Five String Banjo

[Steadfastly]

Why is the banjo made with four strings going all the way to the headstock and the 5 one going two thirds of the way up the neck? See video below with Ashley Campbell playing one of these.

[drive-south]

The 5th string is a drone string tuned to G. Banjo players use it as a pedal point.

Bare in mind banjo is from a different planet. This was covered on Ancient Aliens.

[Brucebubs]

Why do Morris dancers have bells on their shoes?

So they annoy blind people too.

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by drive-south

The 5th string is a drone string tuned to G. Banjo players use it as a pedal point.

Bare in mind banjo is from a different planet. This was covered on Ancient Aliens.

There are other banjo tunings available. The banjo, like traditional 'ukulele tuning, is "re-entrant" meaning the first string you play if you strum down is tuned higher than the next string you hit.

[Rudy4]

As Mandobart sez, the 5 string banjo uses re-entrant 5th string, so the fifth string stopping point is usually located at the fifth fret location. I build 5 strings and use tunneled necks exclusively, but the fifth string stopping point is still the fifth fret generally.

[jaymarsch]

Originally Posted by Brucebubs

Why do Morris dancers have bells on their shoes?

So they annoy blind people too.

Ha! Glad I swallowed my mouthful of coffee before reading this post.

Best,
Jayne

[macmanmatty]

Tension is why the fifth string starts at the fifth fret. The Fifth String is tuned to a G4 commonly and sometimes as high as Bb4 With a regular 25.5" scale like the rest of the strings it would be very prone to breaking. So it starts at the fifth fret to reduce tension or the string and neck.

[Steadfastly]

Originally Posted by macmanmatty

Tension is why the fifth string starts at the fifth fret. The Fifth String is tuned to a G4 commonly and sometimes as high as Bb4 With a regular 25.5" scale like the rest of the strings it would be very prone to breaking. So it starts at the fifth fret to reduce tension or the string and neck.

To a guy who knows little about banjos, that is very interesting. Thanks for the post.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by drive-south

The 5th string is a drone string tuned to G. Banjo players use it as a pedal point...

Indeed the great majority do, but a few progressive players tune/finger it to create close-voiced chords in the upper positions as well...

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Steadfastly

Why is the banjo made with four strings going all the way to the headstock and the 5 one going two thirds of the way up the neck?

Just to add a bit of historical background to the discussion, short drone strings like the banjo's fifth string are quite common in African and Arab stringed instruments. The banjo was brought to American culture by African slaves, who made them from gourds and sticks with a bit of tanned animal skin for a drumhead.

Some accounts claim that it was Joel Walker Sweeney, the first famous and successful white "blackface minstrel" in the 19th Century who added the fifth string to the banjo, but the string he added was the bass string, the lowest note on the instrument. The short drone string almost certainly wouldn't have occurred to someone from a European or white American cultural background.* That short string was already there on the instruments that white musicians appropriated and developed further.

Joel Walker Sweeney

In a cultural development eerily mimicked by the emergence of rock and roll music a century later, Sweeney took an African/African American musical style and made it palatable for white audiences and was immensely successful with it. He helped create a audience for the banjo and for the music played on it throughout the English-speaking world - if you read Kipling's short stories set in India, there are several mentions of British officers and colonial officials playing banjos in their off-duty hours.

Minstrel show music truly was the rock and roll of its day, and the banjo had the same impact as electric guitars had from the 1950's onwards.

Possibly the best book on the subject that I've ever read, and one of the most insightful books on folk music in this country overall, is That Half-Barbaric Twang: The Banjo In American Popular Culture, by Karen Linn. I highly recommend it to anyone with even a casual interest in the subject:

˚˚˚

https://www.amazon.com/That-Half-Bar.../dp/025206433X


Wade Hampton Miller

*While it's true that plenty of European folk instruments have drones, like bagpipes, short strings off to the side like the banjo's are not characteristic to the region. What drone and sympathetic strings there are, like the mountain dulcimer's, the Swedish hummel's, and the Hardanger fiddle's sympathetic strings that run through its hollow neck, all tend to be full length.

[Silly Moustache]

For many years I've positively disliked the banjo - possibly because I have "fought" them in bluegrass bands on and off since 1975.

I had one once ni the '70s, learnt to play dear old Dixie on an top of the range Ibanez - forget where it went.

This year, I got interested in playing open back banjo and , strangely, I was encouraged by my wife who bought me one.
As often happens if I express an interest in an interest or style, Mando Bob follows me and gets the same thing compelling me to be just the singer-guitarist.

There are three banjo players that impress me :



Jason Romero



I love Jason and Pharis - he makes a pretty good banjo too - but here he demonstrates a characteristic of banjo playes ...they never ...stop!

Dana & Sue Robinson :



I've met Sue and Dana frequently and they are the most gentle and lovely couple and I love her minimal approach to banjo.


Dunno how this guy got in there :

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

For many years I've positively disliked the banjo - possibly because I have "fought" them in bluegrass bands on and off since 1975.

It's always fun to try to get a banjo player to get in tune and stay in tune with everybody else. Sometimes you just want to ask:

"Do you understand the CONCEPT?!?"

Having said that, I also play five string banjo (clawhammer style,) mandolin-banjo and - the one I use the most, now that I've got a good one - guitar-banjo. I've got a Deering guitar-banjo and it's really a superb design.


whm

[Nymuso]

My entire right hand technique is a carry over from my early years of playing when I taught myself banjo as well as guitar. At about the five year mark in my playing career I decided to apply the banjo attack to the guitar in order to get a more pianistic sound. It turned out to have been a great decision. I rarely have occasion to play the banjo these days, although I still have one.

Despite the fact that many great players are doing many inventive things with the five string banjo, it has not managed to escape the common perception of being a niche instrument relegated to Country and Folk in general, Bluegrass in particular. I've also noticed that much of the banjo one hears on current Country recordings is played on six string banjo, I suspect so guitar players can double without actually learning a new instrument.

I recently came across a YouTube video of the Eagles in which Don Felder was playing 5-string banjo on a live version of Midnight Flyer, presumably done after Leadon had left the band but before Meisner's exit.

[PiousDevil]

Originally Posted by macmanmatty

Tension is why the fifth string starts at the fifth fret. The Fifth String is tuned to a G4 commonly and sometimes as high as Bb4 With a regular 25.5" scale like the rest of the strings it would be very prone to breaking. So it starts at the fifth fret to reduce tension or the string and neck.

This is the correct answer.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Nymuso

've also noticed that much of the banjo one hears on current Country recordings is played on six string banjo, I suspect so guitar players can double without actually learning a new instrument.

This has actually always been the case. Back in the early 1990's when my kids were still tiny there was a children's music radio station in Anchorage called "Radio Oz." (I think it was a satellite feed.) My children liked it, and we often listened to it when we were in the car.

One day we were sitting at a traffic light and the song that was playing was Kermit the Frog singing: "It's Not Easy Being Green." As I listened to the banjo part, I realized that Kermit was getting low notes that don't exist on a five string - it was a guitar-banjo being played.

Session musicians have always used guitar-banjos, so far as I can tell. The instrument has received an enthusiastic boost in country music circles from Keith Urban, who not only plays guitar-banjo himself but on some songs has another guy in his band playing another one at the same time!

NYmuso, while a lot of the guitar-banjo you hear being played on recordings is, as you thought, because the players didn't want to have to learn another instrument, guitar-banjo is a valid instrument in its own right. There are lower notes I can get on it that I can't get on a five string, and there are an enormous number of rhythm and textures available to you that are difficult or impossible on five string.

I use mine a lot. Greg Deering figured out and corrected the various technical flaws in the guitar-banjo that had plagued it (most of which came from using straight thin standard banjo bridges instead of the thicker, CNC-carved intonated bridges Deering came up with,) and it's now a very viable musical instrument. It still get sneered at by some, mostly five string bluegrass banjoplayers, but it has its place. I've owned guitar-banjos since 1984, and once I got my Deering about fifteen years later it became an instrument that I'll always keep and use.

For certain things it's indispensable.


Wade Hampton Miller