I Saw Abigail Washburn at Telluride. My real first taste of Clawhammer banjo. Been hooked ever since. She's a fantastic player and singer. Wonderful technique. Thanks for the lesson!
It is good that there is clawhammer in the family! You are married to one of the most talented wonderful banjo player in the world (Bela Fleck). He is one of the nicest people in the world and I am overjoyed he has a wonderful wife. I am glad that you can play the different styles and live in harmony. Banjos brings people together and you are a testimony to those beautiful five strings.
Let me qualify both previous comments: Yes, she’s playing an OME Jubilee, which retails for $2570, so yeah, the Gold Tone suggestion is certainly more practical; it is an oversimplification, though, to suggest that you’ll get “THAT tone from any open back banjo.”
She's not playing over the head, but there is a sound some clawhammer players make called the "cluck" that might be what she's doing. She's playing right over a fret where harmonics happen, which I think is an element of getting that cluck sound.
That is a technique commonly employed by claw hammer banjo players called a “cluck” resulting from the harmonic best made where the neck meets the head.
Okay, so all of the replies to this comment are waaaay off-base. That’s the vibrating string lightly buzzing on her ring fingernail. Watch the way she holds her ring finger with and without the cluck.
It’s a mountain tuning, gdgcd. It’s makes to banjo more sound with more sorrow. Plays well with way fairing stranger and others of that like. Hobart smith played a lot of songs in that tuning. Sorry for replying to an old post.
Of course there are exceptions, e.g., double-C can be used for C-minor tunes, and those minor tunings can be used for major tunes, e.g. aEADE can be used for G-major especially if you tune to gEADE (or you can play E-minor tunes for that matter in this tuning).
Pardon,please don't get me wrong, her banjo playing makes new close my eyes and drift back to my youth, swimmin up piney river. But, how has no one mentioned her bitchin jacket?!
she talks about a sound like percussion... but it then jumps and we never find out how to make that sound ... how does she make that tap drum sound whilst playing clawhammer ?
It’s called clucking, there’s various forms of it, it’s basically using another finger to mute a string just played. I’d encourage you to look up a better guide on it
She strikes the string with her middle nail and then, in the same motion, damps it with her pointer nail. The two fingers are just held a little staggered.
@@clowe73 I’d suggest it’s a beginner video - of “Round Peak” as tough to her, and that anchors her entire approach. It’s essentially an arpeggio, using thumb and TWO fingers (well three fingers if you count the pull-off from a rest position on the left hand). So I am inclined to practice that riff for weeks as she suggests.
she doesn't mention tuning ..so is the 2nd string open or ? from the pitch it seems the 2nd string is played on the first fret (gDGBD tuning) to have the riff sound right
Looks like double c tuning. In the first bars you can see the whole fingerboard and there's a full c chord without her fretting the second string, hence it must be tuned up to "c".
I know this post is some years old, but I just found it. I recently picked up my banjo, after a 35 year hiatus from playing. )o: I play old style frailing, as well as 3 finger...and I must ask you why you play so far off the banjo head? I tried that and found my 5th string extremely weak sounding. I also use the head to beat or "hammer" on at times and you can't do that on the fret board. Love hearing you and hope to hear you more now that I am back in the land of the frailing banjer players...(o:
Double C Tuning (G,C,G,C,D) a small typo Steven - thanx for the heads up, I immediately started to wonder what she was in as I commenced practice of this unusual style. Something else to practice for the next ten years to get it half right ... hahaaa
"Give up before wasting your time. You hopes and dreams are purely fantasy, and you have nothing to look forward to but impending doom." -Excerpted from Teachers Union Curriculum Handbook
I'm 38 years old now and with the recent news I have a high probability of having MS. I'm also a disabled, post-9/11, U.S. Marine veteran. Started banjo going on 3 years back now. I'm now an intermediate player. I can play many songs and tunings in overhand/clawhammer, 2-finger, and recently have been working on 3-finger very well. I want to be able to play all banjo styles proficiently. That said, I've been playing instruments and music since my childhood so I do have a knack for picking up instruments faster than those who never played anything before. I did spend a few years playing guitar as well. Don't underestimate yourself. If I can do it, you definitely can! But you need that banjer in your hands almost everyday. Practice, practice, practice. Listen to a song you really like and just jump right into learning it even if it's on a higher playing level. It forces you to learn new things. I'm completely self taught off the internet from various banjo folks of various backgrounds and styles. For me now, banjo is love. ❤ Banjo is life. 🪕
Wow! Well done! Honestly, I didn't know that the banjo was from westafrican origin. I always thought that it has been invented somewhere in the Appalachian Blueridges. So the Appalachians have learned to play and took over that instrument from former slaves? America definitely has to somehow reward the offspring of those africans who brought the banjo from Africa to the USA! Is it possible to find out, who these african slaves with banjos were and who their offsprings are? Without their instruments we wouldn't have any Bluegrass nowadays!
CBC Music is the only part of the Corp that deserves govt funding. In my many years, CBC Music conveys more of Canadian culture in one 5 min clip than a full 12 months of the "news" department... The news department's inability to remain impartial and not be a propaganda machine is going to eventually deprive Canada of stellar, world class Music coverage like this. And that's such a sad realization.
Mostly in terms of sound quality it helps to have long nails. That being said, I have pretty short nails that dont extend past my fingertip and I am able to play just fine.
I find that highly unlikely, and for as many people who have made that claim I don't know that there's any hard evidence for it. Far more likely that slaves re-created their native instruments using local materials after arriving.
A few things to consider: 1. Slave ships were still trade ships. While the human cargo was certainly the largest and most valuable, an average ship might also have textiles, clothes, rum, precious metals, spices, of course food, and so on. 2.Naturally, we learn of, and adopt, foreign culture practices through travel and through trade (even the most incendiary). One could easily imagine slave traders taking a passing glance, or even a listen, of a banjo. They could trade clothes or a bottle of rum, and take home that uniquely amazing sound. 3. But even if we assume that no physical, tangible instrument made it onto a ship, the banjo did arrive on American shores from slave ships. They arrived in the thoughts and minds of the slaves who would eventually build them.
@@captainkev10 Still doubtful, for two reasons... 1) The slaves that were brought to the New World were bought and sold as slaves in West Africa. Meaning, they were already enslaved well before being transported. So we should assume that they had few (if any) possessions to begin with. 2) Historically, it doesn't appear that the banjo really entered white consciousness until the advent of minstrel shows (basically white performers playing their own version of slave music on their own versions of slave instruments), which was many generations after the beginning of the slave trade. It's only within the last generation that people have identified the connection between banjo and West African instruments like the akonting. One would expect that if banjo-like instruments were common cargo on slave ships, this awareness would extend back much further than it does.
1. a.You're assumption is that zero banjos were visible and theavailable for sale in and around any West African port city and trade area -- which is an amazing stretch. b. Slaves wouldn't own the banjo, the traders would. lol 2. "Historically, it doesn't appear that the banjo really entered white consciousness until the advent of minstrel shows ". This is nearly unverifiable, so I'm not sure where to start with this... But honestly whatever, dude...
@@captainkev10 Firstly, "banjos" did not exist at that time, and anything resembling a banjo was certainly not sold at the market. The instruments in question like the akonting were (and are) tribal folk instruments, often handmade by the players themselves. And yes, it is verifiable. Minstrel shows are the earliest historical evidence of white Americans actually playing the banjo. This would be around 1810-1820.
So basics? Hammer ones, pull offs, slides, multiple strum patters? Double thump, double time, basic.....just mix all that and that’s basic! This post is a joke for a beginner! You should be ashamed of your self lady! I’m just shaking my head!
It's actually one of the best Basic explanations of Clawhammer out there. Just slow down and go over the first bit over and over and over, slowly and accurately. And don't speed up until you can do it with out a mistake. Also, it never said it is for beginners, it is just her explaining her basic process.
Abigail Washburn is one of my favorite performers of late.
I Saw Abigail Washburn at Telluride. My real first taste of Clawhammer banjo. Been hooked ever since. She's a fantastic player and singer. Wonderful technique. Thanks for the lesson!
That was like watching Jimi Hendrix giving a basic lesson. Amazing.
Glad you liked it! Is there anyone else you'd like to see lessons from? Any other instruments we should be posting about?
@@cbcmusic I'd love to see something for the mandolin if you have it.
Thanks, Abigail. Delightful and informative. I really appreciate your artistry. Keep it up!
Love that sound...Abigail is so chill....
Clear to see playing the banjo just makes her feel so good.
This lesson was so helpful. Would you ever consider doing another?
Really Great Tips. You Can Sure Tell She Enjoys It & That Ol' Banjo Looks Well Worn, Too.
I’m doing this banjo thing this year Thanks Abigail. Think your Tremendous player 👍
Hot damn I love her jacket
Come to Portland, Ore. We'd love to see you!
I am absolutely amazed. I just discovered that this style of playing was not the origonal way of playing the five string banjo
Beautiful playing.
Very nice Abigail. Thank you.
Abigail, I love you!!
Thanks abi 🇺🇸🙏🇺🇸
"warm today, warm yesterday, even warmer today"
Weeell my big ole fat baby loves to eat
😂😂😂😂😂 classic reference.
In parts, especially the brush there is a sitar-like sound. Great sounding playing. I need to practice more tho.
Beautiful Soul ... ❤️
Hoooooooolyyyy. Amazing banjoist.
Really nice 👌
Wow thanks!
She is lord of one of the great Banjo houses.
It is good that there is clawhammer in the family! You are married to one of the most talented wonderful banjo player in the world (Bela Fleck). He is one of the nicest people in the world and I am overjoyed he has a wonderful wife. I am glad that you can play the different styles and live in harmony. Banjos brings people together and you are a testimony to those beautiful five strings.
Can you share what brand your banjo is? I’m so in love with this sound and would love to start with something close. Thank you for sharing your gift!
Aubrie Jones you’ll get that tone with any open back banjo. Maybe try a gold tone cc-100.
OME jubilee banjo
Let me qualify both previous comments: Yes, she’s playing an OME Jubilee, which retails for $2570, so yeah, the Gold Tone suggestion is certainly more practical; it is an oversimplification, though, to suggest that you’ll get “THAT tone from any open back banjo.”
what is making the percussion sound ( at 2:20)? Is it a right hand finger striking the head of the banjo? I cannot tell. Thank you
She's not playing over the head, but there is a sound some clawhammer players make called the "cluck" that might be what she's doing. She's playing right over a fret where harmonics happen, which I think is an element of getting that cluck sound.
I wondered the same thing.
I believe she is hitting the string over the neck causing the string (and finger?) to make contact with the fret and/or fretboard.
That is a technique commonly employed by claw hammer banjo players called a “cluck” resulting from the harmonic best made where the neck meets the head.
Okay, so all of the replies to this comment are waaaay off-base. That’s the vibrating string lightly buzzing on her ring fingernail. Watch the way she holds her ring finger with and without the cluck.
is it best to wear picker or not some say yes and some say no
Amazing tutorial vdo, thx u.
Glad you liked it!
❤❤❤
Thanks!
You bet!
camera Why not stay on both hands?
Abegail, what brand is your banjo? Love the tone!
It's an OME jubilee
What is the banjo tuned to, I am playing along with you but I am sure you are tuned one note higher on the second string , I am tuned to g DGBD
@David Caron Definitely g CGCD - drove me nuts in her video with her husband - as I thought it was Open G.
It’s a mountain tuning, gdgcd. It’s makes to banjo more sound with more sorrow. Plays well with way fairing stranger and others of that like. Hobart smith played a lot of songs in that tuning. Sorry for replying to an old post.
Sawmill tuning
@@dangandee3184 sawmill would be gDGCD (G-minor) or aEADE (A-minor) for minor key songs. The video is double-C (gCGCD) for C-major.
Of course there are exceptions, e.g., double-C can be used for C-minor tunes, and those minor tunings can be used for major tunes, e.g. aEADE can be used for G-major especially if you tune to gEADE (or you can play E-minor tunes for that matter in this tuning).
Pardon,please don't get me wrong, her banjo playing makes new close my eyes and drift back to my youth, swimmin up piney river. But, how has no one mentioned her bitchin jacket?!
she talks about a sound like percussion... but it then jumps and we never find out how to make that sound ... how does she make that tap drum sound whilst playing clawhammer ?
It’s called clucking, there’s various forms of it, it’s basically using another finger to mute a string just played. I’d encourage you to look up a better guide on it
she never really tells how she gets that percussion sound at 2:22... does anyone know how to get it?
She strikes the string with her middle nail and then, in the same motion, damps it with her pointer nail. The two fingers are just held a little staggered.
@@overcup okay, thanks!
She never did tell us how. She also went from beginner basics to mid tier playing. Aweful video for a beginner to see.
@@clowe73 I’d suggest it’s a beginner video - of “Round Peak” as tough to her, and that anchors her entire approach. It’s essentially an arpeggio, using thumb and TWO fingers (well three fingers if you count the pull-off from a rest position on the left hand). So I am inclined to practice that riff for weeks as she suggests.
Greatly simple on the fundamentals. Those are killer nails. Are they real or glue-on?
This is a beautiful banjo
What is the brand
OME jubilee banjo
Nice playing from someone with my family name
You are too good dear ma'am
she doesn't mention tuning ..so is the 2nd string open or ? from the pitch it seems the 2nd string is played on the first fret (gDGBD tuning) to have the riff sound right
rDmusic yes quite. Did you ever find out?
It sounds like double C tuning gCGCD
The Tick will haves goat that.
...sorry...meant ‘have a go at...’. No goats were involved or injured. 😜
Looks like double c tuning. In the first bars you can see the whole fingerboard and there's a full c chord without her fretting the second string, hence it must be tuned up to "c".
Is this a 12" or an 11" banjo please?
12
Nice One Girl, Respect. STP
I know this post is some years old, but I just found it. I recently picked up my banjo, after a 35 year hiatus from playing. )o: I play old style frailing, as well as 3 finger...and I must ask you why you play so far off the banjo head? I tried that and found my 5th string extremely weak sounding. I also use the head to beat or "hammer" on at times and you can't do that on the fret board. Love hearing you and hope to hear you more now that I am back in the land of the frailing banjer players...(o:
Playing some fingerstyle guitar, especially Travis picking, I think (know) my brain is wired to pull rather than push the fingers. But fun watching!
She doesn't mention that she's playing in "double C" tuning. G D G C D. Good video.
Double C Tuning (G,C,G,C,D) a small typo Steven - thanx for the heads up, I immediately started to wonder what she was in as I commenced practice of this unusual style. Something else to practice for the next ten years to get it half right ... hahaaa
The Washburn company?
Holy crap!! I ain't ever gonna get this!!!🤣🤣🤣
Im 25 old and i just bought banjo, and want learn to play with it. Am i too old for that? to learn :/?
You're never too old to learn to play an instrument :)
"Give up before wasting your time. You hopes and dreams are purely fantasy, and you have nothing to look forward to but impending doom." -Excerpted from Teachers Union Curriculum Handbook
I'm 38 years old now and with the recent news I have a high probability of having MS. I'm also a disabled, post-9/11, U.S. Marine veteran. Started banjo going on 3 years back now. I'm now an intermediate player. I can play many songs and tunings in overhand/clawhammer, 2-finger, and recently have been working on 3-finger very well. I want to be able to play all banjo styles proficiently.
That said, I've been playing instruments and music since my childhood so I do have a knack for picking up instruments faster than those who never played anything before. I did spend a few years playing guitar as well.
Don't underestimate yourself. If I can do it, you definitely can! But you need that banjer in your hands almost everyday. Practice, practice, practice. Listen to a song you really like and just jump right into learning it even if it's on a higher playing level. It forces you to learn new things. I'm completely self taught off the internet from various banjo folks of various backgrounds and styles.
For me now, banjo is love. ❤ Banjo is life. 🪕
So 3 years later how you doing??? 🙂
HEY MAN ! THAT'S MRS FLECK !
no comments huh ? 373 likes
Wow! Well done! Honestly, I didn't know that the banjo was from westafrican origin. I always thought that it has been invented somewhere in the Appalachian Blueridges. So the Appalachians have learned to play and took over that instrument from former slaves?
America definitely has to somehow reward the offspring of those africans who brought the banjo from Africa to the USA!
Is it possible to find out, who these african slaves with banjos were and who their offsprings are?
Without their instruments we wouldn't have any Bluegrass nowadays!
bizarro world
Why doesn't she state the tuning..it's important
X O Open C tuning or “double C” GCGCD
@@rachelbenson4701!
Didn’t Washburn guitars start off making banjos??? Coincidence I think not lol
CBC Music is the only part of the Corp that deserves govt funding. In my many years, CBC Music conveys more of Canadian culture in one 5 min clip than a full 12 months of the "news" department...
The news department's inability to remain impartial and not be a propaganda machine is going to eventually deprive Canada of stellar, world class Music coverage like this.
And that's such a sad realization.
Such a beautiful woman..
Pretty cute chick
It’s funny how an instrument from Africa screams white people more than anything LOL
didn't explain the "percussion" well at all. the technique is wonderful except for that.
do you need fingernails to do this? I would assume so
I play with short enough nails to play piano, no issue
Mostly in terms of sound quality it helps to have long nails. That being said, I have pretty short nails that dont extend past my fingertip and I am able to play just fine.
She mentions in another video with Bela that she uses acrylic nails.
Fake acrylic nails on the first two fingers on your right hand make it easier and make it sound better, too.
I always wonder how those kidnapped Africans crammed into the slave ships thought to bring their banjos with them.
I find that highly unlikely, and for as many people who have made that claim I don't know that there's any hard evidence for it. Far more likely that slaves re-created their native instruments using local materials after arriving.
A few things to consider:
1. Slave ships were still trade ships. While the human cargo was certainly the largest and most valuable, an average ship might also have textiles, clothes, rum, precious metals, spices, of course food, and so on.
2.Naturally, we learn of, and adopt, foreign culture practices through travel and through trade (even the most incendiary). One could easily imagine slave traders taking a passing glance, or even a listen, of a banjo. They could trade clothes or a bottle of rum, and take home that uniquely amazing sound.
3. But even if we assume that no physical, tangible instrument made it onto a ship, the banjo did arrive on American shores from slave ships. They arrived in the thoughts and minds of the slaves who would eventually build them.
@@captainkev10 Still doubtful, for two reasons...
1) The slaves that were brought to the New World were bought and sold as slaves in West Africa. Meaning, they were already enslaved well before being transported. So we should assume that they had few (if any) possessions to begin with.
2) Historically, it doesn't appear that the banjo really entered white consciousness until the advent of minstrel shows (basically white performers playing their own version of slave music on their own versions of slave instruments), which was many generations after the beginning of the slave trade. It's only within the last generation that people have identified the connection between banjo and West African instruments like the akonting. One would expect that if banjo-like instruments were common cargo on slave ships, this awareness would extend back much further than it does.
1. a.You're assumption is that zero banjos were visible and theavailable for sale in and around any West African port city and trade area -- which is an amazing stretch. b. Slaves wouldn't own the banjo, the traders would. lol
2. "Historically, it doesn't appear that the banjo really entered white consciousness until the advent of minstrel shows ". This is nearly unverifiable, so I'm not sure where to start with this...
But honestly whatever, dude...
@@captainkev10 Firstly, "banjos" did not exist at that time, and anything resembling a banjo was certainly not sold at the market. The instruments in question like the akonting were (and are) tribal folk instruments, often handmade by the players themselves.
And yes, it is verifiable. Minstrel shows are the earliest historical evidence of white Americans actually playing the banjo. This would be around 1810-1820.
So basics? Hammer ones, pull offs, slides, multiple strum patters? Double thump, double time, basic.....just mix all that and that’s basic! This post is a joke for a beginner! You should be ashamed of your self lady! I’m just shaking my head!
It's actually one of the best Basic explanations of Clawhammer out there. Just slow down and go over the first bit over and over and over, slowly and accurately. And don't speed up until you can do it with out a mistake. Also, it never said it is for beginners, it is just her explaining her basic process.