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Great thread. I've been at banjo for about two years. I had been at guitar for about 10 years when I inherited my Grandpa's 4 string banjo and started messing around with it. Really piqued my interest as I'd always been into bluegrass and americana type stuff. Within a few months, I decided it was definitely fun enough to worth investing in. Bought myself a deering goodtime banjo (I love this thing, plays great) and have hardly touched the guitar since. I later removed the resonator, so I wish I'd just bought the cheaper model that comes without one, a recommendation I'd pass along to anyone shopping. I'm not too keen on the resonator sound, but I play clawhammer so perhaps it's different for scruggs style players. Walked posted:So let's say I'm pretty good at fingerstyle guitar. Not amazing, but can pretty quickly pick up new patterns, sound good, etc. The left hand aspect will be fairly immediate and simple for you. The right hand has a very, very different feel than guitar/fingerpicking. It also took my brain a minute to accept that the highest pitched string was no longer at the bottom of the neck, but rather the top. However, having built dexterity with guitar, you should be able to pick it up quickly. If anyone has any questions about clawhammer, I'd be happy to do my best to help. Drop thumb was the most confusing aspect for me to learn but I finally got it down after about a year. 
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May 15, 2011 18:41
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Fiddle - I've been trying to learn this for a few years as well. Planet X's advice is all spot on, and make sure to bring a fiddle player with you when you pick one out. They are all different with their own unique sound. This instrument was definitely a lot harder for me to pick up than banjo, the bowing technique felt totally alien at first. TONS of fun once you get it going, though. Percussive clawhammer - thumbing the banjo head was unfortunately kinda frowned upon with some of the musicians I played with... though I actually enjoy it in some instances, depending on the tune, but in the end it was a habit I worked to break myself of for recording purposes. It sounded distracting when I played it back. Also if you are interested in moving on to drop thumb, it will be beneficial to get used to a more shallow thumbstroke. Plucking over the fretted area as opposed to the banjo head helped me with this (and it also gives a great, mellow sound). I don't mean to be a negative nancy, its just something I personally wished I had worked on from the get go.
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May 17, 2011 18:54
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You know, I don't have any experience on the higher action setup, but it seems to make perfect sense. I have heard that a wider neck helps (more space between strings). I'm hoping to get a frailing scoop done to my banjo neck soon, very excited, I love the tones you can get playing there. I've got one other real simple exercise that helped me develop a shallow thumbstroke for drop thumb - and that was to play songs as normal, but instead of using the high string for the drone note, move your thumb down to another string and drone there exclusively. It sounds pretty weird but once I got comfortable, it was pretty easy to alternate strings with my thumb, and voila - drop thumb. As far as using index or middle finger for the downstroke, I've seen it done both ways and could not fault the sound of either. One dude on youtube said he'd wished he'd learned with the index finger because you get more power out of it, but his playing was nothing short of amazing using the middle finger, so who knows. And I couldn't agree more about focusing on feel, sound, and fun. That's what banjo is all about!
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May 19, 2011 19:12
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This made sense of drop thumbing for me - use it only when there is a note that lands on an upbeat in the main melody. When there is no upbeat in the melody, just keep the upbeat going on the 5th string drone note, and switch/drop down for melody upbeats. That way you don't have to double the picking speed of your index/middle finger, and it keeps a smooth rolling sound going. So a full roll as a 1 measure 4 count goes something like: (1) nail, (2) nail, (&) thumb, (3) nail, (&) dropthumb, (4) nail, (&) thumb &s being the upbeats. Errr hope that helps. 
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Jul 16, 2011 19:30
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HollisBrown posted:Also I already love the banjo and may be a life long convert. Who needs guitars? I'm with ya buddy, my poor guitar retired the day I got my banjo. Congrats on the awesome gift, they are a hell of a lotta fun. As far as untraining your thumb - I had the same issue, it just got easier with time. I practiced rolls super slow to a metronome and slowly sped it up. I found that on banjo doing exercises was not as tedious as other instruments cause it's pretty fun to see how fast you can get moving.
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Dec 31, 2011 16:11
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