Fingerstyle Articles: Good Oil: Starting Banjo

Fingerstyle Productions
Wendy Holman
March 2008

“If three people ask you the same question, you’d best formulate a public reply.”

I’ve forgotten who the famous person was who said that but in this case, the question being asked is

“I love the sound of banjo,
I don’t have a banjo yet – where do I start?”

Now, I could write pages about the different banjos in the banjo family and their relative merits, but personally I’m all about promoting and playing 5-string. It’s still actively played all over the world, there’s lots of music written for it, people playing it at local jams, festivals centred around it, chat sites and informational pages devoted to it. ‘They’ reckon it’s growing in popularity. From personal experience I’d have to agree. Three years ago I ran a workshop at the Imbil festival (QLD, November) - there were 8 pickers. The following year there were 12. In 2007 the organisers set up a microphone so that I could be heard above 20 banjo players, raring to go!

There are 2 types of 5-string banjo:

Open Back/Old Time banjo showing frailing scoop

Open-backs/Old Time banjos

These are the traditional construction, featured in the movie "Song Catcher". Folks in the Ozarks/Appalachians were picking Old Timey banjos since before Australia was discovered by Captain Cook. Depending on date and manufacture open-backs can have wooden rims, metal rims or silver rims – some of these very ornate. Traditional construction used one wooden co-ordinator rod. The skin diameter of vintage models can vary. Standard is 11” diameter pot.

Wooden Coordinator Rod

Dual Coordinator Rods

For added strength quality, modern open-backs have 2 metal co-ordinator rods. Tone rings can be metal but wooden tone rings are popular giving a sweet, mellow sound. (Check out the sound bytes on the Fingerstyle website player of “Mississippi” and “Wildwood Flower”.)

Mike Seeger’s excellent video “Old Time Banjo Styles” shows frets on some banjos stop well before the pot - the picker is right over the fingerboard. This style of construction is called a frailing scoop – part of the fingerboard is cut right down giving more height between the strings and fingerboard. Why frailing scoops? Next time you pick up a banjo compare the tone between the bridge and close up to the fingerboard – more tubby, mellow, round, woody, present, resonant etc.

Resonator Banjo

Bluegrass Type Banjo
The other popular type of 5-string banjo, Bluegrass, has a tone-ring, usually of metal although Deering, and Hopkins (USA) and Eucalypt Banjos (AUS) also have models using tone rings made from very hard tone woods such as Grenadillo. The tone ring is considered by many to be the heart of the sound of bluegrass banjos. The main visual difference between Old Time banjos and Bluegrass banjos is the resonator (a sound reflector) which increases the volume and punch. They're often heavier depending on the quality of metals used. Weight used to be an indication of quality but isn’t completely reliable.

Fingerstyle Productions, Nambour, Queensland, Australia.

Website created and maintained by Bewitching Webworks.

About Starting Banjo - Article 1 of 3