Do most banjo players use finger picks?

[Dru Edwards]

Hey all. Do most banjo players use finger picks? I just watched a couple of videos and they were using them. Just curious.

Thanks.

[HHP]

Clawhammer, mostly no. Scruggs style, mostly yes.

[Dru Edwards]

Thanks HHP. I'm going to have to do some research on those styles. Earle Scruggs was the gentleman playing the banjo in the video I watched. He's amazing.

[leftybanjo]

I just came back from the Midwest Banjo Camp, put on by Elderly Instruments. 175 banjo players jamming fro 3 days. The bluegrass folks used picks and the clawhammer, also known as Old Time banjo, used primarily thumb and bare fingers. Both are correct and produce wonderful music. Many very talented young musicians are experimenting with a combination of both styles and I think it is exciting.

[Wade Hampton]

As someone who frails the banjo (clawhammer style,) I do sometimes use a solitary fingerpick. But I put it on backwards on my index finger, to protect my fingernail from further erosion.

Most of the time when I wear a fingerpick it's been when I've been playing the banjo a lot, usually at a festival or workshop. When you frail you stroke downwards on the strings, and that eats away at the nail after a while.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Scriptor]

I play with or without picks ... for most of the Bluegrass stuff I play, I use the picks ... for Folk or Celtic, I sometimes don't use picks to give a different tone/attack ... there is no right or wrong way ... do what sounds best and works for you ... that said, picks take some getting used to so don't give up if it doesn't come to you right away ...

[Dru Edwards]

Thanks Everyone. I did a lot of reading today. For someone who doesn't know anything about Banjos I know a lot more now. I might get me one, just to fool around one.

[HHP]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Thanks Everyone. I did a lot of reading today. For someone who doesn't know anything about Banjos I know a lot more now. I might get me one, just to fool around one.

Cheaper than a lobotomy, same net effect.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

Thanks Everyone. I did a lot of reading today. For someone who doesn't know anything about Banjos I know a lot more now. I might get me one, just to fool around one.

Well, banjos are the precise opposite of babe magnets: if you get a banjo you won't have to worry about adoring female fans dressed in flimsy summer dresses draping themselves over you while you try to play. Banjos work on most women the way those vehicle-mounted deer whistles are supposed to work on deer: they won't want to come within a quarter mile of you!

One of these years I want to write a doctoral thesis on "The Banjo As Birth Control Device"....

I'm exaggerating here, slightly, but not very much.

I know what you're thinking, Dru - it gets lonely there in the frost-bitten extremities of Eastern Canada, and you were hoping that this would bring some Canadian women out of their snow caves to hear you play.

First you thought: "I know, I'll get good at curling, and THAT will rope them in!"



Didn't work.

Then you thought: "Model railroading! Now THERE'S a pastime that the women can't resist!":



That didn't work either.

So now it's banjos.

Sigh....

In all seriousness, Dru, I wish you the best with this. Who knows, maybe I'm dead wrong, and banjo will turn out to be your path to true happiness and musical fulfillment! Good luck!!


Wade Hampton "Banjo Boy" Miller

[darylcrisp]

Dru

here's you some nice clawhammer/OT music on banjo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Rom...hannel&list=UL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VckQWryzAZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFpU3...feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7gV7...feature=relmfu

and the amazing Sarah J:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIEC9DSc3aw
and again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-SLS...feature=fvwrel

d

[anton]

I am still looking for a good fingerpick for clawhammer banjo. I like the tone of my bare nail best, but to much playing shreds my nail, and I need it for fingerstyle guitar. Ive tried the Fred Kelly Freedom fingerpicks, and they work well, but I am not totally happy with the tone of plastic on the steel string. Celtic guitarist Steve Baughman gets a good sound on claw banjo with Alaska picks. Ill have to experiment with it a bit more.


Anton

[HHP]

Perlmann could give up the violin for the banjo and most people would picture banjo players like this......

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by anton

I am still looking for a good fingerpick for clawhammer banjo. I like the tone of my bare nail best, but to much playing shreds my nail, and I need it for fingerstyle guitar. Ive tried the Fred Kelly Freedom fingerpicks, and they work well, but I am not totally happy with the tone of plastic on the steel string. Celtic guitarist Steve Baughman gets a good sound on claw banjo with Alaska picks. Ill have to experiment with it a bit more.


Anton

Anton - I was reading someplace about a frailer who cuts ping pong balls into clawhammer fingerpicks. Ping pong balls are just about the only other commercial product besides flatpicks made from celluloid, because celluloid is still the only plastic that bounces properly, or something.

Anyway, you might try cutting up some ping pong balls, and soaking the resulting picks in hot water to get them pliable enough to mold to your fingers.

Another possibility is taking regular metal fingerpicks and edging them with surgical rubber tubing. There's a banjo player named Paul Smith that I met who played a lot of classical pieces on banjo. He used fingerpicks the regular way, but edged them with fine tubing. It gave him one of the best banjo tones I've ever heard.

Whether that's something that would work for clawhammer, I don't know, but it's a possibility, anyway.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Well, banjos are the precise opposite of babe magnets: if you get a banjo you won't have to worry about adoring female fans dressed in flimsy summer dresses draping themselves over you while you try to play. Banjos work on most women the way those vehicle-mounted deer whistles are supposed to work on deer: they won't want to come within a quarter mile of you!

One of these years I want to write a doctoral thesis on "The Banjo As Birth Control Device"....

I'm exaggerating here, slightly, but not very much.

I know what you're thinking, Dru - it gets lonely there in the frost-bitten extremities of Eastern Canada, and you were hoping that this would bring some Canadian women out of their snow caves to hear you play.

First you thought: "I know, I'll get good at curling, and THAT will rope them in!"



Didn't work.

Then you thought: "Model railroading! Now THERE'S a pastime that the women can't resist!":



That didn't work either.

So now it's banjos.

Sigh....

In all seriousness, Dru, I wish you the best with this. Who knows, maybe I'm dead wrong, and banjo will turn out to be your path to true happiness and musical fulfillment! Good luck!!


Wade Hampton "Banjo Boy" Miller

Wade - Fantastic post. I'm still laughing. That must mean that I'm not a curler.

I don't know anything about Bluegrass music and I don't listen to it but when I saw Scruggs play on that video a few days ago I was amazed. I also saw some guitar flatpickers and wow, so much talent.

I may end up getting a banjo but it would be just to fool around with. No career inspirations and I won't be taking it to any parties.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Dru Edwards

I may end up getting a banjo but it would be just to fool around with. No career inspirations and I won't be taking it to any parties.

You WILL still be taking it to singles bars, though, in the hope that I'm completely wrong about the banjo's effect on women, right?


Wade Hampton "Hope Springs Eternal In The Human Breast" Miller


PS: Have fun with the banjo. Once you get the right hand motion and patterns figured out, the left hand stuff is actually quite simple. It's the right hand stuff that's the difficult part of the equation.