Hi all,
I was going through a bunch of my old music books the other day and ran across "Clawhammer Banjo" my Miles Krassen, copyright 1974, which someone must have given me, since I wasn't even interested in banjo until about 20 years ago (It still has the original Eva-Tone sound sheet 33.3rpm record bound in). I decided to try out some of the tabs, because why not?
He sometimes includes a right hand "pluck" stoke, essentially an up-stroke with whatever finger is available (I think), as part of the melody line. This isn't a brush, it's a specific melody note.
I'm no kind of expert, I've only been doing this for about six months, but I've been using books/cds/dvds from Dan Levenson, Wayne Erbsen and a few other folks and I haven't seen this before. I've tried it, and it seems really clumsy to me, but again, I'm no expert. I'm a long time fingerpicking guitarist, and also working on two-finger banjo style, so I'm familiar with up-picking, but this just seems weird in a clawhammer context. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks,
Darel