Hi:

I started off a great many years ago on banjo, then moved to guitar for most of my life, and a few years ago came back to banjo.

Not an expert, I have done lots of reading & playing, & have enjoyed the thread so far. A couple of notes (pun, get it?): the minstrel-style method was generally called "stroke", or down-picking, and several of the old tutor books are still in print and readily available. If you give your instrument to someone who hasn't played, or to a child, they most often will brush the back of the right hand (nali side) across the strings, from top to bottom (physically, but actually bottom to top in pitch, ie bass to treble - Lord, why are we so perverse in our terminology?), so as far as I can see, the "natural" stroke is that of the clawhammer style.

Both terms have been used interchangeably for many years, and it's only been recently that the definitions have been refined. These days, "frailing" is generally used to describe a kind of chunky, all-fingers stroke, or one which mostly backs up the fiddle player, providing rhythm and adding such melody notes as he/she can find.

"Clawhammer" is more often used to describe a style, part of which is also called "melodic" - more a solo or lead style which Ken Perlmann and many others have developed into a very intricate modern way of playing (paradoxic as that may sound for old-tyme music).

There are also many idiosycracies and personal techniques which provide an endless array of variations on style. There are also dozens of tunings, some quite bizarre, which add an exotic sound to many of the old mountain songs, and echo the origins of those songs in the old modal scales used before "modern" music swept the scene.

The banjo is a fascinating study, and there are some fine recent books I can highly recommend - "Ring the Banjar" and "That Half-Barbaric Twang" are a couple of excellent histories of the instrument from different perspectives. Check the on line booksellers and you'll find them.

Finally, the banjo's fascination is part sound, part history of music and machinery, part social weathervane. There's always more to learn and hear, and the diversity of style and opinion keeps it strong - it's a very democratic instrument. What's important is to play, or to learn, or to observe in your own style and to your own taste.

As has been said to me too many times: "You can tell when the stage is level because the banjo player is drooling from both sides of his mouth".

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