The 5-String Banjo Scrapbook: A Collection of Tips Techniques and Tricks

By Robert Piekiel

Tips, techniques, instructional aids, mental disciplines and advice, from a veteran teacher, for anyone learning to play the 5-string banjo. Stories from students, shortcuts, advice, things to do and thing NOT to do while learning to play.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257573608

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The 5-String Banjo Scrapbook

A Collection of Tips, Techniques, and Tricks

By Bob Piekiel

Copyright 2006 by Robert Piekiel. All rights reserved. No one may reprint or copy any material from this book or companion DVD without express permission from the author.

ISBN: 0-9746391-7-6 Printed in the United States by Lulu Publishing.

I wish to acknowledge some of the many people who have helped me progress with my musical interests over the past 25 years. This list includes:

Lou Martin, Lynden Lee, John Hartford, Earl & Louise Scruggs, Chris Sharp, The Nitchie family, the Flint Hill Flash, Bill Knowlton, John Orentlicher, and John Cadley.

Not listed are the many friends and band members that I have played with over the years. Maybe I haven’t named you, but I haven’t forgotten you.

All copyrights and trademarks remain property of their respective owners.

To Rhonda, my beautiful yet exceptionally plain and ordinary Blackfur

PREFACE

This book is not meant to be an instruction book filled with lots of exercises, lessons, and songs. Its purpose is to present some tips, tricks, shortcuts, and helpful ideas to those of you who are already playing some banjo but would like to be better than you are. It is intended to illustrate a clear path of how to THINK like a banjo player, and avoid stumbling blocks that can hamper progress and slow you down. It can serve for use as a companion to whichever method of learning (books, lessons, etc.) that you are engaged in. Both beginners and intermediate players should find the items in this book useful. If you can relate to any of the topics or situations discussed in this book, you will know that you’re not alone.

So you want to be a banjo player? Do you know that there are thousands of people out there who play the banjo, with more and more taking up the instrument each year? How come they don’t all have the power and drive of Earl Scruggs or JD Crowe? Why don’t all these thousands of pickers have the virtuosity of Bela Fleck or Jens Kruger? If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, or wondered how you could better your skills at the banjo, this book should be of help. You see, most of us are not born as musical geniuses, and many of us are not born with gifted anatomy that allows our fingers to handle an instrument superbly. I’m one of those non-gifted individuals, yet through a LOT of hard work I’ve managed to do reasonably well for myself. I have to keep up this work constantly, for if I get lazy and stop for just a couple of days, my playing suffers dramatically.

The point is that I have FUN playing the banjo. You should have fun, too. Whether you play on your back porch simply for amusement, or play with fellow musicians, you will get more enjoyment from your instrument if your skills are kept sharpened. For most of us, that means work, practice, and concentration. This book is an attempt to get your mind in a better frame to do those things. This book is a collection of my opinions, and it does not necessarily reflect those opinions of other banjo players.

Foreword, by the Flint Hill Flash

A 15-year-old boy once came to me and said, Flash, I want to learn to play the banjo. As has happened thousands of times the world over, to guys and ladies old and young, he had heard a recording of three-finger picking and instantly decided, I’ve got to learn how to do that.

He was the ideal banjo student, and a nice guy as well. He had digital dexterity, a flawless ear, determination, natural timing, and an incredible memory for music. He learned rolls just about as fast as I could demonstrate them. He would watch me play something, then play it back to me. After half an hour, he could play Cripple Creek and Cumberland Gap down the neck. Just for fun, he started mixing up the rolls I had shown him. As the 45-minute lesson drew to a close, he said, It looks like what you do is find as many of the melody notes with your thumb as you can, and fill in the in-between notes by keeping your fingers rolling in these patterns. Is that it?

Five lessons more and we were done. He could play several of the standard instrumental tunes, including Dear Old Dixie. He could play basic back-up. He could take just about any tune he knew and rattle off a banjo part for it. He was a natural, he wanted to learn, he applied himself, and if there had been a Guinness World Record for becoming a good banjo player in a hurry, he would have broken it.

And the name of that student was....not Bob Piekiel.

Bob’s road has been more rough and rocky. In grammar school his ear for music was tested: Here are two notes, Bob. Which one is higher and which one is lower? Bob didn’t know; the notes sounded the same. The grammar school band would have to do without him. For Bob, who had no talent for music, no knowledge of music, no interest in playing music, hands and fingers not built for music, there followed a number of non-musical years.

If the young Bob Piekiel had no talent or aptitude for music, he had plenty of aptitude in other directions. As he tells us, My main activities and interests were in the hard sciences: astronomy, physics, mechanics, mathematics, electronics. What would happen if this aptitude for close, precise scientific study were for some reason to be applied to learning to understand, play, and teach a musical instrument for which Bob had no aptitude at all? The world might never have known the answer to that question if Bob had not in three successive years heard Pete Seeger play the banjo on TV and, after his third exposure, decided that he wanted to learn to play the banjo.

And learn he did. Bob started with no musical assets or advantages and over the next 25 years made himself into an excellent banjo picker, banjo student and teacher, and banjo mechanic. This book is his report of what he has carefully observed along the way—playing in bands, teaching hundreds of students, writing columns and reviews, visiting Nashville for picking sessions with Earl Scruggs, John Hartford, and their friends, and talking with many of the great pickers: JD, Bill Keith, Tony Trischka, and others. He has played Earl’s banjo numerous times and has absorbed mojo that can be obtained in no other way than through its vibrations. In clear, plain language, Bob tells you how you can use what he has learned in order to become a better picker yourself. ’

Many of the banjo instruction books and videos on the market seem to assume that one size fits all: Do certain exercises and learn certain tunes and you can in that way proceed from one banjo level to the next. The 5-String Banjo Scrapbook recognizes that there is no set, standard progression for learning the banjo because we all have different aptitudes and needs. That is the reason for the scrapbook approach.

This 5-String Banjo Scrapbook contains 77 major scrap sections and hundreds of sub-scraps that approach the banjo from many angles. You can read it front to back, or you can examine any scrap with a title that provokes you. Banjo players at all levels will enjoy and benefit from Bob’s teaching experiences, and from the learning experiences of his students.

Some banjo players are born, not made. Earl comes first to mind. Earl can’t read or write music or tablature; he just picks. Most of us find Earl’s style to be challenging. Earl says, My style is easy for me. And in the videos of the old Martha White shows, you can tell that it’s easy for him. His picking is so comfortable and effortless. One of my favorite remarks from Earl appeared in a 2006 Banjo News Letter interview. Earl said, I never notice what I’m doing. Because Earl is a natural-born banjo picking genius whose feelings flow out through his fingers to the banjo, unimpeded by conscious thought, he doesn’t rightly know or notice what he’s doing. Therefore, he can’t really tell you how he did that sensational TITM-TITM lick on Pike County Breakdown or that awe-inspiring back-up on Down the Road or Doin’ My Time, or how he picks the entirety of Foggy Mountain Special. Except for his own banjo book, Earl has let other people explain what he does, while he goes off to pick.

Bob and I have tried to help in these explanations. For the 20 years that I have known Bob, he and I have shared a compulsion to figure out how Earl done it. Bob comes as close as anyone to knowing exactly what Earl is doing and being able to explain it to others. In The 5-String Banjo Scrapbook, he brings this same ability to observe, understand, and explain to all aspects of the banjo.

All of us down here in the Flint Hill Community admire Bob Piekiel and appreciate his contributions to the banjo, the most recent of which is this excellent 5-String Banjo Scrapbook.

F.H. Flash

Flint Hill, NC

A brief summary of my work as a teacher

I’ve been teaching banjo now for over 20 years, to ALL kinds of people. I have literally worked with everyone from Doctors, Lawyers, teachers, factory workers, store managers, etc. Nearly all of my students have been adults who started playing the banjo from square one, or very shortly thereafter. Some students I would classify as intermediate. They wanted to sharpen their skills. I’ve had a few that I would call advanced, and they wanted to learn very specific areas or licks to add to their vocabularies. Believe it or not, I have had very few children as students, probably due to lack of interest in the instrument among young people in my geographical location. Those younger students, on average, did much more poorly than the adults, despite the fact that they generally had more time to practice and brains that were more easily open to new ideas than the adults. This was possibly because they lacked the discipline to practice on a regular basis. Everything I have done from an instructional point of view has been custom-tailored to the individual student, so I can safely say that I’ve seen it all, or at least most of what’s out there. This book is a compilation of teaching methods, tips, and experiences. I wanted to help others by sharing my teaching experiences, as well as my own personal experiences of learning by records and watching.

There seems to be a general consensus that if you start to learn a skill at a young age, it sinks in better, due to the fact that your brain’s neurons are still forming and can be more easily programmed with something new. This new material will then really stick, as compared to starting something when older. After all, you’ve all heard the expression You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Is that really true? Well, yes and no. It may take a bit more effort for an older person to learn a new skill, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done, and done well. Remember, I said earlier that nearly all of my students were adults, who ranged from 30-50. Of these, many had never played an instrument before in their lives, except for perhaps a couple of years in a middle-school band class.

I have seen middle-aged adults who never handled a banjo in their lives go from COMPLETE beginners to competent players in a few years’ time. Some have delved into banjo building and tinkering. Some have organized a band with their friends or co-workers and actually begun performing locally at nursing homes, Grange halls, town picnics, etc. To take someone through these stages every step of the way, helping with all the ups and downs, watching the successes at the end, etc, is something I am always EXTREMELY proud of. On the opposite side of the fence are those who struggle and struggle, never really understanding what they’re doing, making the same mistakes week after week. After the same few years I mention about the successful player, they are still not able to play more than a few simple tunes. The problem here is not the teacher (me), or the material, or the way it’s presented. I firmly believe that some people simply set up enormous mental blocks that they just can’t seem to get around, despite the fact that they might be successful dentists, engineers, etc. Obviously they were educated, intelligent people, but for some (or several) reasons, playing an instrument seems completely alien to them, like trying to teach a penguin nuclear physics.

How I learned to play the banjo:

Having said all these things about my teaching experiences, let me tell you about my own musical background and tenure as a banjo player. This may help give you an insight in to what it took ME to overcome many problems and lack of natural talent to get where I am today. If any of these things hit home, remember that there’s hope for you, too. If I can make it, ANYBODY can make it!

I fooled around with my family’s old upright piano when I was perhaps between 5 and 8 years old, but nothing that you could call making real music. My mother could play a few simple tunes on it, but hadn’t really done anything for years, and my father was totally lacking in any musical skills. I had a couple of uncles who played a bit (accordion, piano, etc) and some sang a bit, but this was only done at family parties and such. Nothing that you would call performing. My maternal grandfather once played the violin and accordion, but due to a hand injury he sustained at the paper mill where he worked, he hardly played any music at all in the time I knew him. If anything, he would bring out his accordion at family picnics and play a few Polish polkas (we were Polish in descent), but I was too young to know if what I was hearing was professional quality or not.

When I was in about 3rd grade, the school’s band instructors came around and gave us all ear-training tests. They would play recordings of two notes, and we were supposed to write down on our papers which note was higher, the first or second. If you passed the test, showing that you had an ear for notes, you were invited to join the school band and begin learning an instrument. I flunked the test so badly I was told that I could never have any hope of playing or enjoying music in any capacity at all. That didn’t really bother me, as I didn’t have any real desire to play instruments, but it was still a curiosity to me as to how other students could hear these sounds (which all sounded the same to me) and tell which was indeed higher or lower.

Although music was pretty much vacant in my family (BTW I am an only child), my father did occasionally listen to the radio, either at home or in the car when driving. Aside from the Polish music that was often played by a particular radio station on a Sunday afternoon, I did hear a slightly more rounded mix of country and pop. Despite the fact that I was still quite young at this time, and had never really listened to any music for entertainment or on purpose, I would sometimes have an almost eerie feeling of deja-vu when I heard certain songs. Their melodies seemed to be ingrained on the very fabric of the cosmos itself, to the extent that when I heard certain songs for the ‘first time,’ I swore up and down that I had heard them before or KNEW them, even though I firmly believe I didn’t. I could sometimes even tell where a song was going, or what passage or notes were coming up, depending on the notes preceding it.

Despite hearing these things, I remained musically inert for many years. When I was a young teenager, I began to listen to the local rock/pop station that was the favorite of my school friends. I enjoyed the music, often taping my favorite songs on my 5-inch reel-to-reel Radio Shack tape recorder. When I was about 14 or 15, my grandfather (the accordion-playing one) died and left my family his house. It was newer and bigger than the one we lived in and was in a nicer part of our little town, so my parents decided to sell our old house and move into it. Because we then actually owned both homes, and because they were only about a mile away from each other, we were in no hurry to move, so we took our time, leisurely moving things into the new house over a 1- or 2-year period.

During the summer before we moved in, I often went to my grandfather’s old house just to hang out in my own space, and get ideas on how to decorate the room that would one day soon be mine. One particular day I was somewhat bored, so I turned on the television and began searching through the 4 channels that it received (This was long before cable or computers!) I stumbled across a concert being broadcast live from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. It was Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, whom I had never seen or heard of before. (I was 15 or 16 at the time). It was strange to see an old man and a young man on stage, singing together. I really liked some of the songs they did, particularly Pete’s Worried Man Blues and his strange, whistled version of The Three Rules of Discipline and the Eight Rules of Attention. In about an hour, the show was over, but the memory stuck in my head permanently.

Almost by accident, the FOLLOWING summer I again found myself in the living room with nothing to do and picked up the week’s local TV Guide magazine. Lo and behold, Pete and Arlo were doing another concert that very same day! Another live concert, also from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. I couldn’t wait to tune in again, and see the duo that so impressed me one year before. Pete Seeger’s mix of singing, playing, and stage presence was like magic to me at that time. At this time, I tried to find out all I could about Pete and Arlo, from local libraries and music stores. Despite all this heightened reaction to the music I heard on the TV concert, music was still not really a priority to me at all. In fact, I would say it was definitely a very MINOR interest, even at this point.

My main activities and interests were in the hard sciences: astronomy, physics, mechanics, mathematics, electronics, etc. I dove head-first into anything that was related to these areas, and gobbled them up with a passion. Interestingly enough, my best friend at the time and mad-scientist partner was a long-time guitar player who had a little rock band of his own, but it was in this area that we never mixed or really spoke about music. I never paid any attention to his guitar playing or his band, and he never faulted me for my lack of interest in it. I want to also add that all during my life, including my teen-age years, I had absolutely NO interest in sports, finding myself extremely uncoordinated and lacking in any physical abilities to play any athletic activities well at all.

I kept my interest in the folk music duo a secret to everyone, but I actually