[Dixielandjazz] Re; Eddie Peabody, Banjos

[Jim Irvin]

I have something called a zither banjo made by A. D. Cammeyer (an American) in London around 1918. The neck was not sturdy enough to handle tenor banjo tuning, so I tuned it like the last four strings on a guitar, and it sounded okay, but it never had that ringing tone of a well-tuned tenor banjo. The zither banjo is pretty well made, except for the weakness in the neck. It has an ebony fretboard, silver or silver-like frets, and the head sits in a bowl-like wood resonator, the back or bottom and sides of which are hollow. It has a six-string classical guitar peghead. There's room for a fifth string to go over a small nut at the fifth fret and then into a tunnel in the neck leading back to the peghead. Yet, Mr. Gruhn in Nashville says it's worth only a couple of hundred bucks. I paid $40 for it eons ago.

>>> "Dave Stoddard" <dhs2 at peoplepc.com> 2/26/2011 1:31 PM >>>
Bud Taylor said:

This discussion on banjos got me to thinking.  A young man plays guitar for
our church services.  He just graduated with a degree in music from a local
college with strong arts programs.  I asked him if he had considered playing
a tenor banjo and he said he had not.  Part of the problem may be to learn
the new fingering associated with tenor banjo tuning *that is the same as
violin).  An advantage of this tuning is the wide range of the notes in the
chords compared with guitar.  Would it be possible to tune a banjo as if it
were a guitar but with the second and fourth string missing?  This would
give a similar range of notes, and may make the transition from guitar to
banjo easier.

If learning the banjo is thought to require a new set of fingerings, most players won't do it.  I would suggest acquiring a six-string banjo (banjitar) or tuning a four-string banjo like the top four strings of a guitar.  There are plenty of banjitars out there.

Dave Stoddard
Round Rock, TX

_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:

http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz 



Dixielandjazz mailing list
Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com