"This beginner's book will guide you step by step to playing songs on your banjo in the popular and exciting bluegrass style"--P. [2].

A complete guide to the world of the five-string banjo written for both beginners and more experienced players. Packed with over 120 how-to photos and 130 musical examples. 94 track CD included - hear and play along with every exercise and song. The only book to offer instruction in clawhammer, bluegrass, melodic, single-string, minstrel and classic styles. From Earl Scruggs’ driving bluegrass picking to the genre-busting jazz fusion of Béla Fleck and the multi-million selling movie soundtrack O Brother Where Are Thou?, the five-string banjo can be heard just about everywhere in American music these days. Banjo For Dummies is the most complete guide to the five-string banjo ever written. It covers everything you need to get into the banjo: including how to choose, tune and care for your instrument, developing a good playing posture, fretting your first chords and getting comfortable with the left and right hand picking patterns used for clawhammer and bluegrass playing techniques. You’ll then add the left hand, spicing up your playing with slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and chokes for an authentic five-string banjo sound. From there, you’ll move on the play 19th century minstrel style, early 20th century classic style as well as try your hand at more advanced examples of bluegrass style. An in-depth chapter on bluegrass music explores Scruggs licks and techniques as well as melodic and single-string styles, with song examples. Also included is a banjo buyer’s guide, a section on music theory as applied to bluegrass and old-time music, an accessories guide (advice on cases, picks, straps, metronomes, computer aids and much more), information on how to find a good teacher, banjo camp or festival, chord charts, bios of twelve influential players, practice tips and much, much more! Banjo For Dummies is accessible and fun to read and it’s easy to locate just what you’re interested in playing. Included are 20 songs including several new compositions written by the author just for this book, including Reno Rag (single-string style), “Winston’s Jig” (Irish three-finger), and “Everyday Breakdown” (Scruggs style). All musical examples are played slowly on the accompanying CD, many with guitar and mandolin accompaniment. Bill Evans is one of the world’s most celebrated banjo players and teachers. He has taught thousands of people to play the five-string banjo in private lessons and group workshops literally all over the world. In addition to leading the Bill Evans String Summit, Bill has performed with Dry Branch Fire Squad, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Tony Trischka and many others and he hosts his own acclaimed banjo camp, the NashCamp Fall Banjo Retreat in the Nashville area. As an American music historian, he has taught at San Francisco State University, the University Virginia and Duke University. He has written a popular instructional column for Banjo Newsletter magazine for the last fifteen years and hosts three popular instructional DVDs for AcuTab Publications. To learn more about Bill, visit his homepage at www.nativeandfine.com. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.

Southern Appalachian native Dan Levenson and Mel Bay Publications present Clawhammer Banjo from Scratch - A Guide for the Claw-less! This book teaches clawhammer banjo the way we play, not the way others say. It really begins as though you really have NO knowledge of how to play the five string banjo clawhammer style. Based on Dan's innovative Meet the Banjo program (where Dan brings 15 banjos and teaches players who may have never held a banjo), this book assumes no prior experience. Beginning at the beginning, Dan presents a brief history of the 5-string banjo then goes over the parts of the banjo, holding the banjo, right and left hand positions and his basic clawhammer strum. Even the strum is broken down into the steps of the finger and thumb. You are guided through the chords, the scale and then the individual notes of each of 12 jam session favorite tunes from scratch. Includes 2 reference CD's with all exercises, tunes (slow and up to speed), and a fiddle version of each tune.

Many folk banjoists draw influence from greats such as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, The Weavers, Peter, Paul and Mary, and many others. These folk musicians traveled the country singing the folk songs that many of us now know, some of which are still played in jam sessions. First Lessons Folk Banjo is a great introduction to learning these types of folk songs on this wonderful instrument.Included are lessons on singing and playing backup with the banjo, strumming and picking exercises, and many classic folk songs. The music is written intablature, and the book comes with accompanying audio available for download online.

George Lewis, one of the great traditional jazz clarinetists, was born in 1900 at about the same time that jazz itself first appeared in New Orleans. And by the time he died, on the last day of 1968, New Orleans jazz had pretty much run its course, too. By then a jazz museum stood on Bourbon Street, and a cultural center was under construction where Globe Hall had Stood. Lewis's life thus paralleled that of New Orleans jazz, and in his later years hew as the best known standard bearer of his city's music. He came to the attention of the jazz world at the time of the so-called "New Orleans Revival" of the 1940's, when veteran trumpeter Bunk Johnson was recorded by a number of jazz enthusiasts, notably William Russell. In this new biography, Tom Bethell challenges a favorite myth of the history of jazz: that the music became moribund in New Orleans after the legal red light district, Storyville, was closed in 1917, resulting in most jazz musicians going "up the river." In fact, Bethell shows, many more jazzmen stayed in the city than left, and the musical style continued to develop and grow. Thus the jazz fans who arrived in the city in the early 1940's did not encounter a "revival" of an old style so much as an ongoing tradition, with clarinetists like Lewis having been influenced by Benny Goodman and the Swing Era in addition to Lorenzo Tio and the Creole School. After Bunk Johnson's death in 1949, at a time when many other social changes were beginning to be felt in the city, the New Orleans jazz tradition began to go into a decline. It became increasingly rigid and repetitive, and was often designed to please what one observer called "Dixieland fans yelling for their favorite members." The book is based on lengthy research in New Orleans, including interviews with George Lewis shortly before his death, and unpublished material from the diaries kept by William Russell on his visits to New Orleans between 1942 and 1949. It also includes a statement by Lewis on jazz and the best way to play it and a complete Lewis discography. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.