5-String Banjo
New Right-Hand Rolls
David realized there are a few challenging new right-hand rolls for the five-string banjo. Béla Fleck uses this right-hand roll in many of his tunes:
Béla plays this roll with lots of thumb and index finger crossing-over. This pattern inspired David to think of other similar combinations of right-hand picking. Here are two:
David refers to the above rolls as the ‘Reverse Béla Fleck Roll’ and the ‘Inverse Béla Fleck Roll,’ respectively, because they are essentially variations of the roll mentioned above that Béla uses.
If we look for a pattern that repeats every nine eighth notes instead of every six, we can find two more similar rolls. They are:
Here are three more right-hand rolls that you should practice that will help make learning all of the above right-hand rolls easier:
Finally, here are two more variations on this theme:
Check out this instructional video that helps explain these new rolls:
Advanced Right-Hand Rolls for the 5-String Banjo
It’s good to practice these rolls with the downbeat falling in all different places.
Linking Left-Hand Slides
As far as the left hand goes, it takes a quarter note to slide up to a note from a lower note on the same string; two identical slides can be played consecutively if they are spaced a quarter note apart in time and three or less frets apart on the fretboard (three frets is the maximum distance your left-hand fingers – your pinky and your index finger – can span comfortably on the fretboard when you’re down by the nut). You can span more than three frets if you’re playing higher up on the fretboard; when you’re playing close to the nut, you’re limited by the distance between your index finger and your pinky finger on your left hand. If you begin and end your slides on adjacent frets, you can play up to four slides in succession (this would take four quarter notes) – each finger (your index finger, your middle finger, your ring finger, and your pinky finger) can be used for one slide.
Enjoy!