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Title: How to Play the 5-String Banjo by Pete Seeger ISBN: 0825600243 Publisher: Music Sales Corp Pub. Date: 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5
Rating: 5
Summary: How to Play the 5-String Banjo by Pete Seeger
Comment: I bought this book over 35 years ago. I still use it today. Learned Seeger and Frailing (claw-hammer) style from this book. Probably the best book for the beginner, who wants to learn the original bluegrass style.
Rating: 5
Summary: Everybody's first banjo book
Comment: What can you say about a little book that started out as a handful of mimeographed sheets, and has been in print for over 40 years? Like thousands of other player, my banjo playing began with a borrowed Harmony 5 string banjo and the this little book.
And what a marvelous little book it was! In a few pages Pete introduced me to scores of styles, tunings and songs. I didn't even know there was more than one way to play a banjo, but by the time I worked my way through this book I could frail, I could play a bit of clawhammer, and I could even work my way through a slow and tortured version of Earl Scruggs' great "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". All the songs and techniques are presented in a simplfied tablature, and Pete's explainations and the illustrations are goods enough that I managed to develop a pretty good clawhammer stroke even though I'd never actually heard one played before.
It's amazing how much Pete squeezed into this tiny book. Besides instruction in playing, there are bits on the history of the banjo, choosing a banjo, installing a fifth-string capo, lengthening a banjo neck- in short, everything the total novice needs to get started and then some. I eventually progressed to other books- notably Art Rosenbaul's "Old Time Mountain Banjo" and "Art of the Mountain Banjo", and of course Ken Perlman's many fine books on clawhammer style, but I always kept a copy of this little manual around, as much as a reminder of those early days as anything. What more can I say? It's a gem. I love this little book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A review by one who learned to play the banjo from this book
Comment: Thirty-four years ago I started buying and using banjo instruction books. Today I have only one still in my possession, Pete Seeger's "How to Play the 5-String Banjo." In addition to his many other gifts, Seeger has mastered the difficult job of teaching a musical instrument on paper. His approach is to take the student step by step with clear explanations in the text to making music as quickly as possible. Even readers with absolutely no knowledge of musical notation will be able to grasp his explanations and his illustrations. His drawings of the fingerboard are not the most sophisticated graphics in the business, but they don't have to be. The book (which isn't very long) also teaches the student about traditional and home made music as it touches on many styles of banjo playing. Seeger clearly uses banjo instruction as another means to spread his lifelong gospel of the integrity, value and sheer joy of music that comes out of living rooms rather than loudspeakers. Despite its popularity, the three-finger bluegrass banjo style of playing gets only cursory treatment in the text, but that is not a slight. There are plenty of slick and heavily tabbed (for "tablature") music books focusing on the so-called Scruggs-style. Seeger's book acknowledges bluegrass, but gives the many other styles the due they receive nowhere else. I was at first frustrated, but later pleased at his technique of giving the student the words and music for only the first verse of a traditional song, telling me that I can get the complete version elsewhere. He was saving valuable space for more songs and other styles, and forcing us to expand our horizons to the sources he cites in the text. Thus, does his banjo instruction book inject the reader into the world of traditional music. My enthusiasm for the book is such that I've gone through 2 copies. I easily learned the frailing style. I have a grasp of Scruggs-style (and I tried Earl Scrugg's own book, too). But, I never got the hang of the drop-thumb. I don't blame Pete or his book for that lapse. Along the way I was introduced to songs, and the musical and social histories from which they sprang. Seeger's book was the best musical investment I ever made after I bought my first 5-string. Its purchase price is a pittance compared to the decades of enjoyment it has allowed me to experience.
Bruce Collins Greensboro, MD
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Title: Banjo Primer by Geoff Hohwald ISBN: 1893907325 Publisher: Cassette & Video Learning Systems Pub. Date: 01 March, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Instant Five-String Banjo by Fred Sokolow ISBN: 0825603056 Publisher: Music Sales Corp Pub. Date: 2002 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Mel Bays Complete Bluegrass Banjo Method by Neil Griffin ISBN: 0871668793 Publisher: Mel Bay Publications Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: How to Play Banjo by Tim Jumper ISBN: 0825623529 Publisher: Music Sales Corp Pub. Date: 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Clawhammer Style Banjo by Ken Perlman ISBN: 0931759331 Publisher: Centerstream Publications Pub. Date: 1989 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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