, so inevitably there were some responses that didn't make it into last week's post. As a bonus, here are some highlights from the cutting room floor. On Collins' favorite banjo player If I had to pick one, it would be Fred Cockerham. He’s a big part of the sound I have in my head. I spent the first several years chasing his sound like some kind of mad dog. His style is spare, but can drive real hard. He also wasn’t afraid to get weird. Some of his renditions of tunes are downright experimental. He can hew to tradition, but has these moments of leaving it behind and soaring into the unknown. That’s exciting to me. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Walt Koken. Such a different player than Fred, but has that same spirit: spinning the old melodies and taking them into the unknown. Walt’s exuberan...

A little more than a year ago, Salem, Massachusetts-based banjo player and teacher Tom Collins embarked on a yearlong project he called Banjo Blitz . The weekly YouTube series provided short banjo lessons on technique. Each video is about five minutes long, give or take, and presents a short pattern — or “ostinato” — designed to teach and improve a specific aspect of banjo playing. The mission was to get the audience “to practice clawhammer in discrete chunks every day without the burden of trying to memorize tunes,” Collins says. He wanted to build skills rather than repertoire. “Let’s take the tune off the table,” says Collins, who has been teaching banjo for 11 years. “Let’s focus on a simple, mantra-like ostinato that can train your body how to execute a technique properly, while training your ears how to hear it properly. Let’s also make it so that you can do this every day without it sucking every spare minute from your life. The big dirty secret about learning how to play ...