h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As someone who tried to teach myself banjo (scruggs/platt style)years ago, I read this article with interest and a little bit of nostalgia. Well written and structured, it deserves a place in teh Guide. I am the owner of one of the bizarre variants that you mention - a 7 string banjo dating from about teh 1930s; 6 strings tuned like a guitar (I guess) and the drone. The sound quality is awful - this was par for the course for a lot of these experimentals.

Anyway - interesting article. But then, I'm biased!

Thanks a bunch! It seems to have been recommended for the edited Guide, so I'm all excited. I'm a clawhammer banjo player myself--just couldn't quite get up the interest for Scruggs-style playing.

Anyway, if you ever get around to trying your hands at the banjo again, it's pretty wild to try the Scruggs-style stuff on a guitar tuning, and on a seven-string banjo (I *think* they're just called banjo guitars, but I've only seen one example, so I'm not sure). If you get a hold of a regular old five-string, and if you tune it to an open A--EAC#Ea, from lowest pitch to highest--you'll find the style a lot easier to pick up. Scruggs himself played out of the old-time open tunings, and almost all bluegrass banjo players still do. On the 7-string, you could probably fake the 5-string open tuning and just have the top lowest strings continue down the chord--C# and A--and have a go at it that way.

It's funny you say that the sound quality is awful. I heard a guy at a music shop, who sold banjos of all shapes and size, explain to a potential customer that the banjolin "combines the worst aspects of the banjo and mandolin into one instrument." That said, people have gotten some pretty amazing music out of instruments that ostensibly sound terrible. Lots of old-time banjo players have banjos that sound like trash cans with wire strung across them, but they sound great because the player has learned what to do with it. Unlike many instruments, you can get away with having a really crappy banjo and nobody will be the wiser. My own banjo, a fretless, cost me all of a hundred dollars. I bought it off a friend who bought it off a guy selling them out of the back of his car. It has a great sound, deep and plunky--better than many banjos I've played that are worth several hundred to a thousand dollars more. But it did take some wrestling with it to make it sound all right.

Thanks again.
-Dr. F.