Chords for Clawhammer Banjo 1 - #2 Right Hand Techniques - Lesson for Beginners - Cathy Fink

_ _ _ _ Alright, we're going to start now with our right hand, unless you're left-handed and
you'll start with your left hand.
And the first thing we're going to do is learn the hand position.
I got my very first lessons from a great guy named [D] Barry Luft, [Eb] who showed me many years
ago, start by shaking hands with an imaginary broomstick.
You might feel a little silly, but that's okay, because when you're done, your hand
is in a perfect position for playing claw hammer old-time banjo.
Now you're going to find that lots of people hold their hands in different ways.
That's okay.
I can only show you the way that I do it when you go to a festival or a fiddler's convention
and you're watching in detail how somebody else does it.
You may want to incorporate some of that into your playing, but I'll start with what I do
and hopefully that'll help you get started.
So you've got this rounded claw hammer hand.
[Bb] Your fingers are together here, loosely, [F] and that might take a little while to get used to.
Your thumb is out a bit, and there's a reason for that.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that claw and I'm going to brush against all
of the strings with the back of my nails.
The biggest rule that I use is that I never pluck or pick up on the strings with these fingers.
My thumb will, and you'll see that in a minute.
So you're going to put that rounded claw, and just in case you undid it while I was
talking, let's go ahead and shake hands with the imaginary broomstick.
And actually from time to [Ab] time I've had people shake hands with a real broomstick, just in
case their imaginations aren't taking them there.
You put your hand in front and you brush down against all the strings.
This [G] is a quick motion.
It's like this.
And then pay attention that I have pushed down with my thumb on the fifth string, the
one that's closest to me.
I'm going to do that a few times.
Fast brush.
_ _ Now some of you are coming to banjo from very solid guitar playing.
The hand motions here are going to be really different.
What I don't want to see is this.
I don't want to see the effort of an arpeggio.
That's a whole different thing.
I keep it all together.
I bang and I stop my thumb on that fifth string, and I even push it down.
Now I tend to teach in the beginning with a lot of exaggeration, because my belief is
that as you get better and better, the exaggeration goes away and you have incredible and crisp clarity.
So you might even want to stop the video for a second and just try doing that.
In my hand position, take a look that I'm not moving my arm around.
_ _ _ It's really mostly coming from here.
And the other thing is there's a little room here.
One or two fingers so that I'm above the head of the banjo and not resting like that.
And I'm not going like that, although you can see, yes, my fingers do from time to time
touch the banjo head.
All right.
[Bb] So let's assume that you've kind of mastered that.
And you're going to want to shake out your hand every once in a while, get back into position.
These are the fundamentals.
And I'm going to spend a lot of time on the fundamentals, because once you have the fundamentals
with your right hand, everything else falls into place.
So let's take one more close-up look at that.
The hand position where you're shaking hands with the broom and your fingers are curled up.
You can see how mine are.
My fingers are together, not separated.
Your thumb is out kind of parallel to the fifth string.
But the first thing you're going to do is just a quick [G] brush, just a quick bang.
And take a look.
Right here, there's about one or two fingers space between the head of my banjo and my wrist.
[Eb] So I'm not resting on it right there.
I'm not touching the banjo head.
[G] I am brushing.
I stop my thumb on that fifth string, and I even push it down.
So it's brush and brush. _
It's not banjo.
It's not holding the pencil.
It's all four fingers going, all these going bang, bang.
And then stopping with your thumb on the fifth string.
Bang.
And the weight of going bang, the thrust, makes you push down on that fifth string. _ _
And don't worry about breaking strings.
It doesn't happen that often.
Hey, I give free strings to people who break them. _
_ So down, up, down, up, down, up, down.
_ _ So step two, we're going to do the fifth string pop.
And it sounds like this.
_ _ _ Now again, that's a big exaggeration, but what am I doing?
Brush, push down on the fifth string, snap my wrist back, and pop with the thumb.
_ Here's what I'm not doing.
I'm not going _ _ _ out.
I'm not picking, like if you're a guitar player who's used to doing this.
It's push, pop, one, two, one, two.
If it starts driving you nuts or some people who live nearby,
you can always cover up your banjo strings.
[Bb]
And that's the sound that you're after.
_ Brush, pop, brush, pop.
We'll cover up [Gm] four of them.
That'll make the [G] dogs go crazy.
_ Brush, pop.
_ _ [F] Now, it's actually such a big deal in your muscle memory
to get that correctly.
[Gb] I recommend 10 minutes, two or three times a day, five minutes, four times a day.
It's [E] all about muscle memory.
It's all about getting the right position.
[Gm] Put your hand in front of you, [G] brush down, stop your thumb on the fifth string,
pop it, exaggerate.
And once you feel like you can do that pretty consistently,
then you want to do it to a rhythm.
It be one [F] and two and three and four and [G] or one and two and three.
And because you're in an open G chord, it already sounds good.
So that's very cool.
I'll tell you a little hint.
When I started learning long ago, I would just put on some TV show.
And I'd watch TV.
And I'd do this in the background.
And every once in a while, I'd check my hand and make sure I'm getting it right.
And before you know it,