2 comments about Hal Leonard Banjo Method - Book 1 - Book/CD Pkg..

1. This book is a great starter if you want to pick up a banjo and start pickin'. I have played the guitar for a few years so the transition was not difficult and I found myself flying through the book, I completed the book in about 2 months. The book focuses on scruggs style picking, you'll learn basic rolls and cords.

   After you learn the basics there really aren't many exercises. The book tends to introduce a roll pattern, suggest you practice it over and over and once you have it play the next acompanying song.

   Don't expect to learn to read music, everything in this book is tabbed out. Capo use is not covered either. Does not cover soloing either.

   For the price it's a good buy, by the end of the book you'll be able to play Cripple Creek, Do Lord, Boil Them Cabbage Down, Hard Ain't It Hard, Old-Time Religion, Comin' Round The Moutain, My Home's Accross the Blue Ridge Mountains, Foggy Mountain Top, Little Birdie, Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms, and a few others as well.

   Despite it not being very comprehensive I was happy with the book and could play pretty well once I got through it. The method was very easy to follow, great for a beginner if you ask me. For the price its a great place to start and you'll be playing songs almost immediately.




2. This is a very helpful book for those who are starting from scratch learning how to play the banjo. However, I had already had about a month worth of lessons before my teacher told me to get it and the first 20 or so pages were of things that I learned in the first 2 lessons. This is a great book and it's fun when you start getting into the songs.

1 comments about The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy.

1. Bob Carlin spent years and years researching, consulting, studying, documenting, and otherwise working on this book. To some of us who joked about how this book might never appear, Bob always responded, I've got to get everything right.
   
   Bob did get everything right, at least as far as I know, here. In doing so he provides a strong practical basis not just for the life of Sweeney but for the nature of early Minstrelsy, the roots of the five string banjo, the spread of banjo playing and minstrelsy to Britain, and much about the nature of the entertainment business in the 1830s through the 1850s.
   
   No one who wants to know about the five-string banjo, American cultural and musical history should be without this book, No one.
   
   This book has the same strengths that Carlin's earlier book on Piedmont Carolina String Bands has. Bob's interest is not to create, validate, or invalidate this or that academic theory. Bob isn't an academic. He is one of the best banjo players, banjo item collectors, and instructors and students of the history of the old time banjo. He was one of the pioneers of the rediscovery of minstrel banjo playing, and accompanied old time music and bluegrass legend John Hartford as well as Joe Thompson, the last remaining traditional African American fiddler.
   
   In this book, Bob Carlin has gathered a wealth of information which he presents clearly and in an orderly manner. He completely disposes of the legend that Sweeney invented the banjo or invented the fifth string of the banjo. Sweeney never claimed that, but claims of that nature were made about him after his death. Carlin tracts down the origins of those claims in a detailed and documented way.
   
   This does not mean that this is a book of Sweeney bashing. Carlin's approach is respect for the great musical capacities this entertainer had and how as he says like Elvis, he energized the whole music world by combining African American and white musics in a new form of entertainment. We do get the sense of how Sweeney's banjo playing and his real background in African American music and his own skills made him widely popular in Britain and America. Yet, the book also showed how age and changing fashions in minstrelsy and entertainment in general meant that Sweeney's star eventually fell.
   
   This book is good, hard, serious work, put forward in a clear manner and will be one of the bedrocks of study of the banjo, minstrelsy, and American popular culture.

No comments about Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo.

No comments about Instant 5-String Banjo.

No comments about New England and Irish Fiddle Tunes for Clawhammer Banjo: Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes Arranged for Melodic Style in Clear Tablature.

1 comments about Mel Bay Masters of the Five String Banjo.

1. For any aspiring banjo picker this book is essential reading. I enjoyed the technical information on instrument set-up as well as the indepth interviews with so many of the people who made bluegrass music what it is today.
   
   It goes beyond the "ten steps to good playing" approach by showing, in great detail, how so many great players think about, practice, prepare for, developed and performed their craft.
   
   Read it from cover to cover then keep it handy as a reference work - excellent.

No comments about Christmas Songs for Banjo.

No comments about The Stories Trees Tell.

1 comments about The Classic Douglas Dillard Songbook of 5-String Banjo Tablatures.

1. Published by popular demand, this long-awaited songbook contains exact transcriptions in banjo tablature that capture the unique playing style of Douglas Dillard. This fantastic collection includes all of his best-loved tunes, from the °Andy Griffith Show", from his many great years of recording as the original Dillards, and from his solo banjo albums and his releases with The Doug Dillard Band. Features more than 20 tunes in G tuning, C tuning amd G modal tuning, including classics such as: Cripple Creek · Hickory Hollow · Jamboree · John Henry · Old Joe Clark · Buckin' Mule · and more. A must-have for all banjo players!

No comments about Christmas Music for Banjo Made Easy.