Introduction
Welcome to Old Time Slow Jam: Clawhammer Banjo!
About This Site
This site provides basic instruction in how to play the open
back 5-string banjo in the old time clawhammer style. After
learning the basics of how to tune
and hold the banjo, read
banjo tablature, and use proper left
and right hand technique, the
novice banjo picker can learn to play
a variety of tunes commonly heard at jams and square dances
in the New River Valley area of Southwest Virginia. The tunes
are shown in the styles of local players.
For each tune, there will be provided (though not all of
these will be available for every tune):
- Tablature (in PDF, Tabulator, TablEdit
formats)
- RealVideo
clips of the song played by local banjo pickers at both
slow and moderate tempos
- A MIDI file, and
- A streaming RealAudio
file of the tune played at a moderate tempo by a local old
time string band or solo by yours truly.
The site aims to replicate the feel of an Old Time Slow Jam
where novice players get together to share tunes by playing
them together at a slow tempo. As time allows and as interest
dictates, more songs, and even other instruments may be added.
Requirements/Recommendations
This site is best viewed on Netscape 6 or higher or Internet
Explorer 4.5 or higher with a monitor set at at least 800
x 600 screen resolution. OS X on the Mac is not yet fully
supported, nor is Unix in any of its various flavors.
 Most
songs are available as tablature in PDF format,
which you'll need Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view.
 To
listen to the MIDI files, you will need a media player or
plug-in which supports MIDI playback. Most computers should
already have a media player which will play midi files. However,
I would recommend downloading and installing vanBasco's
Karaoke Player. This free player will allow you to change
the tempo and key of the song.
  To
view the audio and video clips you will need RealPlayer (version
8 or higher), available as a free download from RealNetworks.The
video files are not streaming and must download in
their entirety before playing . Therefore, if you will be
viewing the video from a home computer with a slow connection
(Each clip takes a minute or two with a 56k modem), you may
wish to download this compressed
zip file of all the videos the next time you are at a
location with a faster connection, such as your work, school,
or local library. Just put it on a zip disk or other removable
media, and take it home where you can uncompress it and view
the videos with no delay. The audio files are streaming
and will begin playing within a few seconds even from a slow
home connection, so they are not included in the compressed
file.
It is also a good idea to download the latest Windows
Media Player if you don't have it, since the explanation
of tablature uses this video format (which does a wonderful
job compressing screen capture). However, this is not absolutely
necessary since there is an alternative RealVideo version,
though it is larger, of lower quality, and does not stream.
To view the TablEdit tablature file (which I highly recommend),
you will need the program TEFView,
a free download from TablEdit. This neat piece of software
not only displays the tablature, but also plays it with MIDI
instruments at a tempo you can specify, highlighting each
note as it is played and showing the position to be fretted
with a fretboard diagram.
 NEW!
Recently, I've developed a way of viewing and playing tablature
with MIDI instruments, using a shockwave movie. I call this
technology tabulator, and the main thing you need to
view the tabulator files is the shockwave
plug-in from Macromedia, which many people already have
installed. The first time you view a tabulator file you will
also be asked if it is okay to install the sequence XTra.
This will allow you to hear the tab played with MIDI instruments.
It literally should only take a few seconds to download, will
auto-install, and won't harm your computer in any way. With
tabulator, you can set the tempo that you want the song to
play at, specify only specific measuers to play repeatedly,
and even have the tabulature increase in tempo by a specified
amount each time it repeats.
About The Author
My name is Robert Fentress (email me at robfentress@yahoo.com).
I am a clawhammer banjo player who with an MAEd. in Instructional Design and Technology at Virginia
Tech. I developed the nucleus of this site as my final project
for a Digital Video class with Dr. Kathy Cennamo there. If
you'd like, you can download and take a look at the production
planning document for this site (in Microsoft Word format)
which I had to develop for that course. I currently work at
Virginia Tech's Institute
for Distance and distributed Learning.
Thanks
The author would like to extend special thanks to Greg Galbreath
and Russ Boyd who let themselves be immortalized for posterity
in the videos and to Aaron Tornberg, who helped me tape them.
Greg also gave me suggestions for tunes and lists of tunes
he'd gotten from other experienced old time musicians when
he had just started to play. Thanks to the band, The Wild
Turkeys, who graciously agreed to record the tunes available
here as RealAudio. Thanks also to Gregg Shadel who assissted
me with the MIDI audio and contributed several of the transcriptions,
and to Gail Gulbenkian, Tina Liza Jones, Mac Traynham, Bill
Richardson, and Woody McKenzie for their suggestions for tunes.
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