Exploring Cripple Creek III - Up On the Fretboard

For this Cripple Creek variation we head up to the nether reaches of the fret board for a little 5 string madness.

A bit melodic with a dash of blues this one covers a wide swath of the fretboard and in its fleeting space.

Here is the video...



And here is the tablature to enlarge)...

Exploring Cripple Creek Part II - Single Stringin'

For the next variation I worked up this singlestring concotion.  It makes extensive use of the minor 3rd (Bb) and gives the left hand a bit of a working out.

For most of this tune I would recommend standard single string right hand work- that is to say alternating the thumb and index fingers.  I try to keep the thumb plucks on all of the downbeats and the indexes on the upbeats.

Measure 2 brings out a C7 chord which is plucked on 4 consecutive strings.  For this I would suggest using T I T M for your right hand fingering.

Here is the vid-jo...



And here is the tab...

NEXT:  Exploring Cripple Creek Part III - Up On the Fretboard

Exploring Cripple Creek - Part I ; A Little Variation

        Cripple Creek is many things; a great song to pick on banjo, an American folk standard, a tune whose title is occasionally confused with The Band's 'Up on Cripple Creek'. One other thing Cripple Creek can be is a vehicle for exploring your banjo.

        The standard bluegrass banjo break for Cripple Creek varies from player to player but generally looks a little something like this (this is an approximation of Earl Scruggs' arrangement on which most others are based);

     
       A while back I did a post on playing double banjo on Cripple Creek (which you can check out here if you're interested) but for this series of posts will tackle the task of writing variations.

        This first variation begins much the same way as Scruggs original break then heads up the neck a little for some descending 6ths with a little backward roll syncopation.

        The B section keeps the slides on the 3rd string but has them going up, then down, with some offbeat pinches on the 3rd and 1st strings.

        It's not the craziest variation but I like the sound of it.

        Here it is in video form....


        And here is the tablature...

        Next; Exploring Cripple Creek Part II - Single String Break

Banjo ------------------> Guitar Transmogrifier: How to Easily Convert Any Banjo Tune for Performance on the Guitar

Yes, just like the title says.

Well, actually it's not really EASY easy (crowd disperses). The concepts may take a while to fully soak in but once you have the trick you will be able to convert banjo to guitar relatively quickly and painlessly.

There are a number of tunings we could use to get the guitar prepped for banjo duty (open G would seem the obvious choice) but for this particular method we will use open D tuning. Open D tuning involves tuning your guitar from low to high D A D F# A D.

Once you have your guitar in D tuning you are ready to begin.

The idea is this; think of your guitar's 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings (A D F# A) as being relative to the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st strings (D G B D) on your banjo (in standard G tuning). Then think of the 1st string of your guitar as being relative to the high 5th string of the banjo.

Making sense? Here is a tab example of the transmogrification in action.

The first 2 measure of Cripple Creek in banjo tab...



And those same 2 measures converted for open D tuned guitar...



How's that? The idea is essentially treating these strings on the guitar



like these strings on the banjo



And then treating the 1st string on the guitar like the 5th sting on the jo.



For a full song example lets try a little of the old Blackberry Blossom.

Here is a standard melodic style banjo version...



And here it is converted for open D tuned guitar (added some harmonic strums but otherwise transferred directly from banjo)...



Here is a vid of that Blackberry Blossom arrangement on guitar...



Soothing, ringing stuff (a little string noise but what the hay).

You may have noticed that the 6th string on the guitar is not used at all. This is simply because thus far we have only been transferring directly from banjo and the 5 string banjo has 5 strings. If you want to make use of the low string for whatever purpose (probably to provide some harmony/ bass) it is right there waiting to be used. This method allows you to transfer banjo arrangements directly to guitar but once you have done that you can alter them for their new environment as you see fit.

Also, if you want to keep things in their original banjo key you can use the capo. If something is uncapoed on banjo then capoing on the 5th fret of the guitar will make it make it match. If you are capoed on the 2nd fret on banjo then capo 7th fret on guitar.

Hope that proves helpful/ fun for some people. It may be a bit of a headful to get down at first so take your time and as always don't hesitate to write me with any questions.

Cripple Creek Harmony

For this post I thought I might cover a little close banjo harmony.

Twin banjos can sound great and there are a multitude of angles you can approach the harmonizing from. The most common, and the one I'll be using today, is to have one banjo play the straight melody and the other harmonize it in thirds.

A third is the distance from 1 note on a major scale to the note after the next note up the scale. This means if you were playing in the key of G (which is not uncommon on the banjo) and the melody note was a G you would play the note 2 letters up the scale for your harmony note(a B note in this case). For an A note the harmony would be a C and for a B note the harmony would be a D.

Make sense? I will make a future post explaining the thirds harmony more fully but to get right into playing it and hearing what it's all about let's try harmonizing some Cripple Creek.

Most banjo players know a version of Cripple Creek. This here is a fairly standard version...



And here is the harmony part...



Here is a video of the harmony played slow, medium and faster...



If you already know Cripple Creek play along with the video and hear the harmony jump out. This is a great tune to have a harmony part for as most banjo players know it and it tends to come up alot at jams. It works nice if you throw it in on the last pass of the tune to finish everything off...just make sure you aren't playing over anyone elses big solo or otherwise stepping on toes. Until next time.

BONUS...

Thought I would add a video of two banjos playing the harmony in response to a BHO request so I convinced my student Doug to help me out. Thank you Doug. Here it is...