Chords for Cumberland Gap Banjo Lesson!

_ [B] _ _ [A] _ _ [G] _ _ _
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_ _ _ _ _ _ Howdy, welcome to BanjoBendClark.com.
I'm your banjo picking host, Banjo Bend.
That's almost too many banjos in one sentence.
Anyway, thanks for joining me today.
Today we're going to learn a great version of an old, old standard called Cumberland Gap.
I'm going to do it mainly in the Scruggs style, although I do throw a couple of little melodic
tricks in there for you.
I know that you'll enjoy it.
If you're watching this on YouTube or on Facebook, here in a little while I'll ask you to go
over to my favorite website, BanjoBendClark.com, where you can join as a Go Pick member and
see hundreds of video lessons and tabs that accompany them that I put up each and every
week, just like this week.
So go check it out.
Each lesson is a 20 to 30 minute video lesson showing you not only how to play each and
every note, but then I have another video where I play the whole thing through very
slowly with the tab on the screen there.
Then I have guitar rhythm video tracks.
So for this one I have four different speeds of me playing guitar so you can play along.
You can download the tabs there, which are a PDF file, or you can get the TEF file as well.
Good stuff.
Let's dive into Cumberland Gap.
Let's learn this version of Cumberland Gap.
This is a great old folk song in the key of G, just basic time.
This one's built for speed.
People like to play it fast.
That's good.
If you'll notice there beneath the tab, under each one of the notes I have your right hand pick indications.
So if it's a T in a circle, that means we're going to play the string with our thumb.
A one would be our index finger, and the two would be our middle finger.
It's going to start off with just two half notes in that first measure, and that's just
kind of to establish the tempo.
So that's just two pinches on the first and fifth string.
So one, two, three, four.
Now I want us to look in measure two at just the pick pattern before we worry about putting
anything down on the left hand, because this is going to be a recurring pick pattern that's
going to come to us several different times throughout the song.
Essentially it's a forward roll _ _ that begins on our low [D] D string, on that fourth string,
and we're going to roll through [Bm] four, two, one, [G] and then end on the fifth string up there,
and then come back again for the third string.
So just very slowly that forward roll that happens there in measure two looks like this.
_ _ _ _ _ And then we finish off that measure with another pinch.
So slowly again, all of measure two sounds [G] like this. _ _
_ _ Now if you can get that down, you've got that measure licked.
But the only thing we're going to do different when we're playing the song is after [D] we play
that very first string, [E] we're going to hammer to the second fret with our middle [G] finger
before we play that next note.
So it sounds like [E] this.
[G] _ _
_ And I want you to leave it down _ until you hit that third beat there. _ _ _ _ _
Measure three we've got another forward roll coming, so not paying attention to what we're
doing with our left hand, just looking at the right hand, it sounds like this.
_ _ _ _ Can you do that? _
_ _ _ However, when we add our left hand, we're going to begin on that second fret of the
first string that we play, and we're going to slide from the second to fourth fret before
we play our next string.
So it sounds like this.
_ Can you do that?
_ Good.
And then we're going to land [Em] on our second fret of our first string for the third beat,
and then another pinch.
So measure three slowly sounds like [G] this. _ _
[Em] _ _ Now leave that down because in measure four we're going to do a forward reverse roll,
and we're going to have this down for the first time that we play through that first string.
So measure four slowly sounds like this. _
_ [G] _ _ [D] _ [G] It's just a good old forward reverse roll.
_ _ _ _ _ [Em] _ [G] _ _
[D] _ And then measure five is exactly the same as measure two.
We've already [E] learned it.
[G] _
_ _ Measures one through five very slowly together.
Try to follow along if you can.
Remember I have another video segment in this lesson if you're watching on the website where
I play the whole thing through very slowly with the tab on the screen.
So don't forget about that.
Here we go.
Ready, go.
One, two, three, four. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ [D] _ [Bm] _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ [Em] _ [G] _ _ _
Now if we get into measure six_ _ _ _ _
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