A good friend of mine was a very good banjo picker and helped me to get started in the seventies ! He gave me these rolls to get started with , this was about 50 years ago and it did work out very good ! Ofcourse you use other rolls with it and the art is when you hear a melody that you play it with all different rolls ! Sadly my friend died in 1998 ! I have helped other banjo players to get started and used these rolls you play ! I put them on paper in 1991 !
That was a great lesson! I love useful little tips like this, that are fairly simple to implement but go a hell of a long way in results. Thanks very much for that tasty secret sauce ingredient!😉👍🪕
You'll never be able to get any speed repeating the same finger. Twice, do it with the thumb. And the index do it the way Earl. Did it believe me, brother? You're not earl
This is kinda cool though but I agree with you nobody will ever shun Earl though, he will always be the man, but I don’t think this lad is doing that, just a little different thinking eh
The one banjo trick that the late Earl Scruggs WOULDN’T want you to know, for a good reason. This will certainly cause a beginning player to develop a bad habit that will highly limit speed and fluidity.
IMHO..If u have Earls's book pay VERY CLOSE attention to every picture of him and notice where his right hand position is...if you want good tone..this is ignored by even some of the "pros"
"Earl Scruggs might not approve".. he's been dead for quite some time and he could have cared less how you played it. He was all for people finding their own way of playing. Your video title is nonsense
Firstly, the title is nonsense. Secondly, this may be the instinctive and obvious way to play that roll, only using the index finger on the second string, but it isn't the way 99% of banjo players do it, for good reason. In fact you could almost consider this downright wrong, as most players find playing it the way you're suggesting is much harder. There are exceptions - notably Ralph Stanley - but it's just not how it is done by the overwhelming majority of good players, who drop the thumb to the second string alternately. This helps with timing and speed, and also with the syncopated feel of the roll. Alternately dropping the thumb to the second string means the index finger doesn't have to work so hard, or so fast. Specifically because this can seem counter-intuitive to beginners, several videos on youtube have been made by (with all due respect) professional players with far more experience than you, specifically to explain why NOT to do it the way you are suggesting. Many of them state the same as you - "I wish someone had shown me THIS when I was starting" - but the "this" in that sentence is DO NOT try to play every second string note with your index finger! Tony Trischka has a video on exactly this common beginner mistake, titled "Banjo Tips from Tony Trischka: Foggy Mountain Breakdown Roll". There's another explanation of this in Jim Pankey's video called "Why is the Foggy Mountain Breakdown Roll the way it is?" I suggest all beginners check it out. Dropping your thumb to the second string may be a little awkward at first, but when you get the hang of it you'll probably be able to play it much faster, and cleaner, than if you overwork your index finger in the way you suggest here.
Sadly I kinda have to agree here. A simple forward reverse roll would sound better or even more so just a regular forward 5 3 1 roll. Or a 4 3 1 with slide.
