I have the Fred Kelly picks but I prefer the natural nails.

As for clawhammer, there are three-fingered traditional styles that sound good too from North Carolina and Virginia. Obray Ramsey, Mike Seeger, Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Charlie Poole. Clawhammer isn't the only trad banjo game in town.

Banjo requires that people find their own style. Pete and Peggy are unique with their picks.George Pegram adapts a bluegrass type style without being bluegrass but traditional.
George Grove of the KT has his own style based on Dave Guard's approach with picks.
Derroll Adams has a unique style, non-bluegrass or picks.
Pete Steele from Hamilton Ohio, a coal miner who influenced Pete Seeger uses up-picking with his fingers as in "Coal Creek March" and "Pay Day at Coal Creek".

With clawhammer, you can use different fingers I think depending on the sound you want to get. The index finger is the most trad I think. Once you frail, you can use any finger.

Interesting question here:

"as regards playing Irish music on the 5 string,for me it is definitely easier to use a plectrum,as I have acquired that skill with the four string,hence my question regarding four finger style,having acquired that skill on the guitar, it is thus easier
what I am asking before I go down that route],is there a logical musical reason for not doing this,other than it has not been done before,after all no one was using three finger blugrass style before 1938 were they?

Bluegrass banjo really is a product of the late Forties. The two main guys to bring it on were Scruggs and Don Reno. Reno was in the army at the time Scruggs popularized his style. There is no logical reason for using any fingers one way or another except that this has been a cultivated style. Bluegrassers anchor the ring and pinky on the banjo head.
If you can play the banjo with your teeth successfully why not?

As for Irish, the frailing style doesn't seem to lend itself to the music. Kevin Burke has been accompanied by a clawhammer style but in order to play the "chunes" with the Irish musicians, you need the attack of the flatpick unless you develop an accompaniment style for them. Even then, I think accompanying Irish "Chunes" is tricky. Some chords don't work well. And you have to stay with the "lilt" which clawhammer doesn't get too well.

Back to the question. Whatever works. But it seems as though with the three fingers, this is a "classical" banjo style which was in it's heyday in the late 1800's. Fred Van Epps, Cammemeyer and others developed this. Capt., you might want to look into this. There is an American Banjo Society that does "classical" pieces much in the same way as "classical guitar".

My feeling about banjo accompaniment is that it is best when sparse.


"or does it produce the wrong emphasis because I am using an index [up]instead of a thumb down,on the third string."

The ideal banjo picker can probably do it all. I don't think there is a formula for this.
Pete Pardee's banjo book covers this by presenting some unorthodox patterns.

Uncle Dave Macon could do both clawhammer and three-finger up picking sometimes
interchangeably. Pete and Peggy can as well.

Frank