Author: Native Ground

Bluegrass or Clawhammer Banjo – Which One is Easier to Learn?

You’ve got your heart set on learning to play the banjo. Come to find out, there are currently two popular styles of banjo playing: bluegrass or clawhammer banjo. Which one should you choose? And most important, which style is easier?

First, let me explain each style and then we’ll talk about which one is easier to learn.

Earl Scruggs 2Bluegrass banjo was more or less “invented” by Earl Scruggs who first showcased it on the Grand Ole Opry in December, 1945 when he joined Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys. Earl’s way of playing was partly influenced by his brother Junie Scruggs, along with

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How Difficult is it to Play the Fiddle/ Violin? 

Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus! instruction book by Wayne Erbsen

Among the many stringed instruments, the fiddle or violin has long been revered but also feared. Somewhere along the line, it got the reputation of being the most difficult instrument to play. Let’s look this question right in the eye and answer it right here and now, once and for all.

What do I say when someone says that the fiddle is the most difficult instrument to learn? “Hogwash.”

A more detailed answer would go like this. “It depends on several things.”

  1.  Talent. Some people have more natural ability to learn musical instruments more than
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‘In the Pines’ + Music, Lyrics & Tips for Playing

By Wayne Erbsen

Talk about a dark and spooky song! In the Pines has it all: a young girl who shivers when the cold winds blow, and then sells herself to the men in the mines. As if that’s not quite bad enough, she then gets her head cut off when she fell under the driving wheel of a train. After all that, she didn’t even get a proper burial because “her body has never been found.”

Originating around the time of the Civil War, the history of In the Pines is entangled with such songs as The Longest Train

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In the Pines: History, Lyrics & Tips for Playing

Talk about a dark and spooky song! In the Pines has it all: a young girl who shivers when the cold winds blow, and then sells herself to the men in the mines. As if that’s not quite bad enough, she then gets her head cut off when she fell under the driving wheel of a train. After all that, she didn’t even get a proper burial because “her body has never been found.”

Originating around the time of the Civil War, the history of In the Pines is entangled with such songs as The Longest Train I Ever Saw

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My Apple-Picking Gizmo and the Song ‘June Apple’ + Banjo Tab

By Wayne Erbsen

Why is it that when you drop a slice of bread that you’ve just slathered with peanut butter, it always lands peanut- butter-side down?  Maybe it’s the same cosmic forces at work that cause the best apples to be at the very top of the tree. That’s the predicament I found myself in yesterday as I contemplated how I was going to get some juicy apples down from 35 feet up a tree that was too skinny to climb.

IMG_2373

But wait! I’m getting ahead of myself. It all started this fall weekend when I was up at

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June Apple Banjo Tab + My Apple-Picking Gizmo

Why is it that when you drop a slice of bread that you’ve just slathered with peanut butter, it always lands peanut- butter-side down?  Maybe it’s the same cosmic forces at work that cause the best apples to be at the very top of the tree. That’s the predicament I found myself in yesterday as I contemplated how I was going to get some juicy apples down from 35 feet up a tree that was too skinny to climb.

IMG_2373

But wait! I’m getting ahead of myself. It all started this fall weekend when I was up at our remote off-the-grid

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Bigfoot’s Gone Away (+tab for banjo,fiddle & mandolin)

bigfoot Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Abominable Snowman. Whatever name you want to call him, this mythical creature has crept into our collective imaginations as far back as 1811. That year, just outside what is now the town of Jasper, Canada, a trader by the name of David Thompson discovered footprints in the snow that made him stop in his tracks. He swore that the impression left in the snow had four toes, was fourteen inches long and eight inches wide. Word quickly spread and imaginations ran wild about the existence of a huge hairy ape-like creature that walked upright on two legs. Of

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“Drifting Too Far From the Shore” by Charles E. Moody

Charles E. Moody was not your average gospel songwriter. He alone wrote both the words and the melody of two of the bedrock classics of country and bluegrass gospel, “Kneel at the Cross” and “Drifting Too Far From the Shore.” To get a handle on this man and the songs he wrote, let’s go back to Moody’s beginnings in rural Georgia.

cabin illustrationOne of eight children, Moody was born in a log cabin on October 8,1891, near Tifton, Georgia. In this rural farming community, music was a favorite pastime, and as a young man Moody learned to play the harmonica and

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The History of Tuning Gizmos

By Wayne Erbsen

chromatic.black

Over the years, there’s been a dizzying array of gizmos created to help us find the right pitch for singing or to help us tune our instruments. The first one I remember was a round pitch pipe the music teacher in my elementary school used when we would sing in class.

Tuning ForkWhen I first started playing the guitar in the early 1960s, it was common to use a tuning fork. Since that time I’ve heard that tuning forks have been produced in different sizes and pitches, but my only experience was with an “A” tuning fork. I

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Tuning Gizmos

chromatic.blackOver the years, there’s been a dizzying array of gizmos created to help us find the right pitch for singing or to help us tune our instruments. The first one I remember was a round pitchpipe the music teacher in my elementary school used when we would sing in class.

 

Tuning Fork

When I first started playing the guitar in the early 1960s, it was common to use a tuning fork. Since that time I’ve heard that tuning forks have been produced in different sizes and pitches, but my only experience was with an “A” tuning fork. I would bang it

… Read the rest
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