Music Education

Learning Banjo - How to Play By Ear

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Your 6 chord can be played as a major chord as well. But it is kind of funky. You will really only use the major 6 once in a great while. In some songs like "Little Maggie" you might run into what some players call a mountain seven. That is when you flat the 7 chord. That is why "Little Maggie" goes from G to F rather than G to F#. We talked about this in the last New Time banjo workshop.

The slang term for numbering a scale like this is "The Nashville number System." It didn't come from Nashville (you don't really think the people who brought us gems like "Achy-Breaky Heart" were responsible for something like a musicial concept, did you?) but they got the credit for it. Don't as me why, it's as much of a mystery as why there isn't a half step between B and C.

Now take the other scales you worked out earlier and come up with the 1-4-5 progressions for each.

Now take a really simple song like Boil Them Cabbage Down (the tab is for frailing banjo so if you play another style or instrument you'll have to come up with something else. If you need help drop me a note.)

Boil Them cabbage Down: (the lyrics are available in our basic frailing workshop)

Now they way the song is tabbed out here you are playing a chord progression that runs:
C / F / C / G / C / F / C G / C

If we compare that chord progression to our scale and the number system:

It's easy to see that we are working with the 1, 4 and 5 chords.

Now how would you play Boil Them cabbage Down in the key of G? How would you play the song in D, A or even E?

What I want you to work on until the next New Time Banjo workshop is just taking simple songs and listening to what the chord progressions sound like in other keys.

I recommended picking up a good songbook like Rise Up Singing or The Folksingers Wordbook and messing around with songs you like. If you don't