What is a Plectrum Banjo?

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 10 Oct 98 - 05:33 PM

Barbara, much as I love you, I'll have to withdraw my offer to run off with you. I'm already married to someone who hates housework--even more than I do (and that's what I should be doing now, instead of flaking here on the 'cat). If I leave my wife it'll have to be for someone who loves housework and is independently wealthy--so I guess my wife has no fears of my ever leaving.

"I yearn for you tragically, A.T.Tapman, Chaplain, USAAC" Can you tell me the source of that (which expresses my feelings exactly)? --seed

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Oct 98 - 02:41 PM

Aye Lass, and don't I agree with you absolutely. It is a grand place to hang out with lovely people talking all sorts of talk about the music.

Is there a name for the style of playing a banjo with a flat pick?

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Barbara
Date: 10 Oct 98 - 02:09 PM

Ah, Mick, I have a life; I have a home to go to; it's just that Mudcat is friendlier and more interesting, and I don't have to do any housework here. I will go to just about any length to avoid cleaning house.[grin]
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Oct 98 - 11:54 AM

It has enhanced my performing as all of you insane eejits expose me to a much broader range of music. Unfortunately it is destroying my personal life as all I do is spend time on the CAT, practice, sleep, go to the day job and perform.

Have you no homes to go to? **grin**

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From:
Date: 10 Oct 98 - 03:20 AM

I am not sure breaking the mudcat habit would help. I often leave the site with the feeling that there are a lot of others as insane as I am and feel newly inspired to practice ;-}

Murray

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 12:42 PM

Murray--That's probably a good idea, but OTOH, if I had any good sense, I'd try to break the 'cat habit. It takes most of my practice time. --seed

and it's eBay, in case you do decide to check it out.

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From:
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 04:51 AM

But dani, maybe the guy threw it away because it was the wrong kind of banjo and we still don't know!

I think I will get back into the habit of peering into trash cans!

Bseed, I know Lark in the Morning's site. It is very interesting to browse. Their somewhat harsh return policy and their reluctance to give out information sort-of put me off buying things from them, though. I have heard references to ebay and decided to avoid them for my own peace of mind!

Murray

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 02:28 AM

Uh, oh. There's a space in the URL above where no space oughta be: If you highlight it and copy it to your browser's internet link, make sure to dump that space after the period after ca. Notice the allusion above? Notice how well it scans? It just popped out that way. --seed

http://www.mendocino.k12.ca.us/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/larkhp.html

That's funny: I just cut and pasted from the previous post (actually, previous to previous post, i.e., the ante-pen ultimate post)(anybody know where that modifier came from?) and the space didn't make the jump. It's apparently an un-space. --seed

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 02:27 AM

Uh, oh. There's a space in the URL above where no space oughta be: If you highlight it and copy it to your browser's internet link, make sure to dump that space after the period after ca. Notice the allusion above? Notice how well it scans? It just popped out that way. --seed

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 12:52 AM

I tried to jump over to Lark in the Morning, but my Mac froze when I clicked the favorite places button. Anyway, while your browser would probably get you Lark via a key word search, I thought I'd give you the URL anyway:

http://www.mendocino.k12.ca.us/MenComNet/Business/Retail/Larknet/larkhp.html

yup, all that. --seed

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 09 Oct 98 - 12:31 AM

Speaking of banjae, plectrum and plucktrum (and strumpet), during the last great disaster (the Mudcat Crash of l998), with nothing else to do, I was surfing banjo sites and one link led me to eBay.com--"Almost heaven, ee-bay--dot--com." I have been spending almost as much time there as on the 'cat. A few days ago I had a five day hold on a 1971 Vega tubaphone, mint condition, until the last day when the bidding shot up from my modest but still beyond my means $600 to finally end at $910. There are five-strings from Kays to Silvertones, plectrae and tenor, banjo ukes, banjolins, banjitars, a sitar, lots of git-tars, violins (not one listed as a fiddle), dulcimers, autoharps, whatzitae and gizmae, etc. I should probably wait a week or so before telling you all for fear that you'll come along and top my high bids.

One other "Almost heaven" I have found recently is Lark in the Morning--somewhat limited on the usual folk instruments, but what a great supply of the less common: steel drums, spoons, stainless steel and wood (!), all kinds of percussion and string instruments from around the world: Asia, including ChinaJapanPhilippinesVietnamIndia/etc. Africa, middle east, eastern Europe, Latin America, and on and on. Just skimming their online catalogue is a gas--and there's a real live store across the bay from me, in San Francisco--at the Cannery. --seed

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Dani
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 12:03 PM

Having been only a sometime Philadelphian, and never brave enough to attend the Mummer's parade myself, I have only anecdotal evidence. But last year someone I know attended the parade, and on the walk back to his car after it was all over, he spied a nice banjo case sticking out of a garbage can. Knowing I had a banjo in need of a case, he plucked it out. (Oh... plucked...) Anyway, it turned out to contain an actual banjo. He attempted by means of newspaper advertising to reunite the banjo with its owner, to no avail, so now he is a fledgeling banjo player himself. It is a five string, no bluegrassy-fancy things on it. We have had many chuckles about how it might have ended up there: "... and if I EVER hear that stinkin' banjo again..." or "WHAT?! LAST place??!! That's it! I'm not dragging these feathers around one more year!"

Dani

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From:
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 11:59 AM

Art,

FECES is the plural of FAX?

Bert.

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 11:35 AM

I mentioned once in another thread:

In olden times banjos were strung with possum-gut-strings. One possum was only good for 4 and 1/2 strings---ie, the 5th string had to quit half way up the neck! ;-)

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Jon W.
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 11:22 AM

Banjo history is about as reliable as any other form of folklore (I've gotten in trouble more than once here by relying on folk songs for my history), but most of what I've read states that the 5th string was added in 1830 by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel musician. I'm sure the 4-string predates that considerably. Whether the early 4-strings were played with a plectrum or what, I don't know.

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From:
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 06:39 AM

There seems to be a difference of opinion. One is that the 5-string came first and the plectrum was a simplification of that while the other is that the four string came first and the fifth string was added.

Anyway, I now have an idea what it is, although I am not sure I have ever heard a banjo band.

Philadelphians: What kind of banjos do the string bands play in the Mummers' parade on New Years day? I saw plenty of the parades when I was a kid; but I didn't pay any attention to banjos at the time.

Bob. I have noticed that there are very few five-string banjos in second-hand shops here in Sydney, whereas I have seen some four-stringers. Now that I am aware of the tenor vs plectrum. I will look more carefully to see which ones I see most often.

We might have a celebrity in our midst. Bob, are you the Bob Bolton mentioned in "Band in a Waistcoat Pocket"?

Murray

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: BSeed
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 03:49 AM

Has Art met his match in rich r? The pair have loaded their pun guns and are back to back (facing each other?), waiting for the referee to start the count to ten. --seed

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: rich r
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 12:17 AM

Art, your sign change operation (plus or minus) alerted me to the fact that I had too many vowels. I often suffer from loose vowels. It should be "aquarists". The world is porperly divided into two groups, the aquarists and the antiquarians. The former are all wet and the latter are often rather dry.

Mick (big or little), sometimes you just have go with your confusion, it's a part of the traditonal folk idiot.

rich r

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 08 Oct 98 - 12:16 AM

G'day all,

...Er, just to get back to banjos, I'm no expert (own two, but just fiddle about with them - Hey! Maybe that's what I've been doing wrong!) but I remember being told that the Plectrum banjo long predated the Tenor banjo and was designed for melody playing.

In order to facilitate this, they left off the drone string of the traditional 5 stringer ... and I have seen a few with a 5 string neck and a wooden plug in the hole where the 5th string peg would have been.

It is interesting that, in Australia, where we seem to have adopted the banjo after the 19th century minstrel shows toured the goldfields areas, there is little tradition (outside of the folk revival) of playing the drone string. In country areas you used to come across old players who played chord styles for dance music with what had started out as a 5 string banjo, but now had the 5th string - and often its peg - removed.

The Tenor banjo appeared later, in the jazz era, and was given a shorter neck with heavier, tighter strings, to get a sharp, loud sound that would cut through all those loud brass instruments.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Big Mick, er Big Gun, er Big Feces
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 10:03 PM

I am so confused. I came to this Forum with a clear understanding of the music I love and perform. I am now reduced to discussions about the Peruvian Prince of Aquarian Feces shooting guns.

Mick (or what the hell ever else you want to call me.)

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 08:53 PM

AQUARIESTS??? What's THAT???

I was born a CANCER, but I didn't like the implications so I had a sign change operation.

Now, I'm a feces.

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: rich r
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 08:05 PM

The concept of a banjo band is pretty scarey.

Any aquariests out there might consider the plectrum banjo as an interspecific hybrid between a plecostomus and a banjo catfish.

rich r

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 11:28 AM

Mick, (think I'll call you BIG GUN)I ought to change my name too!

I'll be THE PRINCE OF PERU.

That's my hobo name given to me in an official proclamation by the hobo king (at that time) Luther the Jet (Luther Gette), a wonderful singer and composer of hobo ballads of the high iron. He is the only HOBO KING who ever had a PHD in French Literature! (TRUE)

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 11:13 AM

A plectrum banjo is played with a flatpick (or plectrum) only. Not with the fingers,

It has 22 frets---the same length as a non-Seeger 5-string banjo.

Plectrum banjos are the LEAD INSTRUMENT in the banjo band.

It is tuned to the normal c-tuning on a 5-string. Chords are formed all up and down the neck. The main melody note is carried on the FIRST STRING, not inside the chord usually. That makes it easier to accentuate the melody with the flat plectrum pick while playing complex chord structures and progressions.

The TENOR BANJO has a shorter neck--20 frets. It's tuned differently and ALMOST ALWAYS plays a HARMONY to the plectrum banjo in the banjo band.

These bands were VERY poular in the 1960s in "BANJO BARS" like Your Father's Mustache---a bar chain all over urban America then. The bands wore 1920's period clothes and so did the waitresses.

Art

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Jon W.
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 10:39 AM

There is a difference between a tenor and a plectrum banjo - the plectrum has a longer neck and is tuned lower (I presume). Plectrum banjos were what they had before the 5th string was added. Deering Banjos still makes both types as well as 5-strings.

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Big Mick
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 10:12 AM

I have a four string tenor banjo that I play with a pick in the Irish style. I guess I would describe the style as flatpickin banjo.

I love Frank's Mudcat name. I think I will add the name of where I live.

All the best,

Big Mick of Gun Lake. (no kidding)

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Einnor
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 10:04 AM

I saw one in a pawn shop in Powell River for $350. I don't know if that is reasonable or not. Does'nt Frank in the swamp have a spooky kind of romantic zingto it. I think I will be Einnor in the tall timber. Just does'nt quite do it does it girls?

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Bert C
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 08:12 AM

A banjo with 4 strings is most probably a "Tenor" banjo, very popular in the early part of this century. The neck would be a few frets shorter than a typical 5-string.

Bert C. 5-String Picker

Subject: RE: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 07:48 AM

A "plectrum" is a "pick". It's probably an irrelevant term as far as any player is concerned, since you can use your fingers, a pick or a ballpeen hammer to rattle the strings if you like. I think marketing people just come up with adjectives because they're compulsively hyperbolic.

Frank in the superlatively sweaty, steamy 'skeeter infested, festering, sloggy sloshy swamps.

Subject: What is a Plectrum Banjo?
From:
Date: 07 Oct 98 - 05:06 AM

I passed a pawn shop that had a banjo in the window with only four strings. It was labeled "Plectrum Banjo". What are they and what kind of music does one play on them?

Murray