The tenor banjo is tuned like a viola. The tuning is C,G,D,A. Tenor banjos have been used for jazz and folk for many years. Deering makes tenor banjos with two scale lengths. They are 17 fret and 19 fret tenors. In general, the 19 fret banjos are preferred by jazz players but also played by Irish music players.
The 17 fret tenor banjos are quite popular with Irish music players. The shorter scale length makes fingering the fast triplets in Irish music a little easier due to the fingers not having to reach so far. Many Irish tenor banjoists like to tune their banjos to one octave below a mandolin.
The low, Irish tuning usually requires heavier or larger diameter strings so the strings have comfortable playing tension. Tuning standard strings down this low results in strings that flop too much and have no tone clarity at all.
The plectrum banjo is probably the first Dixieland Jazz banjo. It is a five string banjo with the fifth string removed and flatpicked like a guitar would have been in the early 20 th century. The standard tuning on a plectrum banjo is C,G,B,D. But, like all banjos, it responds well to other tunings.
This tuning opens up the possibility for baritone uke players to add a banjo to their repertoire while using all familiar chords and fingerings. The open G tuning is also used by some and is great for beginners who want simple chords that are easy to finger. The low tension of the strings and the delicate brilliance of the plectrum sound complimented the trained classical touch.
Most banjo ukuleles are tuned to standard ukulele tuning. As a result of retaining this familiar tuning, ukulele players delight in playing a banjo style instrument using the same chords, fingerings, etc. Most banjo ukuleles are strong with four, nylon, monofilament strings. In the past, Deering has made a few tenor banjos and tuned them to a ukulele tuning but with metal strings.
The whole tunneling could have been accomplished with one RR-spike! The real advantage of your design is that the interval of the 5th string with respect to the other strings is maintained no matter how the instrument is capod. The tradeoff is that the thinner 5th string might have a little different tone. The other thing I like about the design is that you could have a lower pitched 5th string using RR-spikes and still be able to fret the 5th string up the neck. I would really like this, because I play about half the time with a flat pick and my middle finger, chickin' pickin' , so I often use the 5th as a melody string and the 1st as a drone.
I think its so the "string makin' companies" can make more money. Check out Barry Abernathy's banjo ,tunneled 5th ,no 5th string peg hanging on the side of the neck. Love that Barry ,he really encourages me..
But that doesnt tell you who did the 5th string???? Eddie Phillippians For years I had friends ask me that question. But, those were pre-internet days, and I did not feel like researching for the answer at the local library.
So I got to speculating how it came about. I knew about the banjos from Africa not having 5 strings, so that ment it might of been an American that built the first 5-string banjo with the short drone string. Actually I recall reading that it was not an American, but nevertheless I figured that maybe in the mid 's a cowboy got a little too drunk while playing his 4-string banjo and broke the 1st string. I next speculated that this same drunk cowbow took the broken string and invented the drone string by tacking the string on where we now put the 5th string.
I just figured the cowboy wanted to keep using the broken string, but it was too short to be strung like the other ones were. Somewhere online there is a long story about the guy they give credit to for inventing the drone string- on a 5-string banjo.
As I recall, he wasn't drunk at all. You know, the octive G string on a 12 string guitar is also a full length high G, and they've been sounding good on 12 string guitars for a long time! I love it, because if you don't fret the 5th, the banjo plays identical to a traditional banjo. If you capo, a guitar capo is all you need for all 5 strings. Thumbovers on barr and movable chords can change the drone note with the chord Higher notes are in easy reach giving some neat chord posibilities.
Terry Joel Sweeney was for a long time - and often still is - mistakenly credited with adding the done string to the banjo. What he may have done is add a fifth long string to the instrument - mostly likely a bass string the one we would today call the fourth. He can certainly be credited with popularizing the five-string banjo, to the extent that it became the standard configuration. But adding a fifth string is not to be confused with adding what we today call the fifth string.
That short drone string had been a part of the banjo for at least years before Sweeney arrived on the scene. MY version goes: Ancient Music Fellow was stringing the First Banjo, which used the animal's hide for the head, and the guts for the string.
The first four went fine, but the fifth was a bit short. Rather than taking the life of another animal, for just a few inches of gut, the Ancient Music Fellow decided to peg it off, right there. And that was the fine example set by him, which has been followed to this day. Hugh has the bad habit of letting provable facts get in the way of a good story, but I do appreciate that he did post the basic facts, above.
I thought it was because you have 4 long fingers and a short thumb. If all your fingers were the same length it would look odd. Same with the banjo. It's a representation of your hand. Iain www. Tim you are right. The Wikipedia article on banjos explains it thus: The modern 5-string banjo is a variation on Sweeney's original design.
Improve this answer. Hard to manufacture? Just paid almost 2K for a new neck. Hard to play around? Not really, you get used to it being there. Do some makers tunnel the 5th string to be properly fretted at 5, but tunneled all the way up anyway? See: Robin Smith or Rob Bishline, to start Regarding your side comments about some chords being impossible: It depends on how much of a purist you are.
Grey Dog Grey Dog 2 2 silver badges 4 4 bronze badges. Caveat: In my D7 example above, I use the D chord as the base. There is a better way to play a D7, specifically, but then you lose the 3rd tone of the chord so the effect still happens to some degree.
The more general rule above about losing the root tone applies to all other root tones, as-is, from D thru C. I simply wanted to avoid the extra confusion of "Make an E chord with the D shape Regarding "Hard to play around. What I haven't really mastered is remembering to properly crimp the "slack" end of the string - when a tiny little bit of it is poking out of the hole in the tuner, and your thumb slides up for an impromptu impalement in the middle of a tune I got myself a banjo with a tunneled neck, and feel much safer now.
OSHA would approve. I wholeheartedly agree. Instead of the tunneled neck, I opted for a cheaper box of band-aids for such impalement occasions. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown.
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