Banjo For Dummies. Bill Evans
by Wiley, Composition Services Graphics
FIGURE 1-1: Comparing strings and pitches on a guitar (left) versus a five-string banjo (right).
Tenor and plectrum banjos: Look for another book
In the early decades of the 20th century, folks loved the quality of the banjo's sound so much that they attached different kinds of necks to the banjo body to create new instruments with different numbers of strings. These hybrid instruments were tuned and played differently from the five-string banjo.
Tenor and plectrum banjos are examples of this phenomenon. These four-stringed instruments are commonly used in traditional jazz, Dixieland, and Irish music. They don't have the short 5th string and are usually played with a flatpick instead of with the fingers. Although these banjos make the same kinds of sounds and look a lot like the five-string banjo, tenor and plectrum banjos use other tunings and playing techniques and are viewed as different instruments by banjo fans.
Photographs courtesy of Elderly Instruments
FIGURE 1-2: Comparing a five-string (a) and a tenor (b) banjo.
BANJOS OF ALL SORTS
In the early decades of the 20th century, America was mad for anything that sounded remotely like a banjo. (Amazing, isn't it? Just like it is today!) Instrument makers took guitar and mandolin necks and attached them to banjo bodies, creating new kinds of instruments of all sizes that had that great banjo sound but could be played using guitar and mandolin techniques.
Banjos with mandolin necks usually have eight strings and are called mandolin banjos or mando-banjos. These instruments are smaller than most five-string banjos. Banjos with guitar necks have six strings and are called guitar banjos. These instruments are perfect for guitar players who want that banjo sound (and maybe are too lazy to actually learn to play the banjo — but you didn't hear that from me!). Guitar banjos have six strings instead of five and can be a bit larger than most five-string banjos.
Today, these more obscure branches of the banjo family tree are seen largely as novelty instruments and, like the tenor and plectrum banjo (see the section “Tenor and plectrum banjos: Look for another book” in this chapter), are considered to be a different kind of instrument than a five-string banjo. Mandolin banjos are played like mandolins, and guitar banjos are played like guitars.
Knowing the Parts of a Banjo
The banjo combines wooden, metal, skin, and/or plastic parts held together by rods, nuts, screws, and brackets to make some of the most incredible and beautiful sounds in the world. You could call the banjo the Frankenstein of musical instruments, but I like to think of it as the Bionic Woman. Practically all banjos share a common characteristic of having a replaceable top playing surface made of plastic or animal skin (called the head) that's stretched tightly across the body of the banjo (called the pot) to form the top of the resonating body of the instrument (see Figure 1-3).
In the following sections, you get to know the banjo from head to toe (well, really from the top of the headstock to the bottom of the pot). You also discover how the instrument captures the energy of a plucked string and turns it into that unmistakably great sound that banjo players love. You can refer to Figure 1-4 to see exactly where these parts are located on the banjo.
Photographs courtesy of Elderly Instruments
FIGURE 1-3: Comparing open-back (a and b) and resonator (c and d) five-string banjos
Photograph courtesy of Gruhn Guitars
FIGURE 1-4: The parts of a banjo.
Looking at the neck
The neck is one of the two main sections of the banjo (the pot being the other; see the section “Checking out the pot”). The neck is the long piece of wood that supports the strings and tuners. Necks are usually made of maple, mahogany, or walnut.
To get a better feel for the banjo, take a look at the parts of the banjo neck:
Frets: The thin, metal bars on the banjo neck that are positioned at precise intervals to give you the various pitches needed when fretting a string. (Fretting is what you do when you move a left-hand finger into position behind a fret to change the pitch of a string.) In the world of fretting, you use the term up the neck to refer to moving the left hand toward the pot and down the neck when you talk about moving the left hand toward the nut and peghead.
Fingerboard: A thin, flat, wooden strip glued to the neck that holds the frets and is the surface upon which the left hand produces notes and chords.
Peghead: Also called the headstock, the peghead is the elaborately shaped end of the neck that holds the tuning pegs for the four lower strings of the banjo.
Tuning pegs: Sometimes called tuners or tuning machines, these pegs are the devices that raise or lower the pitch of the banjo's strings with a turn of the buttons located on the backside of the peghead. The pegs for strings 1 through 4 are attached to the peghead, while the tuning peg for the 5th string is found on the topside of the neck near the 5th fret.
Nut: A block of ivory, bone, or plastic that's glued to the end of the fingerboard where the peghead begins. Strings 1 through 4 pass through the grooves in the nut on their way to the shafts of the tuning pegs. The 5th string has its own smaller nut, located near the 5th fret.
Heel: The name given to the part at the end of the neck that's attached to the pot of the banjo.
Truss rod: You can't see the truss rod, but it's an important part of most banjo necks. The truss rod is an adjustable metal rod that runs down most of the length of the banjo neck in a channel underneath the fingerboard. This rod helps to keep the neck stable and controls the amount of curve in the neck to keep the strings