Summit School of Traditional Music and Culture

Have you learned the fundamental skills for clawhammer banjo, and have several old- time tunes under your fingers? Are you familiar with the main old-time banjo tunings? Want to move forward, learn new techniques, and build your repertoire of songs? In this eight-week class, you will strengthen your command of the right and left-hand skills of claw-hammer and add new ones, such as the “cluck,” the skip, triplets, and muting. You will increase your familiarity with the “topography” of the different banjo tunings, and use that familiarity to add variations which personalize your playing. Together, we will choose songs in the Open, Sawmill, and Double tunings which build skills, encourage variation, and are often played at Old Time sessions in Vermont. I will also recruit a fiddler or two to sit in with us during classes later in the session. You will need a five-string, preferably “open-back,” banjo.