Frets

[Classic Banjo]

Is a fretted banjo considered essential to classic banjo? Does anyone here play classic repertoire on a fretless or flush fret banjo?

[Jody Stecher]

I would find it difficult to get all those demented and demolished chords well enough in tune without frets. Playing in flat keys like A flat or E flat would also be difficult for me. As for Cammeyer's compositions, they're hard enough with frets to help out. However with practice it must be possible. Comparison with fretless plucked instruments such as oud or sarod are not valid because these instruments are used for non-harmonic music. There are no chords. Each pitch is played on its own. And that's difficult enough.

[Jody Stecher]

One feature of classic style and technique is that a large part of what is played can be readily found by shifting from one chord position to another. Some of these involve open strings, some are entirely closed, many or most are 3 string chords but there are also 4 string chords and 2 string partial chords.  But this is also true of so many other genres played on various string instruments. The repertoire Temlettt refers to can be easily played on a fretless instrument but it also involves holding down chord positions, though these are simpler chords.

Mike Bostock said:

Does that repertoire of complex closed chord compositions define the classic style?

The reason I ask is that I’m looking to get a sense of the identifying features. Not so much in terms of technique, more as ‘boundaries’ to the repertoire and the relationship (or not) to frets or fretless instruments.

Temlett referred in 1888 to an ‘old fashioned style’ of English banjo played out of first position with a repertoire of what he referred to as ‘funny jigs and breakdowns ‘. That earlier manner of playing is my area of research. As a more nuanced picture emerges of that early period I’ve also become interested in exploring the nature and markers and social aspects of that transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’. The extent to which there is evidence for differentiation, change and overlap.

[Joel Hooks]

Pretty much anything published in the US before about the mid 1880s was, more or less, intended to be played on a "fretless" fingerboard banjo.  "Fretless," in this would include professional frets or inlaid frets, though one could argue that those were forms of frets, just not raised frets. 

By the late 1870s, most books were recommending some form of "frets", but the "smooth arm" banjo ("fretted" in the above non raised fret style) was pretty well in use until the mid 1880s.

So, look at all the American music published in or before about 1885 and you should be able to play a good chunk of it.

The theme of the next ABF rally is Stewart publications and I've been organizing all that I have (digitally) with spread sheets.  Also, playing through them.  There is a pretty clear transition in the printed music from when raised frets became normalized.  One sees the fingerlings given for jumping up and down on the first two strings before, but after there is much more position playing in the left hand fingerings. 

Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule, but just a trend I have found.

Contrary to many of the things that have been written about the classic era, the banjo design followed the music-- not the other way around (as the authors would have you believe).   So the music gets more challenging, with position playing, and the banjos get raised frets.

Jody brought up Cammeyer, and since all of his music was published after 1893, it is safe to assume that all of that was intended to be played on raised frets. 

[Jody Stecher]

Joel, what do you mean by "professional frets"?  By the way my first banjo, a Gatcomb, had  inlaid frets (which my spell "corrector" is trying to change to "invalid" frets). I was 12 years old and able to play it in tune but I was playing simple music. 

[Joel Hooks]

Professional frets are side dots at every fret position.

Jody Stecher said:

Joel, what do you mean by "professional frets"?  By the way my first banjo, a Gatcomb, had  inlaid frets (which my spell "corrector" is trying to change to "invalid" frets). I was 12 years old and able to play it in tune but I was playing simple music. 

[Jody Stecher]

However —I just remembered — when the banjo virtuoso Joe Morley first came to the attention of Clifford Essex Morley was playing a smooth arm (fretless) 7-string banjo. You can read about it by clicking "The Life Of Joe Morley" at the upper menu of any page on this website.. Essex believed that Morley would be a success on the concert stage if he played a 5-string banjo and that the 7 string banjo would somehow not be taken seriously. Was such an instrument not up-to-date? Quaintly old-fashioned? I am guessing.  A compromise was reached and Morley played his London concert debut on a 6-string banjo. I think it must have been fretted.  Apparently when Essex first encountered him playing on the Isle of Wight Morley played all over the fingerboard and was very much in tune on his fretless banjo. Essex comments that Morley did not play out of "positions", by which I think he meant that he did not play the usual chord shapes that enable banjo players to easily find all the needed notes in any piece of music.  I think that is the crux of the matter. It is not difficult to play individual notes or double-stops in tune on a fretless instrument. Violinists and cellists do it all the time. But to play 3 and 4 note chords reliably in tune frets are a great help.

[Joel Hooks]

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, all the easy jigs, reels, hornpipes, clogs, schottisches, polkas, etc., etc., continued to be printed, sold, and composed through 1900 in the US.  There was a demand for that type of music.  If one searches the endless examples extant of dance cards one will see that was the music people wanted. 

In addition to those standard style pieces, one starts to see works like "L'infanta March", "Cupid's Arrow", "Music of the Pinewood", "Hall's Parade March", "Hall's Blue Ribbon March", etc., etc., then ragtime.  Banjo design changes followed those pieces.  95 percent of music does not go past the 17th fret, but after the late 1890s the three octave neck was a must have, even if it was not that useful for most stuff. 

One thing to keep in mind is that in the US the big market for this stuff was the working class.  We did not get the 40 hour work week until about 1940.  So the consumers (and often the composers), in addition to working 12 hours, 6 days a week, also heated their shaving water on a coal or wood stove, walked to work (or worked on farms) and lit their evenings by kerosene lamps that needed cleaning.  That did not leave a lot of practice time. 

[Jody Stecher]

Two wrinkles:

Morley's London debut seems to have not been at a music hall but at St Martin's Town Hall which seems to have been a concert venue. Have I go that wrong?

and

Morley's banjo, made expressively for his debut concert was made for him by Weaver. This seems to have been in the 1890s. Was Clifford Essex even in the banjo manufacturing business back then?

Mike Bostock said:

Yes, I think Clifford Essex's comment reflects the opinion of William Temlett. We do have to bear in mind that they both had a big iron in that fire as makers of what were then more modern banjos! We can see from the contemporary advertising that the banjo market was highly competitive and not averse to hyperbole and claims of unique excellence. Human nature being what it is any green young musician venturing into the professional arena and the unforgiving gaze (and heckling) of the music hall stage would be subject to a dual expectation; firstly that an audience would assume the prestige of the instrument was a mark of the quality of the performer, and secondly an ambitious wannabe pro musician would no doubt want to bolster their credibility and gain every possible advantage by trusting to the most reputable makers and their cutting edge instrument design.

Both the social context and banjo context in which that transition from 'old' to 'new' took place is witheringly described by a Lancashire writer under the nom de plume 'Hugh Bette' in this extract from 1889:

The Banjo Craze

  Great Ceasar! What a craze there is on just now for playing the banjo. Unless some of the other instruments look sharp, they will have to take a back seat. The newspapers are stating that good banjoists are at a premium, and I should say that good banjos are at a premium also, for in looking through the catalogue of a firm of manufacturers I find that prices go up as high as twenty guineas for a single instrument.

  It is not many years since the banjo was regarded with universal execration by society; and when one reflects how tenderly it is now being nursed by that society which was its' former enemy, one is led to wonder how the change has come about.

  When an instrument rises from a condition of skin and bones - or at least, a condition of skin too closely associated with bones - to be the accompanist to royal voices we naturally want to know whether the rise has been due to the merits of the instrument; whether there is a lamentable degeneration taking place in the quality of royal voices; or whether the whole thing has been a mistake, only just discovered by a genius, and which when pointed out, society has determined to vigorously correct at once. Society is very good that way. As soon as one of its' leading members shows that it has been making a fool of itself in any given direction, it immediately sets to and sweeps that direction from the face of the earth. It is quite evident that society has now determined to eradicate all traces of it's previous animosity to the banjo.

From a research perspective we must take this invective with a pinch of salt. The 'execrated' had been actively going their own sweet ways on the banjo in England for three decades by the time this unconcealed snobbery was penned. 

Jody Stecher said:

However —I just remembered — when the banjo virtuoso Joe Morley first came to the attention of Clifford Essex Morley was playing a smooth arm (fretless) 7-string banjo. You can read about it by clicking "The Life Of Joe Morley" at the upper menu of any page on this website.. Essex believed that Morley would be a success on the concert stage if he played a 5-string banjo and that the 7 string banjo would somehow not be taken seriously. Was such an instrument not up-to-date? Quaintly old-fashioned? I am guessing.  A compromise was reached and Morley played his London concert debut on a 6-string banjo. I think it must have been fretted.  Apparently when Essex first encountered him playing on the Isle of Wight Morley played all over the fingerboard and was very much in tune on his fretless banjo. Essex comments that Morley did not play out of "positions", by which I think he meant that he did not play the usual chord shapes that enable banjo players to easily find all the needed notes in any piece of music.  I think that is the crux of the matter. It is not difficult to play individual notes or double-stops in tune on a fretless instrument. Violinists and cellists do it all the time. But to play 3 and 4 note chords reliably in tune frets are a great help.

[Jody Stecher]

Got it.  Thanks. OK I know that at various times Weaver was the builder of certain models of CE banjos. So I guess Clifford Essex approached one of his reliable builders and ordered a 6 string model for Joe Morley.

Mike Bostock said:

Jody, Clifford Essex was making banjos in the 1890’s. He entered into partnership with Cammayer in the 1880’s before he went into business on his own at the turn of the century. However, I’m not an expert on CE or even the 1890’s banjo context. My area of research is the English banjo context 1842 - c.1875.

[Joel Hooks]

Was the partnership in the 1880s between Cammeyer and Essex by correspondence?

Mike Bostock said:

Jody, Clifford Essex was making banjos in the 1890’s. He entered into partnership with Cammayer in the 1880’s before he went into business on his own at the turn of the century. However, I’m not an expert on CE or even the 1890’s banjo context. My area of research is the English banjo context 1842 - c.1875.

[Joel Hooks]

Never mind, Cammeyer arrived in London in May of 1888, also, I don't know where I got the 1893 publication year-- so just please ignore that.  That said, the "zither banjo" was always fretted with raised frets per Cammeyer. 

Joel Hooks said:

Was the partnership in the 1880s between Cammeyer and Essex by correspondence?

Mike Bostock said:

Jody, Clifford Essex was making banjos in the 1890’s. He entered into partnership with Cammayer in the 1880’s before he went into business on his own at the turn of the century. However, I’m not an expert on CE or even the 1890’s banjo context. My area of research is the English banjo context 1842 - c.1875.