Bluegrass Exercises

Been working on fingerpicking the banjo. I've carried on with Tom Dooley and also picked up Goodnight Ladies and Old Time Religion. Both tunes carry on the alternating thumb roll pattern but progressively add in slides. They're still a bit slow and dodgy at the moment...

Tom Dooley



Goodnight Ladies



Old Time Religion

Tom Dooley

Even though I'm obsessed with my new guitar at the moment, I haven't completely abandoned the banjo. In fact I've been having a bit of a rethink recently and I've got New Year resolution number 2 - work on three finger picking skills this year. I've been messing around with picking but developed an annoying finger brush action which works ok with uke and guitar but really annoys me on the banjo. So I thought I try and get a more conventional action before the habit is too ingrained.

I've gone back to the Mel Bay book 'First Banjo Lessons' by Jack Hatfield, which was the first book I tried to learn from two years ago. I found the bluegrass finger picking style too difficult to manage while also trying to coordinate my left hand on the frets, but now I feel ready to give it a go.

This is a simple finger picking roll pattern and I've been working on it endlessly!

I've got myself a scanner recently so I might even start posting a bit of tab. I can't be bothered with the various tab writing programs so they'll probably be hand written.

Tom Dooley

Fingerpicking

I had another go at Cowboy Waltz, and I think I've nearly got it. Still a bit out on the melody with the hammer-ons, but almost.



Also, since the fingerpicking seems to be coming on, I've been working on a simple chord progression 1/4/5 in C to get my right hand in. It's got the same structure as the progression in F that I was doing on the uke a while back. C/C/F/F/C/C/G7/C/F/C/G7/C

Cowboy Waltz

Hopefully getting together with the lads this week for another jam, so I thought I'd have a go at getting my head around Carl's song 'Cowboy Waltz'. It's G/C/D in 3/4 time and previously we've played it with frailing and finger picking banjos, but it's never quite worked, so I thought this was good time to work on my fingerpicking on the banjo after making some headway picking the uke.

It's not quite all there but I'm get it!