Here's a little summary of our first episode before we complete this stop to Banjo land. As the title states, this monthly mag titled "On-Line Akustik Travels" brought to you by "Guitarist Magazine" is designed to introduce you to what we'll call "World Guitars" (oud, banjo, balalaïka....) and to see how we may be inspired by these guitar cousins...
Other sources of inspiration along our way will be : "open-tunings", classical, celtic, new-age, hawaien etc....
These "Akustik Travels" are therefore set on two levels :
Tips taken from other instruments
Banjo techniques for guitarists,
An introduction to "World Guitars"
What to do when faced with a Balalaïka, an Oud, a Bouzouki, etc....?
How to adjust your knowledge to these instruments ?
Further to these one bar banjo licks, we'll see what a longer and more elaborate lick will do in a song, as I used for a break in "Blue Grass State".
The chord progression is from "That's All-Right Mama", with an up-tempo (136), played in the style of like Albert Lee or the Hellecasters, either in finger-style or with a 2 fingers & pick technique. The 5 string banjo's best used with open-string playing and right-hand finger-picking techniques.
If you play this instrument in a traditional guitar manner, without the open strings, the notes will be there, but the fluid harp-like effects, the ringing of the strings, the sound and the style in general will be lost. On the record I played acoustic, but it would sound great on a Telecaster.
