Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

[Vicksburg Dave]

Hello Guys,
Do you know if any instructional minstrel banjo dvds exist; I need some visual instruction. While I have looked at a number of youtube videos everything have seen so far is too fast or too far away for me to see hand and finger movements. I need something slow for really dumb people. ;)

Thanks,

David Slay

[Deuceswilde]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

There is no better, or more authentic way to learn than this.
http://www.elderly.com/books/items/351-1.htm

http://www.elderly.com/books/items/262-2.htm
http://www.elderly.com/books/items/262-2.htm
http://www.elderly.com/books/items/351-4.htm
This is a good introduction
http://www.elderly.com/books/items/49-1325.htm

Bob Flesher's books are good for a start also, but if you use the originals, there will be no question as to the authenticity. Using modern recordings DVD or otherwise will only have you making the shortcuts and mistakes of others.
A bit of advice, learn to play stroke with your first finger, don't use the middle. From Briggs' all the way to Stewart's writings on thimble playing in the 1890s it was always the first finger.

[Hardtack Herring]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

I recommend Minstrel Banjo Briggs Banjo Instructor by Joseph Weidlich.

This is the Briggs Instructor written in tab form. It also has a section in front that explains the patterns used through out the book.

I also have Bob's book. It is pretty good as well.

Once you learn the basic technique it is pretty easy to pick up on other tunes by ear or standard notation.

As for DVD's I know of no Minstrel Style DVD.

Tim Twiss has instructional video that covers the movements or patterns used in Briggs on his website http://www.milfordmusic.com/Banjo%20Audio.htm

Briggs Banjo instructor is a must if you want to learn the minstrel style. Most of the tunes from that book are in audio format on his site as well. This is helpful if you are having problems understanding what the tune should sound like.

I hope this helpful. Get Briggs ASAP. You will not be sorry!

Another good piece of advice is to get an electronic tuner if you do not have one. Use this to tune your banjo of course.... It is also very helpful in teaching you the fretboard. Use the tuner and mark out the frets with tape until you figure out where to place your fingers for each note. I taped off my fretboard when I first began to play and it helped out a great deal. In fact, I did the same thing for my fiddle. It will not take long before you figure out the fretboard and can remove the tape.

[Danny]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

...Get Briggs ASAP. You will not be sorry!...

Paul, true enough. And the Weidlich book contains the original Briggs tutor material.

But David, if you also want the original Briggs Tutor itself in three pdf downloads I've prepared it that way to print as a banjo case copy. See: pgs. 1-17 Briggs..., pgs. 18-34 Briggs..., and pgs. 35-53 Briggs..., from the supplemental Google Minstrel Banjo group site "files" area:

http://groups.google.com/group/Albert-Baur?hl=en

Dan Wykes

[Old Cremona]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

My buddy Tim Twiss has recorded some authentic period banjo exercises or "movements."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvisepNuAy0

Tim is a stand-up guy, if you contacted him I'm sure he'd be willing to record some more instructional material.

ps- I just saw Paul gave a link to the same exercises I gave- well it should be easy to find now.

[Deuceswilde]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

The Weidlich books are a good introduction. They do have problems. He has added alternate ending measures on a lot of songs that they did not originally have (or necessarily need). I have also found several places where he has changed notes to make the pieces more repetitious. Strange, because the original scores sound just fine played as is in most cases.

Twiss is an excellent musician. Carl, don't sell yourself short, you are also topnotch. http://www.youtube.com/user/oldcremona:)

[Vicksburg Dave]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

Thanks a lot for the excellent advice. I have a number of the publcations you have mentioned, and I was watching Carl's great youtube videos long before I considered purcashing an authentic banjo. I could use a slow motion close up video of how one's fingers strike the strings. With bluegrass style it is fairly easy to see what's going on, but in instructional video like Tim's of the Briggs' movements, all I see is the thumb work and the top of his hand rapping on the head. I don't see what's going on underneath. Another problem is I don't have nylgut strings on my banjo (a Prust tackhead) but they are in transit and should be installed the moment they arrive. I have an electronic tuner but it is giving me fits until I get the proper strings installed and stretched.

Again, as I mentioned in another thread we at Vick are interested in holding a musical event next year, we just need musicians.

[zeked45]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

Im a bit newer to playing the minstrel banjo myself and i have both of Bob Flesher's books. They play well and the instructions are pretty good.

[Old Cremona]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

in instructional video like Tim's of the Briggs' movements, all I see is the thumb work and the top of his hand rapping on the head. I don't see what's going on underneath.

Dave,

Nothing beats face-to-face instruction when learning to play an instrument. This is especially true with a playing style that went basically extinct over a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, pure minstrel-style banjo players are a bit rare.

If you could find a "clawhammer" teacher, that would be a step in the right direction. The basic motion of the right hand is the same, and that's where it all starts. What's different is the "lick" repertiore, the note choice, the tempos. It's easy to let a modern feel creep into your music, which is why the tutors are so important to base your playing on. As a primary source, they "trump all others."

In the abscence of a live teacher, permit me to make a suggestion. Read all you can. Study the right hand motion instructions of the Briggs Banjo Instructor. Put that together with Tim's "movements" video. Play slowly, watch yourself in a mirror, and make it look like Tim does it. There's not really alot going on "underneath." It's all with the wrist and index finger action. The rest is pretty static.

If you have questions, post them on the Google Minstrel Banjo Group, the real one-

http://groups.google.co.cr/group/Tom-Briggs?lnk=li&hl=en

Best of luck. For a history lover, the sound of the early banjo is a "period moment" every time you hit it.

[Deuceswilde]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

First, I would like to issue a warning. The following is a reference to a more modern source. Go to this link https://urresearch.rochester.edu/handle/1802/2586 and check out the April and Many 1892 Issue of the Stewart's Banjo and Guitar Journal. Pages 15-16 has a nice description on the proper way to play stroke style.

As to the other instruction, Seeking a "clawhammer" Banjoist is good advice, but, insist on using the first or index finger. The CH players, for some reason, favor playing with the middle.

By the way, welcome to historical musicianship. You may find that it is pretty lonely doing it correctly. You may also receive some strong peer-pressure to compromise, try not to. You will be much more satisfied.

[Danny]

...By the way, welcome to historical musicianship. You may find that it is pretty lonely doing it correctly. You may also receive some strong peer-pressure to compromise, try not to. You will be much more satisfied.

Joel -

Good advice. One small example is there's some peer pressure to establish that typical CW banjo players would have obtained their technique from pre-war published tutors. While obviously those tutors were (and are) the very best record of Minstrel stage and parlor technique for banjo, it's not especially likely that the typical soldier/player in camp used those formalized techniques. Many were likely self-taught, developing styles that would be frowned on by the tutor authors.

Also, pre-war factory-made banjos are not especially the only, or the best, pattern to reference for the often cruder banjos obtained and used in garrison camps or sometimes on campaign. As many of those pre-war and during-war instruments were home-shop or carpenter-made instruments (per George Wunderlich and others), not very similar to the more sophisticated Minstrel-pattern banjos that some would insist on for soldier/player impressions today.

Back to technique, it's only an assumption that Midwestern, Western, or Southern farm-and-factory-boys-turned-soldiers knew much about the couple of mail-order tutors then available. The amateurs, even the first Minstrels for that matter, as likely learned by mimicking stage performers, listening to popular sheet music renditions on piano (or some that could read that sheet music), or watching slave or negro soldier/ players. In other words by raw-reckoning. To whit these two accounts of those times:

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“ I do not read music but can spell it out painfully, note by note. In the long ago, when I was a fair manipulator of the ‘gourd shell,’ I remember only three banjoists who read notes. They were Dan Emmett, G. Swayne Buckley and Frank B. Converse, who, by the way, was on the stage but a short time. Joe Sweeney didn’t know a note, nor did most of the banjoists of 40 or 50 years ago. In fact, when I was a boy, I often heard it said: ‘There are no notes to banjo, you just play it.”

- excerpt from the 1897 writings of Fred Mather, a contemporary of Joe Sweeney and also a minstrel banjoist (“Joel Sweeney and The First Banjo”, Arthur Woodward, in Los Angeles County Museum Quarterly Spring 1949, vols. 3, 7, 8)
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and
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''Albert Baur recalled that before the Civil War 'everybody thought it impossible to write music for this instrument,' and therefore most early banjoists did not read music. 79 It was only in the late nineteenth century that 'classical' banjo players, in order to distinguish themselves from the minstrel performers, began playing from notated music. While the first banjo tutor appeared in 1848, banjo music notation did not become standardized until the end of the century, and most performers continued to learn via an aural musical tradition throughout the 1850s. Piano music, on the other hand, was from the beginning of the century a print repertoire.''

- 79 soldier banjo player Albert Baur in “Reminiscences of a Banjo Player,” S.S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal (February-March 1888), 2. 100, excerpts by by Laura Moore Pruett in a 2007 dissertation on American Composer Louis Gottschalk and musical reviewer John Sullivan Dwight through the years 1853-1865
----------------------------------------------------------

Dan Wykes

[Danny]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

Im a bit newer to playing the minstrel banjo myself and i have both of Bob Flesher's books. They play well and the instructions are pretty good.

Zack -

Keep us posted on that... welcome to the Old Cremona, as they called it!

Dan Wykes

[Deuceswilde]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

One problem with quoting memories written 20-30+ years after the event took place is the unreliable human brain. This is the biggest problem I have with the old "oral tradition" claim used by "old time" string bands to justify not doing, or flat out not using valid research. There has always been a great desire for older generations to talk about how bad they had it compared to the next. An example of this that everybody has heard is the old "in my day we had to walk 20 miles to school in a foot of snow with no shoes." Another point can be made against the accuracy of memories is to take a look at the current justice system and how inaccurate eye witnesses are. Also, how many people can recount a story that happened even ten years ago and get every single detail correct. So, looking at the tone of Stewart's Journal in the late 19th century, written for entertainment, one will find the common bias opinion that the early era of Banjo is the "dark ages" and the instruments that we love to play are "old tubs." I would like to site S. S. Stewart's Banjo and Guitar Journal June and July, 1889. The article on page one titled "A Relic of the Dark Ages" supports the late 19th century opinion on early Banjos and tutors (esp. Briggs'). The tone is clear. So, is it hard to believe that a story recounted at that late date could have been embellished or exaggerated to support and "prove" how superior the "modern" Banjo was compared to the obsolete "dark ages of Banjo" (it is pretty obivous that The Journal was also a vehicle to sell Stewart Banjos, what better way to convince people to buy a new model)? We have no way of proving or disproving the accuracy of these articles. We all need to make up our own mind on what we feel is the correct way. I'll stick with the contemporary documented sources, others may want to create their own way. It is my understanding that this discussion group is designed with documentation in mind.

This thread is about playing styles, skills, and sources for the proper way to learn. Perhaps another topic for criticizing individuals choices in instruments would be more appropriate.

As to thimbles, we know that they were used. Tinsmiths and Tinkers a plenty. It takes me about 10 min. to cut one with snips and bend to shape (I am very inexperienced in metal work). Keeping with assumptions, I would think that all ACW Banjoists would have pockets full of them.;)

[Danny]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

...We all need to make up our own mind on what we feel is the correct way... This thread is about playing styles, skills, and sources for the proper way to learn...

Joel -

Thanks for the support. Didn't think peer pressure would demonstrate so quickly or intensely but at least it's been 'outed' and we have returned to civility, per the AC rules.

Again, IMHO, the pre-war tutors are the best possible, and unrefuteable, source by which we determine the technique used by antebellum stage musicians. And factory banjos are, unrefuteably, representative of banjos used in military camps at the time. But neither is the only authentic model. It's documented in prior post and elsewhere in soldier's letters home about the quality of campfire musicians, and in tintypes of soldiers with their cruder instruments.

That's all, no big demand or agenda, just an observation based on research I've done, and which no credentialed expert cited would refute. Not even a big deal.

Dan Wykes

[33rdaladrummer]

Re: Minstrel banjo instruction dvds?

"Good advice. One small example is there's some peer pressure to establish that typical CW banjo players would have obtained their technique from pre-war published tutors. While obviously those tutors were (and are) the very best record of Minstrel stage and parlor technique for banjo, it's not especially likely that the typical soldier/player in camp used those formalized techniques. Many were likely self-taught, developing styles that would be frowned on by the tutor authors"

Gentlemen,

I find this discussion interesting because it brings out the two schools of thought that are found among living history musicians. I think there are valid points on both sides, but perhaps we are oversimplifying each others' opinions.

Maybe it is different with banjo tutors, but I look at the fife and drum manuals simply as a record of how some period musicians played (the authors or musicians the authors observed). On the other hand, I agree that your average musician probably did not learn how to play using a manual, but what they learned by ear or rote was most likely very similar to the techniques in the manuals. Sure, there were probably different styles and techniques that non-music readers used which can not be found in the manuals, but since all those performers are dead, we no longer have to ability to learn from the aural tradition. We are trying to resurrect those sounds, and we really have nowhere to go but the manuals. We cannot just make up what we think might be the way "untutored" banjo-players played because we risk the chance of coming up with a style that no one used in the 1860s.

I admit I may fall into the "tutor-worshipper" camp, but the musicians who belong to that school of thought are going off what is actally documented as opposed to those who belong to the "this is the way they may have played it" camp. Without a time machine, the tutors are really the only way to get the satisfaction of playing something the exact same way that at least some musicians in the 1860 did. Everyone but the authors of the tutors took their styles and techniques with them to the grave.