Intro to the tenor banjo, for ukulele players.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 พ.ย. 2019
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The baritone banjo ukulele tuning (dgbe) is also often called Chicago tuning.
I am a ukulele player but bought myself a tenor banjo a couple of weeks ago on a whim then this tutorial appears on my feed, great timing!
Perfect!
I've struggled a lot to learn how to play my tenor banjo. With this comparison to a standard ukulele, it suddenly went far easier. Thanks a lot!! ❤
I play uke, mandolin and tenor banjo tuned Gdae . I have a spare tenor banjo that I am about to restring to cgda and was in some doubt about being able to play it. Your video is absolutely brilliant, I’m now confident to give it a go, you make it seem so simple, thanks very much for the video
Hi Ken,
You'll have no problem if you already play GDAE (apart from remembering the right name for the chord!)
I don't play mandolin or ukulele but I have mess around with a tenor banjo in a store a some nice folks let play around on their tenor banjos. I play 5 string banjo 2 finger thumb lead style and tune it also the same way as a 5 string and it sounds excellent.
I've seen folks play 5 string banjo music on a Irish tenor banjos and it sounds interesting the way how they emulate 5 string banjo playing on a tenor banjo.
Mirek Tim Patek does some really cool 'string style' playing on 4 string tenor...
th-cam.com/video/dwV-tCN6jmA/w-d-xo.html
Fabulous lesson. Thank you for such a clear, well executed lesson! You are a wonderful teacher 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
You've made an excellent little video here - you covered all the questions I had and as usual explained things in a way that's easy to understand and apply to real life.
Great lesson, i just restored my dads banjo. Its been in the family for over 60 years. He bought it for 5$ used. We think its from the 30'I thought it was time to make it playable. Now i just need to learn how to play it. This was a hreat lesson. Thanks for sharing.
That's great, it'll be lovely to be able to play your Dad's banjo.
trying to find decent Mandola tutorials on here and this one has made the most sense cheers phil .... Mike
Cheers Mike. Quite fancy a mandola myself...
@@PhilDoleman i got it for Caroline about 10 years ago, under a hundred, but never really sounded any good always a bit out, anyhoo i tried mucking about with the bridge and it sounds a lot better now so i feel inspired, there are not a lot of mandola vids on here, but uke of carl sent me the tenor banjo chord table and here i am
Makes so much sense; much appreciated!
The range covers two octaves because most chords on the tenor banjo are built in open harmony (skipping every other note of the chord in ascending order). For example, wherein a standard (closed-harmony) chord is built C-E-G, the open-harmony version of the chord is built C-G-E in ascending order, covering a wider range. You can build a lot of chords this way from bottom to top (4th to 1st string) on the tenor banjo.
Absolutely. The uke does closed harmony brilliantly (especially with the re-entrant tuning is used), and the tenor banjo has these love wide voicings. I'm fond of plectrum banjo tuning too, with the wide bottom end and the closer harmony on the top .
Great thanks Phil!
This was so helpful! Thank you!
I play a bit of tenor banjo as well as ukulele but have never viewed the relationship between the chords in that way. Thank you!
Thanks Trevor!
Gonna try this Great tuition Thanks
Thanks Terry!
After watching this video I was looking at my baratone uke and the GDAE tuning of the tenor guitar, octave mandolin and mandolin and think the same relationship and method apply. Cool. Thanks
Yes spot on!
Brilliant tutorial, thanks. I'm playing mandola CGDA
Thank Paul. Not many mandola players using that tuning any more (they're all playing an octave below mandolin!), shame as it sounds great!
Thank you!
Brilliant.
You can even tune a Ukulele like a Mandola with Aquila 5ths Tuned Concert Uke Strings
Love the intro lessons to tenor; thanks so much! I was wondering how you'
d relate Soprano-Tenor ukulele tuning (GCEA) to tenor banjo....
you're great!
Just started tenor banjo and find yr explanations v. helpful - be great if you did series on this instrument (CGDA tuning), espec showing melody/chord positions up the neck! Many thanks - PS could you what was tune you played at start of this clip?
Hi Elizabeth,. I do have a short series here...
th-cam.com/video/hkXHSpjBxyM/w-d-xo.html
The tune is "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone", I teach it in lesson 6!
Wish I could give this a dozen more likes.
You make want to get a tenor banjo
A tuning where the intervals between strings are all equal make so much more sense than what we have on guitars and ukuleles. I wonder why they aren't tuned to all fourths. There must be some historical reason for it, perhaps related to tunings in the middle ages based on different modal scales?
Some guitarists have tried it, but the problem is when you have 6 strings you end up with a low E string and a high F, with makes some chording quite tricky. The jazz guitarist Ralph Patt tuned in minor 3rd intervals on a 7 string guitar and developed a whole playing method based on that!
It is a lovely logical tuning, and as I started out as a bass player (tuned in 4ths) having an instrument with a similar, logical pattern really appeals to me.
odontomatix um, I believe ukuleles are tuned in fourths, not fifths.
Like Phil says, the reason is practical, not historical or theoretical. On a 4-stringed instrument, tuning in 5ths means that the distance between the bottom and top strings is less than 2 octaves (e.g.,C3-A4 on Phil's banjo). 6-string guitars are tuned in 4ths because it would be too much of a stretch in most cases to form chords. Tuned in 4ths, the distance between a guitar's bottom and top strings is 2 octaves (E2-E4). Tuning it in 5ths would add almost an octave to its range (E2-D5).
The scale length of a double-bass, and the distance that is therefore required to get from one note to another, is the reason why double-basses (& consequently, bass guitars) are also tuned in 4ths rather than 5ths.
Wonderful! What brand of Banjolele is this? I've been looking for one for a while now but can't find one with the sound i want. But this one sounds amazing!
Thanks Danielle. This isn't a banjolele, it's a tenor banjo, which is a different instrument with metal strings in a different tuning (the 'tenor' in 'tenor banjo' has nothing to do with the 'tenor' in 'tenor uke'). This one is a Deering Goodtime 17 fret open-back tenor
Do you ever put 'fifths strings' on ukeleles or banjoleles? I've bought some GDAEs to put on a soprano, because I used to play violin. I'd like to put CGDA on an x-elele too but I don't have one :-)
I haven't done it myself, but I have played on a friend's uke tuned CGDA. It worked really well, but it confused me as to whether I was playing banjo or uke!
@@PhilDoleman Thanks. It seems an obvious thing to do on a banjolele to me, so the fact that so few people do it worried me. I guess there a lot of tunings and people's walls are getting smaller :-) I was a bit concerned that if I bought a banjolele, I might try to make it into a Plectrumish banjo, with a low-G, and then I'd 'need' another.
Please, what strings should i buy for 17 fret tenor for CGDA
I use these...
www.eaglemusicshop.com/prod/4-string-tenor-banjo-strings/daddario-ej63-nickel-wound-tenor-loop-ended.htm-
Phil, can you recommend string guages for chicago tuning
It depends on your scale length, but somewhere in the region of 13, 17, 26 (wound), 34 (wound).
In the UK, Eagle music sell a set with those gauges
www.eaglemusicshop.com/4-string-tenor-banjo-strings
Great lesson! What song were you playing at the beginning?
Thank you! The chord progression works for lots of songs, but in my head I was singing this one...
th-cam.com/video/QuiRbL8_5LM/w-d-xo.html
For those of you who play Tenor Guitar it works too
Please,, what was the song you played in the intro..I now have learned it from using your video but the name of this escapes me and I know my pops used to play it with his dixieland jazz band..Cat on a hot tin roof....thanks
In my head I was singing "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone", but it's also "Five Foot Two".
In fact, here's a video of me singing it!
th-cam.com/video/QuiRbL8_5LM/w-d-xo.html
@@PhilDoleman perfect...you have a LOT of great videos Phil thanks for you help...even made me get my Uke off the wall and get familiar again...
Hello friend! What string did you use for this tuning?
Hi, I use these www.eaglemusicshop.com/daddario-ej63-nickel-wound-tenor-loop-ended-
are moveable jazz shapes more difficult on the tenor banjo compared to the ukulele, or is it just a familiarity thing? I can imagine them being harder to finger.
Some are physically a bit more of a stretch, but actually most are really logical (meaning pretty easy to remember) and fine to hold down. It's also pretty common to play 3-string chords (especially if you're after a melody note on the 2nd string), muting or simply not playing the string you don't want (usually the first string).
A lot of it is just getting used to the fact that the chords are more spread out, musically, than the close-voicings you get on uke.
Check out Eddy Davis on TH-cam for loads of great CGDA tuning banjo stuff!
Phil Doleman thanks for the reply!
Group lesson Phil, as usual. I have a 5 string banjo, my question is, can I remove the 5th string and tune it like a 10er
That's supposed to be great, sorry
A 5 string will probably have tooling a scale to get that first string up to A, it'll probably snap. A 5 string without the 5th string is technically a plectrum banjo though, often tuned CGBD, DGBE, or DGBD.
So, is an Irish tenor banjo the same as a tenor banjo just tuned differently?
Yes, the instrument is the same, but Irish tuning is GDAE, which is just the same as this but everything tuned lower.
@@PhilDoleman I see. Thanks. I didn't get that from the thing I saw about it.
Can I play foggy mountain breakdown on my ukulele? Tab? What tuning?
That's a 5 string banjo tune. I don't gave any tab for it and I'm not sure how well it would work on uke.
Very nice explanation, Phil, but I have a correction for you. In music theory, a fourth is the interval of 5 semi-tones, and a fifth is the interval of 7 semi-tones, so the intervals between your strings on the tenor banjo should properly be called "all-fourths" tuning, not "all fifths". Here's a reference which says "All-fifths tuning is closely related to all-fourths tuning. All-fifths tuning is based on the perfect fifth (the interval with seven semitones), and all-fourths tuning is based on the perfect fourth (five semitones)." www.wikizero.com/en/All-fifths_tuning . On the Circle of Fifths (sometimes called the Circle of Fifths and Fourths), a fifth is the interval from one chord to the next higher chord clockwise, which is 7 semi-tones higher. A fourth is the interval from one chord to the next chord counter-clockwise (anti-clockwise), which is 5 semi-tones higher.
I see what you mean, but no this is definitely 5ths. A bass guitar would be in 4ths. I am indeed going up 7 semitones to get to the note for the next string, but I'm counting up the major scale, to 5, but I'm not going up 5 frets, I'm playing open, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th frets. If you follow your link to all 5ths tuning you'll actually find tenor banjo listed. The tuning is (low to high) C G D A, which is going around the circle of 5ths clockwise.
@@PhilDoleman Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't watch your fingers while you were going up the neck on one string. I just glanced and assumed you were going up on consecutive frets. Now that I re-watch, I see that clearly your are going up diatonically, as you said: frets 0, 2, 4, 5, and 7.
What is an octave? I am lost! Thanks for the video I will keep trying anyway😁🌼🌻
An octave is when you find the same note name but a higher or lower pitch. Your open A string is an A note, and the 12th fret of your A string is also an A note, but an octave higher.
Many thanks, great!
Hi Phil, I have a Duke 10 tenor banjolele with GCEA nylon strings that I would like to tune the same as your tenor banjo CGDA - is there a set of strings that you would recommend? Either nylon or steel (which I'm not sure can be fitted without damaging my Duke 10)?
Yes, avoid steel strings! Aquila make a string set for CGDA tuning (I think it might be designed for concert uke, but worth a look).
@@PhilDoleman Thanks Phil, just ordered a set. At 76cm long, I think they will just about fit!! best wishes Ian.
Gracias! There is a handy simple chord chart here...
banjochords.net/chords/tenor/standard/
And one here that will generate lots of positions for each chord you choose
chords.cc/en/tenorbanjo/jazz/c/major
All the best,
Phil
Viola tuning
Could you just swap the two big C and D strings?
You could tune up the D to E and swap the bottom two, but the C would be a whole octave lower than on a uke. Might sound interesting though!
The only thing that I understand, is that there is a finger involved.
So if anyone wanted to play this type of banjo like a ukelele they could in theory tune it to the exact tuning of a Ukulele
You could, but you would need some different string guages (the G string could move over to the 4th string position I suppose, then you'd need a new string the right guage to tune up to C for the 3rd string. Then you'd have low G ukulele tuning). It's more common to tune DGBE like a baritone, but personally I think it's the 5ths tuning that gives the tenor banjo (and tenor guitar) it's particular sound.
@@PhilDoleman th-cam.com/video/Hxpiy_RQPpU/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=JamesHoodGuitar
@@AngloSaxon1 Ah, nylon strings! I'd be scared of that high A going ping, it's quite high tension for nylon!
Keep
Keep breaking a string
What size banjo do you have, and what gauge strings? Mine is a 17 fret and I'm using a gauge 9 set. That top A string is under a lot of tension!
@@PhilDoleman 19 fret a string 9 gauge
@@susanmccrum8778 Right, I wonder if there's is a sharp edge somewhere at the tailpiece/bridge/nut?
@@PhilDoleman thanks Phil I will check