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The five lines represent the five strings of the banjo
as one sees them when playing:
Numbers are placed
resting on the line of the string to be played. “0”
represents an open
string and numbers (1 to 22) represent the frets at
which strings are to be stopped.
The right hand picking fingers are indicated by:
To translate: second
string, fretted at the first fret, is picked by right
hand index finger; first
string, fretted at the second fret, is picked by right
hand middle finger; fifth string is picked open
by right hand thumb; first string, fretted at the
tenth fret, is picked by middle finger of the right
hand.
Left hand techniques are the slide -sl; hammer-on
-h; pull-off -p; lift-off -l; and choke -
ch. These are indicated by a dash between or after
tablature numbers, and their abbreviated
symbols below with the right hand fingerings.
Right (or picking) hand fingering is usually not included
because, with notes of equal
duration (for example, successive eighth notes ) one
finger has to follow another, and:
The THUMB is usually the only digit which plays the
fifth string. It also plays the fourth,
third, second, and rarely, the first string.
The MIDDLE finger plays mostly the first string, but
sometimes the second, and less
frequently the third string.
The INDEX finger plays the second, third, sometimes
the fourth, and less often, the first
string.
Musical notation has a vertical axis representing
pitch, and a horizontal axis representing
the passage of time:
The treble clef is
used for banjo music. The clef sign is at the left.
The music staff, in the
center, has five lines. When placed on the staff,
its “curlicue” encircles the second line
of the five
lines of the music staff:
The clef sign places
“G” above middle “c” on that
second line. In actual pitch, that would
represent the pitch of the fifth string of the banjo.
Banjo music is written one octave higher than it
actually sounds, so that “G”, the pitch
of the open third string, is placed on this line.
When the
music is pitched very high (that is, mainly notes
above the 12th fret), is
used. Theand
dotted line show that the music is to be played one
octave higher than written.
The first seven letters
of the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, are used
to represent the
natural notes in music. If the familiar do, re,
mi, fa, sol, la, ti and do are sung, beginning
on “C”,
the major scale, or natural notes in the key of C
is the result:
This is a one octave
C scale (eight notes). The small er c indicates the
beginning of a new octave.
The higher octave can be sung, if you can reach the
notes:
If placed on the music
staff, these notes appear on the staff lines and spaces,
placed stepwise as
follows:
The notation to be
used on thebanjoman.com is a combined, complete sytem
especially for
the banjo. The five staff lines represent the five
strings of the banjo, so the lines have a dual
function. From top to bottom (strings one through
five), O’s are placed in the four spaces between
the staff lines and above the top line. These represent
the five open strings of the banjo in G tuning
(gDGBd). Otherwise, the numbers used on staff lines
are not fret numbers, but the four left hand
fingers:
Both the combined
tablature and music notation and standard tablature
are used for all
examples and exercises on the site except for moveable
scale or arpeggio pattern diagrams. Below
are the five open strings of the banjo in G tuning
(gDGBd) played from lowest to highest note.
The fourth string is to be played first, followed
by the third, second, first and fifth strings:
On the right is a
chord. The notes are stacked, and can be strummed
down with the thumb.These are the open strings of
the banjo in G tuning in music and tablature combined.
Notice how
the notes, which are whole notes (
), balance on the staff. You can see the D note (open
fourth
string), the lowest note, sits just below the bottom
line of the staff. The open second string, the B
note, straddles the middle line, the third line from
the top or bottom lines of the staff. The open
third string G, straddles the second line from the
bottom, while the open first string d, straddles
the second line from the top. The music alphabet can
be seen in use on the staff lines and spaces as
follows:
The notes are named
above, and open strings or fretting fingers (0, 1,
2, 3 and 4) are
shown on the string played as in tablature. Notes
are played at the lowest position (fret number) as
possible. Position numbers (that is, 1P and 2P) show
what fret the index finger is nearest, whether
fretting or not. To translate, the scale tones above
are played open or by fretting: 4th string open;
4th string fretted 2nd fret by index finger; 4th string
fretted 3rd fret by middle finger; open 3rd
string; 3rd string fretted 2nd fret by index finger;
open 2nd string; 2nd string fretted at 1st fret
by index finger; open 1st string; 1st string fretted
2nd fret by index finger; 1st string fretted 3rd
fret by middle finger; 5th string open.
The higher pitches
(which are higher notes or frequencies and played
higher on the neck) are
placed higher on each line and in each space on the
staff. As we saw on the last page, the letters
progress alphabetically (c to c', or C to c in the
lower octave). This scale begins on the “C”
note
(called “middle c” for most instruments,
but sounding an octave lower in banjo and guitar notation),
on an extra line below the staff, called a ledger
or leger line. Those spaces and lines below
and above the staff are continuations of the staff
to show pitches for notes lower and higher than
the range of the five line staff.
The banjo, in G tuning (gDGBd–fifth to first
string), covers almost three octaves, a total of
35 notes, from the lowest note (D–the open fourth
string) to the highest (c"–the first or
fifth
string fretted at the 22nd fret). Note names in letters
use upper case for notes below middle c,
lower case from middle c to the next, c' in lower
case with a minute sign: '. As shown below, the
beginning of the next octave is represented by c"—this
time followed by a second sign: . See how
these notes relate to the piano keyboard by studying
page 2 on Tuning the banjo in Play It.
These letters represent the natural notes of the banjo
in G tuning from the lowest to the
highest pitch:
D E F G A B c d
e f g a b c' d e' f g' a' b' c"
On the music staff,
these notes will fill the lines and spaces of the
staff, in both standard and
octave notation (from the asterisk, the a note up
to c"):
The C scale can be
played on the banjo on the second string. Notice that
there is only one
fret, or a half step from e to f and b to c'. Music
is arbitrarily set up this way. Notice that c to d,
d
to e, f to g, g to a, and a to b are two frets, called
whole steps:
On frets 2, 4, 7,
9 and 11 of the second string, the sharp and flat
or accidental notes are
found. These pitches can be named two ways, that is,
sharp or flat depending on the key and
context. In music notation, the symbol “
” before a note raises it a half step, or half
tone, that is,
one fret higher. A flat sign “
” lowers the note a half step, or one fret lower.
These names, both
referring to the same tone or pitch, played at the
same fret on the banjo, are called enharmonic
equivalents.
Notice that each fret
is a step in the chromatic scale; that is, each fret
is an interval of an half step.
Once the chromatic scale is learned, it is easy to
know what the notes on the other strings are.
Thus far, mo st notes represented have been whole
notes (
). The common time signature
(with
, or a 
after the clef sign) has four beats per measure. A
whole note fills a whole measure. A measure is the
space between vertical lines through the music staff—see
the following page on note values and musical symbols.
A measure must contain the equivalents of the whole
note: two half notes, four quarter notes, eight eighth
notes, sixteen sixteenth notes, thirty two thirty-second
notes, sixty four sixty-fourth notes, etc. Many combinations
of these notes are possible, but that’s for
later. time has just as many notes per measure, and
notes in measures of 
time also add up to a whole note. In time signatures,
the upper number tells how many beats there are in
a measure, and the lower number tells the kind of
note which receives one beat (e.g. 2
= a half note).
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