ught it 20yrs ago (or more, I can't remember), I've only seen one other copy. Very glad Joel got it scanned...the original is so fragile, it is barely hanging together.
This is one of Joel's "transitional" Bb tuning schemes: fBbFAC (just a whole tone lower than gCGBD and just a half tone higher than A notation's eAEG#B). Still read out of A notation.
I like it and I'll put it in the queue to translate into C Notation (and Tab, of course).…
"H" will appear.
2.) Errors happen. I think the B is correct.
3.) The original was written in "American Notation", that is, as a transposing instrument. The way I get around this in TablEdit is to "retune" the banjo to eAEG#B and enter the notation as written. After the piece is complete, I "retune" back to gCGBD, clicking the impact button to "notes". Then you have to go back and remove a couple of sharps in the Key Signature.
It is a pretty easy thing to do, you just have to get used to it. I like TablEdit a lot but it does have some quirks!
I tabbed out AAGCM some years ago but never learned it. AAGCM is used in the blackface scene (often edited out) of the awesome James Cagney movie, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942).…
G#B, but getting it up to C would necessitate getting them even tighter than they already are. If there is a viable replacement peg out there (aesthetics don't matter, just compatibility), I would rather just spend the money than risk causing damage. Joel Hooks said:
What is wrong with the pegs you have?
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came across a farcical article in a Stewart’s Journal (“A.D. 2000”), which seems to suggest that banjo music written in “A” tuning actually sounded in “C”.
https://urresearch.rochester.edu/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.action;jsessionid=8774EA82452A28D111B970D523244803?itemId=2330&itemFileId=3183
Was this the case? Was there a time when banjo read in “A” but was tuned to “C”?
Thanks in advance for your help!…
out, if you look at some American notation from the period (for instance, in S. S. Stewart's Journal) you will see that it is mostly written in the key of A and the key of E, which were natural keys for the old eAEG# tuning. By this time, however, most Americans were already tuning their banjos gCGBD, whose natural keys are C and G. The old "A" notation was mostly kept out of tradition, and due to backing by such important figures as Stewart, who published hundreds of pieces in his Journal in A notation.
Bob Winans and Eli Kaufman wrote an excellent article on the subject called "Minstrel & Classic Banjo: American and English Connections" published in American Music Vol. 12, Number 1, Spring 1994, which you can purchase online. Here's an excerpt on tunings (pp. 11 and 12):
The decade of the 1880s was a momentous one for the continued exchange between the American and British banjo worlds. First of all,this period saw the culmination of a series of changes in the pitch ofthe banjo. In America, especially, the pitch of the banjo had been onthe rise ever since its introduction in the minstrel show. We do not know for certain what pitch minstrel banjoists used in the 1840s, but the earliest instruction book (1850) gave an F tuning (cFCEG) as the primary one (for playing in the keys of F and C) and the G tuning(dGDF#A-not the modem G tuning) as an alternate (for playing inthe keys of G and D).41 In Briggs's 1855 tutor, the music is in G notation,11 to correspond to the dGDF#A tuning, and several tutors of the late 1850s and early 1860s continued to use this notation and tuning.42 But this notation and tuning were quickly superceded as standard by the eAEG#B tuning, with the music in the corresponding A notation (that is, in the keys of A and E), probably as a result of its adoption in three influential tutors by Rice (1858), Buckley (1860), and Converse (1865),who were probably following the actual practice of the professionalplayers, including themselves.43 By 1865 at the latest, then, the banjowas being tuned so that what was called its "natural" playing key was A (the bass string being tuned in this instance to A), and this remained the standard for another fifteen years or more. Probably by 1880, and certainly by the early 1880s, it became, in the words of one 1884 tutor,"customary to tune in C Major [gCGBD].... [which] is to be preferred,as it is more brilliant."44 Another 1884 book stated that gCGBD "is the pitch now used by nearly all Banjoists."45 This re-pitching of the banjo to C, which occurred in both England and America, is also sometimes attributed to the use of smaller banjos and finer strings.46 For another twenty or thirty years, however, Americans continued to write their banjo music in A notation, while the English wrote virtually all of theirbanjo music from the early 1880s on in C notation.
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later. I have 17 of them and none are banjo! The Smithsonian has a large archive of these discs and it can be dated from the pressing number as well.
I would expect the listed tuning to be a simple mis-communication or just a fabrication by someone who didn't know. This piece in this style was common in gCGBD tuning in England and America (but this is in the "A Notation" period over here so perhaps it has been confabulated from gCGBD and eAEG#B...)
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Added by Jody Stecher at 10:13 on October 18, 2022
nd C notation Classic style is the same, the Standard Chord shapes remain the same.
There are approximately 13 standard chord shapes to learn, and they are, in the main, played as 3 string chords.
I produced a flyer some time ago showing the shapes that can be used up and down the fingerboard when playing Classic Style.
You can download it here:
STANDARD CHORD SHAPES…
publication.
"American Notation" is indeed a hint that it will likely be in what we call "A Notation". Although they voted to go to "C notation" in '07, publishers were unlikely to reset/re-arrange existing stuff. I have some stuff where the tunes are published in both.
I usually just look at the music and scan for sharps/flats. Then, I scan for the lowest note in the piece (two ledger lines below...it's A notation. "A" being the lowest note).
Funnily, the old tuning (eAEG#B) hung on for longer than anyone expected. I recently discovered that the Kratt Pitch Pipe company still makes pitch pipes for the 5-string banjo in that tuning. I contacted them about it and they have no idea why...except that they occasionally still get orders for their SN-7 pipe. They started making pitch pipes in this country in the 1920's...and were offering both "C" pipes and "A" pipes for the 5-string banjo from the very start.
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Community tunes:
Banjo Oddity
Donkey Laugh
The Park Crescent March
Return of the Regiment
Rugby Parade
Sunflower Dance
Whistling Rufus
+ Tired Tim in memoria Gordon Dando