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BACK-UP BANJO - Up the Neck

I like to think of good back-up as laying down a carpet that the other musical furniture sits on - the carpet has design; colours and patterns to show off whatever's sitting atop it. Once you've mastered the 3 basic closed chord shapes (G shape, D shape and barre) and a couple of basic vamping patterns it's nice to be able to bring variety into your back-up with some new techniques.

This article plus tab has been expanded from the workshop I conducted at Imbil festival. 20 pickers participated, all at different skill levels. There are moves in this tab that may be too advanced; do what you can. If you need to, grab the foundations of closed chords and vamping from the Fingerstyle DVDs - Back-Up Banjo Up the Neck.

Many banjo students rail against going up the neck - they grimace and curse those four-finger chords - it's hard! But you should see the smiles of achievement when we all get together for a jam session!

Back-up banjo is an exciting musical adventure that for many pickers brings more satisfaction and demands more creativity than the solo. Let's face it, in any song there's only a small amount of time given over to solos - the majority is all about rhythm, chords, joining chords, phrasing and punctuation. It's good to have a variety of vamps, patterns and licks memorised so you have choices - you can play what sounds right at that particular moment. That's where the artistry of back-up really shines! Happy Picking!

Back-Up Banjo - Up the Neck Tab