Chords for Pete Seeger style banjo. (tutorial)

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_ [A] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ Hi everybody.
That's [F#] a little bit of what I call Pete Seeger style banjo.
If you have ever gotten your hands on his instruction book, this is what he, his basic,
what he calls the basic strum.
It's not so basic.
It's a little difficult.
But let me try to explain what he's doing to the banjo [G] here.
_ _ I'm in G tuning. _
_ And here's the basic strum.
I'll do it for you slowly.
I'm going to move up a little bit so you can see what I'm doing.
And then I'll break [G] it down. _ _ _ _
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It's the same rhythm as a claw hammer, which is _ _ _ the difference being [D] a claw hammer, you
strike with your nail going down like this.
And then strike the [G] strings, strum the strings, and then hit the fifth.
With the Pete Seeger style, you actually pluck the string coming up from the bottom.
Then you strum and hit the fifth.
So let me do that really slowly for you.
It's plucking the first string [D] up, _ strumming down with [G] my finger, and then hitting the fifth string.
_ _ _ Really slow.
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_ _ _ [E] So there's a couple [G] of things you can do to sort of get your hand ready for this.
One is [D] learning to pick up.
Just grabbing, again, the first string is the easiest to get to.
So just get that, come up.
You don't want to hook it.
You just want to grab it with the tip of your finger and then [G] strum down.
Just get those two things going. _ _
[D] They're one beat each.
So it's one, two, three, four. _
_ _ What am I strumming with?
I'm strumming with these two or three fingers right here.
Just the nails.
You can do whatever's easy.
If you like one finger, if you like the middle finger, which is the longest, a lot of people like that. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Then, after the strum down, _ you want to get the fifth string.
So this is important.
This is the same thing as the claw hammer.
When you strum [G] down, see what happens?
My thumb comes out and it catches on the fifth string.
And then I hit the fifth string.
I pop the fifth string with my thumb and that pulls my hand back up.
So I _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ put that with the first pluck of the first string.
_ _ _ Again, really slowly, [D] pluck up, strum [G] down, hit the fifth.
And rhythm-wise, Pete in his book says the rhythm should be bum-ditty.
Bum-ditty, bum-ditty, bum, which is like. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Once you get that, you can practice on other strings.
Second string. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ What I find, I'll go sideways here so you can see what my hand does.
With this particular style of picking, _ I tend to get the base of my thumb close to the head
of the band. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ You don't have to do that, but that's what my hand likes to do to play this.
To play this way.
_ _ _ _ Okay, let me play, let's do this a little Beethoven.
[B] Why not?
Okay, this is the Ode to Joy.
I'll sort of try to get over here so you can see me doing it. _ _ _ _ _
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I'm picking [D] out those strings.
Melody knows [G] with the upstroke of the finger, _ _ strumming and hitting the fifth.
_ You can use it for just playing chords.
_ [C] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ [G] _ Another good exercise is to just take an open G and play the first string and then the second string. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ And then if you're feeling pretty good, try the third. _ _ _ _ _ _
I think the beginning of Will the Circle Be Unbroken you can do with the second, third,
is it the second, third and fourth strings?
Let's see.
_ _ _ _ So there's just the second string, the B string, the G string, the low D string. _ _
_ Okay, so that's how Pete does it. _ _ _