Great warbird pic Tig! Invasion Stripes!
Sorry about the Tigers Rev.
Hung out and watched the Gators eke out another ugly win over Mizzou on telly yesterday. Unfortunately Georgia also won, as did Bama, neither of which results were pleasing to me. Oh well, maybe Auburn will upset Georgia.
Had a fun Sunday morning, fellow Fretter Warren stopped by my church. It was fun, kinda weird that I ended up not playing any guitar today on a day when one of my guitar buddies was there, but the songs the band did were pretty trad and there wasn't really anything for a guitar to "do." Plus we have another guitarist who was going to play rhythm, so all I was gonna do was muddy things up. Although I guess I coulda fingerpicked triads further up the neck, I do that a lot to keep from doubling rhythm strums with the other guy.
It's rare for me to play banjo, but just before I left to go pick up a guitar (at the office, on the way to church) I ended up not playing (ha, best-laid plans, wot?), a Mumford & Sons viddy came on and put me in a banjofication mood, so I grabbed the 5-string on the way out the door. The first song we were to do was in E, not a very banjo-friendly key (at least not when you tune to open G, as I do), but I reckoned E, A, and B weren't all that different from C, F, and G (basically the only chords I know on banjo, haha), just a different key.
Now, if I really knew what I was doing I just would've moved the capo on the banjo and played the chord shapes for C, F, and G on different frets, but that woulda required more thinkification than I was prepared to muster at 9:30 in the a. of m. So instead, I figured out an E chord by sliding the F chord I do know back a half-step, which was actually a slightly easier chord since one of the notes for an F chord (which has no open notes in the tuning I use) was fretted on the first fret, and thus became a lovely open note.
With me so far?
OK, so I figured out what E was. I still needed A and B. Since I was using a F-shape for the E chord (just lifting one finger up on the open string), I just slid the same F-shape up to where it needed to be to make A and B, and voila! My left hand could stay in the exact same shape for all 3 chords, just with one finger lifted for the E chord.
Ah, but what about the high drone string? (5-string banjos have a high string that is seldom fretted and just played open in all chords, or avoided if it clashes.) I honestly don't know enough about banjo to even know what that note it is, but I'm guessing it's a G. Which does not really gibe with E, A, or B. So I retuned the drone string by ear, I'm guessing to an E, which sounded perfect with all 3 chords.
Voila! Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy! Learn the rules, then break them.
Oh, and on the other 2 songs I played mandolin.
Good times.
Warren took this shot of us up in the loft while practicing before service, you can see my head over the edge of the railing, and my banjo beneath it:
He came upstairs after the service and we got a pic together:
