One small step for me. A giant leap for…
Well, maybe not. But I’ve been thinking about the timbre of the banjo and how it imparts a particular melancholy to ballads. I asked around to see if anyone around here played one and I found no-one. So I was at the excellent local luthier putting in my Santa Cruz guitar to be set up in Nashville tuning (6 strings like the high strings on a 12 string – see the acoustic sound on etc, especially Santa Cruz) and I asked if I could play one and is it possible to ‘fake it’ with a plectrum. As some of you may already know, my primary acoustic technique is a finger picking fake that I came up with in 1995. Well the guy I spoke to said that that is what he does… so I picked up the cheapest one, a Rover RB-100, made in China, and found that banjo tuning is almost the same as open G tuning on the guitar, which is almost the same as open D which I use on my black guitar, so I already knew a bunch of the shapes, just not necessarily which strings to play them on… so I bought it, with the understanding that if after a year I still suck, they will buy it back from me for a fair price. It was very inexpensive anyhow.
I’ve been strumming and fake picking it all weekend, I even took it out on the porch – I think I’ll be able to use it on the record. It has a lovely tone and at least one of the guitar ideas I had (a riff, I suppose) sounds better on the banjo.
It’s funny, one of the main reasons I was thinking of the banjo was Neil Young’s Harvest record. I was sure there was a banjo in that ensemble (the Stray Gators) but I just listened and there is no sign of one…