Music Education

Learning Banjo - Frailing Backup Banjo

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It's a really good idea to get used to playing this pattern before you start getting fancy with it. Pick up a good songbook and spend some time just playing and singing folk songs. I think one of the main reasons old time banjo is such a mess today is that everybody jumps into fiddle tunes right away without giving themselves time to build up the basic right and left hand skills.

This also has a neat way to expanding your repertoire without trying to remember a whole lot of individual notes. If you can play even the simplest backup technique and sing people will think you are the greatest thing since frozen orange juice because our ears have a weird way of "completing" what we hear. While you might just hear yourself singing along with a bump dit-ty strum people listening will think you are doing sixteen different things at once.

Once you are comfortable with the basic pattern throw in a hammer-on. In this example we're playing the fourth string at the second fret. Simple G run

e=eighth note q=quarter note +=any eighth note combination

Try this run out of a C chord: Simple C run