Comment by carrie horgan on December 16, 2015 at 18:57

Well played Anthony and nice finger-tricks - that's not any easy piece to play.

Comment by Anthony Derycke on December 16, 2015 at 19:00

thank you carrie :) i try to make progress on this piece but there is still work

Comment by Brian Kimerer on December 17, 2015 at 2:02

Truly marvelous. It looks like your banjo has no fret markers on it. Is that just because of the foreshortening from the angle you shot the video at, or are their really no fret markings?

Comment by Anthony Derycke on December 17, 2015 at 8:33

This is an old time banjo, Leon ballard, I did not want inlay

Comment by Jody Stecher on December 17, 2015 at 16:01

Personally I think a bare fingerboard is beautiful, especially a bound ebony board on a fretless instrument, but historically speaking this was not the norm. Every old time banjo player I have met or know of who played a fretted banjo, played one with position markers. Some were open backed, some had resonators, some had tone rings, some didn't. But they all had, at the very least, a few inlayed dots on the fingerboard. Buell Kazee, Cousin Emmy, Dave Macon, Dock Boggs, Lily May Ledford, Hobart Smith, Wade Ward, Roscoe Holcomb, Matokie Slaughter, Clarence Ashley, Justus Begley, Bill Cornett etc: Not one of them played a banjo with a bare fingerboard. The reason is easy to see: bare fingerboards on fretted banjos are a recent development and would have been an anomaly in the past. As for Rufus Crisp, he pulled out the frets, but left the dots! 

Comment by Trapdoor2 on December 17, 2015 at 17:00

I never realized how wedded I was to markers until I owned a bare one. Even though it has side dots, I have trouble with certain positions on it.

Of course, S.S. Stewart went the other way with some instruments. His 'fretless' offerings had "professional frets", which were side marker dots...at every position. I have found that that is almost as bad as having no markers at all!

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