I'm buying a banjo

[FilterFunk]

Banjo is cool. Taake is a black metal project that has banjo. It' kick ass too. Congrats on your new banjo OP.

Wouldn't banjo, along with accordion and bagpipes, be a natural for black metal? After all, they're considered by many to be the the instruments from hell!

 

[EatS1stBassist]

It does...depending on where all of these things are.

Waaay deep in the backwoods? NNNNNOPE!!!

Lol!

 

[JimmyM]

Historically, you are correct. There were banjos in various sizes and configurations. Anything with a stretched skin and some strings could qualify. But, over the last 50 years or so, if you put out a call for a banjo for a band or recording, you expected a five string banjo and not a guitar or ukulele or whatever that kind of sounded like a banjo. So, I was going by what country and bluegrass players expected. In music, they are no firm rules, only guidelines.

I've actually booked a session with a 4-string tenor player once because the music we were doing was old-timey jazz style. But for country and bluegrass sessions, absolutely you'd want a 5. And now Bela Flack made a 5 a requirement in jazz I'm doing mostly punk rock for my recordings.

 

[JimmyM]

He ain't far from the Everglades.

6 hour drive on a good day. Far enough

 

[Playbyear]

Not sure when that "rule" got declared. Do you have documented evidence of this ruling? I ask because I sure see a lot of instruments called banjos that existed well before the first 5 string banjo.

I don't think there is any rule, but its written that the first Drum body banjo was a five string developed around 1830.

Before that banjos had gourd bodies with skin stretched over it and often three or four strings.

 

[Bonsist]

Wouldn't banjo, along with accordion and bagpipes, be a natural for black metal? After all, they're considered by many to be the the instruments from hell!

They are used in black metal more nowadays, and I don't mean just folk black metal.

 

[Rick Brienzo]

I play 5 string banjo and also own that very guitjo in your first post. For a more convincing banjo sound tune the guitjo to open G. It will help you avoid the standard guitar riffs and licks that make it sound like a guitar.

 

[NinjaPyrate]

Played clawhammer banjo before I came to the bass side. Also check out Gold Tone cello banjos for a bassier tone.

 

[JimmyM]

I play 5 string banjo and also own that very guitjo in your first post. For a more convincing banjo sound tune the guitjo to open G. It will help you avoid the standard guitar riffs and licks that make it sound like a guitar.

I would take your advice if I was interested in it sounding like an actual banjo. Of course, I want it to sound like a banjo but not trying to convince anyone that I'm playing a 5-string.

 

[mexicanyella]

I would take your advice if I was interested in it sounding like an actual banjo. Of course, I want it to sound like a banjo but not trying to convince anyone that I'm playing a 5-string.

Might be fun to try open G either way. I found even the 5-string G tuning wasn't enough to keep me from sounding guitaristic on some of what I played the other day, avoiding the drone G string because I don't have either the picking or claw hammer frailing thing down. But ultimately it was fun to just jump in to unfamiliar fretboard territory and see what I could come up with. I kind of forgot we had a banjo, to be honest, and now I want to get into using it on stuff.

 

[Rick Brienzo]

I would take your advice if I was interested in it sounding like an actual banjo. Of course, I want it to sound like a banjo but not trying to convince anyone that I'm playing a 5-string.

I respect that. Open tunings are also a whole lot of fun. Open G, open D, and DADGAD all work great on a guitjo. Have a blast with that thing!

 

[BurningSkies]

Cool. Wanna start a cover band? We can do Pogues and Golgo Bordello etc...

 

[JimmyM]

Cool. Wanna start a cover band? We can do Pogues and Golgo Bordello etc...

I love both those bands! But if we do Gogol Bordello, I want to be the old guy on the violin.

Looking up how many work reward points a cheap violin costs right now.

 

[mongo2]

I love both those bands! But if we do Gogol Bordello, I want to be the old guy on the violin.

Looking up how many work reward points a cheap violin costs right now.

Speaking of cheap violins...

About 20 years ago my then 10 year-old son told me he wanted to learn violin. Thinking it might be a passing thing I bought him a black violin (his color choice) on eBay for $60. When the band leader at his middle school saw it she tried it and told me it was very good sounding and in her hands it was.

Anyway, my wife and I both remember distinctly the day, after months of private lessons and practicing diligently, he found his intonation. My wife and I looked at each other and I said, "Finally!" The next day he and I took the tapes off the fingerboard. He wound up being second violin in the state youth orchestra during high school using that same $60 violin. Best $60 I ever spent.

 

[rufus.K]

Speaking of cheap violins...

About 20 years ago my then 10 year-old son told me he wanted to learn violin. Thinking it might be a passing thing I bought him a black violin (his color choice) on eBay for $60. When the band leader at his middle school saw it she tried it and told me it was very good sounding and in her hands it was.

Anyway, my wife and I both remember distinctly the day, after months of private lessons and practicing diligently, he found his intonation. My wife and I looked at each other and I said, "Finally!" The next day he and I took the tapes off the fingerboard. He wound up being second violin in the state youth orchestra during high school using that same $60 violin. Best $60 I ever spent.

Thats a rad story!

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

May be irrelevant but this is a cool pic that reminded me of this thread.

 

[BurningSkies]

I love both those bands! But if we do Gogol Bordello, I want to be the old guy on the violin.

Looking up how many work reward points a cheap violin costs right now.

I don't know if anyone here has posted this, now that the thread is longer but in along with the derogatory whiteguy stereotypes of banjo there IS this...

Invalid Link Removed

 

[JimmyM]

I don't know if anyone here has posted this, now that the thread is longer but in along with the derogatory whiteguy stereotypes of banjo there IS this...

Invalid Link Removed

I'd love to see it. There are so many possibilities for the banjo in all kinds of music and I'm all for them.

Meanwhile, I come on here to say that my banjo is sitting in Nashville filling up with lots of Music City vibe before it gets to me

 

[Playbyear]

I'd love to see it. There are so many possibilities for the banjo in all kinds of music and I'm all for them.

Meanwhile, I come on here to say that my banjo is sitting in Nashville filling up with lots of Music City vibe before it gets to me

And then there is Sufjan

 

[Basically Bob]

The guy playing banjo in this shot is my grandfather. The banjo is a four string Gibson Mastertone. He purchased it used, we think, sometime around 1937, for something like $275.00. According to my father, the purchase caused quite a scene with my Grandmother when he arrived home with it.

The band played locally, at dance halls, back in the day.

So many fond memories of him playing and singing for my brother and I when we were kids.