In my endless quest to try and discover the true breadth of traditional music I have decided to learn yet another instrument. I should probably just concentrate on the instruments I know fairly well and get better at them but the temptation is just too compelling.
The banjo is a noble instrument. Bluegrass music would not be bluegrass music without that instrument but the banjo has a history that far predates Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. Earl Scruggs solidified the bluegrass style with the three finger picked machine gun rolls we all love but before that and indeed since, many great banjo tunes have been produced with the clawhammer, frailing or whatever you want to call it style.
i love the banjo so for the past couple of years I have been on a journey to attempt to learn its intricacies. I started with three finger rolls and even drove five hundred miles to a banjo camp in Washington. I learned a lot but I still struggled trying to reproduce anything close to the Scruggs legendary sound.
Why not go a different direction? Well, I did. Clawhammer style still melds with most of the music bluegrass fans like to play and it has some advantages over three finger Scruggs style.
First of all you never lose your picks because you don’t need any. Some pickers use metal picks pointed backwards on their fingers but it’s not necessary at all. If I had a nickel for every finger pick or electronic tuner I have lost along the way I could probably afford a few more.
About 90% of the three finger style banjo I know already comes from Eli Gilbert’s Thirty Days of Banjo series on YouTube. Eli has just come out with Thirty Days of Clawhammer. I’m up to day 8 and it is just as good a course as his Scruggs style course.
There are other good resources out there too. Get out your banjo and play some clawhammer!
