Hi Andrew, I came across your site while trying to find out about two finger picking on the 5string banjo ,I,m in the twilight years so no spring chicken but still would love to play.I have had my open back G banjo over the past year and I,m still struggling just to play some kind of tune. I have tried hard with three picks and several books and dvds know a few chords.then I bought a dvd on ebay by Happy Traum who plays two finger picking ,he calls it mountain music and just maybe I could manage this. So I have contacted you to see if you could point me in the right way of finding more about this style may some place I could get Tabs for two finger picking. I live in sompting sunny sussex down south,any way you know I,ll be very happy with any help so a Happy New Year and all the best
alan
There are a whole load of different fingerpicking styles out there, about as many as there a different tunings on the banjo. If you've tried for a year to get going with the fingerpicking style and still having problems, maybe a strumming style would be a better place to start. I know I struggled and got disheartned with the bluegrass three finger style and eventually started 'frailing', or pick and strum as it was easier for me to pick up. As someone who hasn't played any other instruments I found the bluegrass finger rolls and left hand techniques hard to learn at the same time.
I got a good book by Tim Jumper called 'How to play: Banjo' it starts by introducing simple pick and strum technique, moves onto 'downpicking' which is picking and struming with with the back of the nail, and finally moves onto three finger picking. I've found that after two years of working through these various techniques I'm ready to go back and try the three finger technique. With the frailing method you can get a song going fairly quick. I think it took me about three-six months of pretty heavy practice to get the action going naturally - check out the earlier posts!
here's a link to amazon for the tim jumper book
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Play-Banjo-Tim-Jumper/dp/0825623529
The other place to go is Daily Frail.com Pat and Patrick Costello are a mine of useful hints tips and encouragement and I've found there free online tutorial invaluable. They have all their videos on you tube for free and the series on basic technique is where I would tell anyone to go to see demonstation and techniques explained in a non technical way.
Try these for a start http://www.youtube.com/user/Dobro33H#grid/user/EB220FDB09CFC903
These guys have also pubished some of the best instructional books and DVDs that I've seen so maybe give those a look too.
Hope this helps.
Good luck and let me know how you get on.
Andy
Anyone else got any suggestions for Alan - contact acwesley@aol.com
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