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First Lessons Tenor Banjo
by: Joe Carr

An Exercise in C for the Banjo

If you ask top end musicians who their musical influences are you might be surprised when they tell you how much they like to listen to other instruments being played. It's really not much of a mystery, elite level players are pushing the edge of their instruments and they not only need new technical ideas but they like to listen to the music at the same time. When a banjo player hears Gerry O'Connor or Mick Moloney play, he or she often pays more attention to the technical side of the playing and focuses on how to achieve the effects that they hear. But by listening to another instrument, we not only hear the music, but are inspired to try new things on the banjo. I like to listen to fiddles, pipes and accordions mostly because they play tunes suited for the banjo. It is difficult to mimic the ornamentation of these instruments but that is an advantage. Instead I think of these instruments as telling me more about the music.

Recently I had the pleasure if sitting in on an advanced fiddle class with Randal Bays at the Milwaukee Irishfest Summer School. He taught the class a nice little jig composed by Paddy Fahey (sometimes called his Number 9, Fahey does not name his tunes) that translated to the banjo easily. Randal was showing the class where various cuts and rolls could go in the tune and how varying them changed the way the tune was perceived while keeping the rhythmic basis of the tune intact. The other nice thing about the tune was that it is in the key of C.

Now some of you might think that there is little use for the key of C on a banjo but the fact is that putting in that F natural is one of the best things you can learn to do. Not only does it stretch your brain a little, but it opens up the possibility for transposing tunes into a tuning that compliments the banjo and it allows you to play in D minor and some G minor tunes. In addition if you keep it up, you can soon play in Bb and keep up with the fiddles who have a tendency to go into keys that the rest of the session can't play.

In a technical sense the only difference is a little more stretch towards the nut on the E string (the same thing happens on the A string if you play in Bb) and getting use to making the interval jump from F natural to an A on the top string.

Here is a little exercise to help you learn this interval and to think in the key of C. Play it very slowly at first and try to be as precise in fretting the notes as possible. Don't worry about speed that will come as you become more comfortable with the C scale.

Here is an artificially generated version of the exercise.

Exercise in C MIDI
ExerciseinC.mid

Here is the Paddy Fahey jig. It is deceptively simple and very pleasant to play and hear. The place that banjo players will stumble is in the third bar and the last two bars of the B part. If you are not solid with the C scale, you will have a tendency to play the F sharp note instead of the F natural because you are used to the finger interval that goes to the F sharp. In a sense, going to the F natural is like going to a second or third position, only backwards. Persons with smaller hands will have to slide from the F natural to the A note but if you did the exercise, you will have figured out how to do it. Just take the jig slowly and enjoy it. The tune is so pretty that it sounds good at any tempo.

Paddy Fahey's Jig MP3
PaddyFaheys.mp3

If you are still not convinced, remember two things: Am is the relative minor of the C scale (there are a lot of tunes in Am) and your banjo sounds very good in C. Once you are comfortable with the C scale try to play some of your favorite D tunes a full step down. Not only will you become a better musician, but you will find different ornamentation sound possibilities.

Randal Bays, who has a web site at http://www.randalbays.com/, is one of the finest fiddlers of any style around. He is primarily a teacher and devotes much of his time to showing others how to play the music he loves. Irishfest is the largest Irish cultural event in the world and is held in Milwaukee every year in August. There is a one week Irishfest Summer School right before the main event that always features world class teachers and interesting classes. More information at http://www.irishfest.com. Ireland produces a number of composers like Paddy Fahey (http://iol.ie/~ronolan/fahey.html), an East Galway farmer who happens to write gorgeous tunes but has never recorded a solo album or sought fame for his playing. He never names his tunes, just numbers them, and if you go to sessions you will have heard at least one of his tunes. He has been honored several times a cultural treasure in Ireland. In his part of Ireland it is not unusual for fiddlers to play in the "wistful" flat keys. C scale is the least flat of these key, learn it and you can go on from there.

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