Music Education

Learning Banjo - Frailing Backup Banjo

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In this example we are playing around with the fact that your D chord moved down to the ninth fret becomes a G chord and that you can blend the "high" G with the "open" G:

If you don't want to use the C at the fifth fret you can always jump all the way back up to your basic C chord. In the next example we are playing the whole chord as a hammer-on to make it interesting, and to give us a moment of breathing room to make that long run down the fretboard:

One thing I would suggest when it comes to picking up new ideas for your backup playing is to listen to, and hang out with, as may guitar players as you can find. Guitar players as diverse as Riley Pluckett and Robert Johnson hade a lot of cool ideas that can be reshaped to fit into the frailing banjo framework. Listen to Jhonny Cash and Hank Williams. Lonnie Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt. Then listen to some mandolin players like Bill Monroe. Good backup is everywhere because it adds so much to the music without overwhelming anything.

And don't forget to sing. Banjo solos get boring.

Before I toddle off let's look at happens to Banks of the Ohio when you stick in a few simple licks: Banks of the Ohio in G