Two-Finger Thumb-Lead Techniques
Added 2018-06-13 23:56:21 +0000 UTCIn this video I demonstrate most of the elements that I have developed to embellish, emphasize and vary my traditional two-finger banjo picking.
1. "Bump-Ditty" or "Chicka-Boom" Lick
2.Two-Count Rhythm
3. Three-Count or Waltz Rhythm
4. Drop-Thumb
5. Pinch
6. Double Note
7. Forefinger Brush
There are, of course, other licks that could have been included in this video; these are the ones that I employ most often. http://cliftonhicks.bandcamp.com
https://patreon.com/cliftonhicks
Comments
This video is fantastic! Thank you.
Jane Cabrera
2020-08-29 04:28:02 +0000 UTCThe kind of dediction Earl had to music from childhood is captured whenhe and his brother and sister would practice by starting outside their house, one playing the banjo the other playing guitar (early was a great guitarist and had to play guitar more when he was a kid)and would face back to back and start picking a tune and then walk around the house going different ways, and aim to be on the same beat, the same note whenever they met face to face on the other side of the house. This was at 11 or 12 years old. I think whoever posted here about "primitive" music should look at this level of dedication and work that went into folks learning to pick
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 14:15:17 +0000 UTCEarl really used the guitar banjo 3 finger technique with very very strong admixture of the stronger playing with the thumb from thumb lead banjo and he also used total mastry of the whole keyboard from the botton frets to high about the 12th fret that came out of classic and ragtime banjo. He was very much into strong banjo playing and felt when bluegrass went from ickerslike him who started out without picks to pickers who always used picks the strength of play tended to be lost. But both he and Charlie Poole were people who had mastered the three finger technique and applied it to the string band music they tried to make. Earl probably had a stronger mixture of things he learned playing two finger thumb lead that Poole. I have heard that Poole did play down picking but not on records. Earl had a father who played some clawhammer, but he and his brother June who also played banjo and was recorded probably always played finger style, first two finger thumb lead and then three finger
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 14:12:17 +0000 UTCWhat Earl did in my humble estimation is applied the syncopation he heard in blues--he oftened cited Blind Boy Fuller as an inspiiraton--and his memory of ragtime banjo, and like all the bluegrassers of the 1940s, he was inspired by what swing jazz was doing-- and added in strong syncopation, strong swing. In many ways as great as Earl's lead playing, the way he made his banjo the kind of swing and rhythm regulator of the bands he played with was more important to the perfection of bluegrass than his leads which are fantastic,
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 14:06:40 +0000 UTCThe cotton mills, especially in the mill villages, cotton mill's equivalent of coal camps, hired music teachers, and had music rooms, and favored people picking and so across the Piedmont cotton mill areas you had fairly sophisticated musical approaches being applied to old time music. Mack Woolbright famous for his recording "The Man who Wrote the Home Sweet Home Never was a Married Man" hung aroudn the community Earl was raised in, was a friend his his familyk and often picked the banjo on a neighbor of earl's front porch when earl was a kid. If you listen to that recording, you see a whole set of rolls that any bluegrass banjo player would be familiar with, that were actually an internationally known way of playing Home Sweet Home starting in the 19th century. People who spent time with Earl in the 1970s have told me he could still play Woolbright's version of this tune note for note and would!
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 14:03:54 +0000 UTCEarl began as a 2 finger thumb lead player. He often sauid (I keep forgetting he is passed and wrote says and he will say what a loss and what a living person) he was a 2 finger thumb lead player who added a third finger and tells a story about doing that playing Reuben when he was a teenager. Howeve3r, he came from an area where a number of local pickers were applying the guitar banjo style that Poole used, the world's dominant popular music and parlor music style to old time music. This was cotton mill country and like Charlie Poole earl evenutally spent time in the mills
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 13:59:54 +0000 UTCYou can see the progression toward what Earl did if you go on Bob Carlin's Carolina banjo 2 CD set and listen to a recording made by Poole's son in the 1930s. I dont have time to play it to write this now, but you hear a whole lot more banjo and a whole lot roll playing and you hear a lot of blues inflection and swing. It is pretty clearly on the way to what Earl and Snuffy Jenkins and other folks would do in the 1940s.
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 13:52:49 +0000 UTCCharlie Poole was a pure devotee of the guitar banjo style called classic. Charlie wanted to record popular music tunes with his band but the record company said he made mnoney Hillbilly style. He did one very Van Epps like recording of a ragtime classic banjo piece. Poole used his banjo as the kind of rhythm coordinator in his band, almost never playing lead, letting the fiddle and the voice do that and giving the great Roy Harvey freedom from jut playing chords, for his great runs. He usually would do what I learned to call gapping, or grabbing, making a low note with the thump and then plucking two or three notes high on the treble strings. He went up and down the neck getting some emphasis by hearing the same chord position at different places on the neck. This was what Poole did on the records, although he did make at least one recording that showed a mastery of what is now misnamed "classic" banjo on a difficult ragtime piece
Tony Thomas
2018-06-19 13:50:54 +0000 UTCTony, how would you compare and contrast Scruggs' playing with that of, for example, a Charlie Poole?
Clifton Hicks
2018-06-18 21:02:43 +0000 UTCWhile exaggerating and minimizing his own influences from 3 finger guitar banjo, Earl Scruggs used to claim that he was just a thumb lead 2 finger banjoist who added a third finger, though what he did is used approaches to rolls and things that emerged in 19th century guitar banjo stylings, as well as the wide range of the instrument that really emerged in late 19th century parlour and ragtime banjo with 3 fingers
Tony Thomas
2018-06-18 18:47:33 +0000 UTCI do a lot of thumb lead playing,, While I sometimes use the index finger, I more often, especially if you are chiefly droning the first string with the non thumb, I used the middle finger, something I noticed a number of traditional players both black and white do. Clay Black who your probably know reinforced this for me when I had the privilege of going to a workshop he gave on 2 finger KY banjo here in florida about 7 years ago, explaining this gives the thumb a wide range to ramble the strings than the index finger. Certainly once tone ring and resonated banjos came into play 2 finger playing became as if not more common than down picking.
Tony Thomas
2018-06-18 18:44:21 +0000 UTC
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