Got it. "Carry On" has been on my "to TAB" list for too long...

Thanks!

Good idea Marc, "Carry On" is a great solo which really deserves to be accessible to the wider banjo public.

BTW, here's my piano accompaniment, if anyone wants it: http://www.mediafire.com/?w3q4gve22ofwok7

Thanks Mike, it is a good idea producing the intro for banjo.  Often banjo solos have piano introductions, but we poor “home alone” banjo players don’t have a pianist and have to start playing part way in!

Here’s a tip about your notation score. When I produce scores with two voices I make note “sticks up” for Voice1 and “sticks down” for Voice2.  This makes it easier to count the bar. Your first two bars of the Intro look like they have 6 beats as all the sticks are pointing Down.  JMHO

I like Alfred Kirby compositions and am working on Joy Dance myself at the moment, which is a fun lively piece.

You can hear Mike playing Kirby’s “Carry On” in the JUKEBOX or watch him in VIDEOS... and very good it is too!

Thanks Ian, my notation software is a bit awkward but I'll try to find a way to make it change the stems according to the voices (what it usually does is change the colour, making voice 1 black and voice 2 red)

Joy Dance is a good one, I'm looking forward to listening to your recording!

Hi Ian, which way the tails point I think is more down to the peculiarities of the software used. I use Finale Printmusic and the tails default to opposite directions when using layers. The only problem is that when I don't want that to happen, I can't change it! It could be interesting and helpful to have discussion about the various types of music software used by our members....Steve.

I guess that Steve is the ”expert” on entering notation on here as he has done so many arrangements for the MUSIC LIBRARY!

I use Gvox Encore V5 for Mac and have used the software for many years so just about know how to use about 10% of its facilities!

The trouble with all these notation software packages they seem overly complicated with functions that are rarely, if ever, used.

Now I am used to it (and have read the manuals 100 times) I find it fairly easy, but time consuming, to produce quite reasonable scores.  Flipping notes up or down is any voice is really easy and only takes a simple select and then CTRL-U  or CTRL-D.

Short cut keys make life easy CTRL-S  is sharpen CTRL-F is flatten  etc etc.

Here I have re-entered Mike’s intro in Encore 5 to show how it works.

I selected a single stave with 4 measures per staff and then selected half common time and finally the Key signature Eflat (3 flats).  I then entered notes in VOICE 1 (All notes are “sticks down”)

Then I switched to VOICE2 and entered the notes. You will see that VOICE 1 greys out and VOICE 2 overlaps. (The notes are also “sticks down”)

I now selected all VOICE 1 and flipped all notes Up (CTRL-U)

I don’t like that as the sticks look confusing in the ledger lines above the staff, so I flipped them down again (CTRL-D) in VOICE 1 and Up (CTRL-U) in VOICE 2

It looks better, so now I added the string indications and finally selected ALL VOICES to make them show.

I could move the rests, just by dragging them anywhere I want, or flip individual notes to tidy things up.

  I tried “Finale” notation software recently (This is the big brother of Print Music that Steve uses) but find it very awkward compared to Encore, but maybe that is because I am not familiar with it.