I've mentioned why I play tenor banjo* several times, but I'm not sure I've covered what I like about banjo. I had to give it some thought. Here's what I like about the (tenor) banjo.
-Stringed instrument played with a flat-pick. At least the tenor banjo is. If I wasn't playing a stringed instrument with a pick my second choice would probably be a chromatically tuned mallet percussion instrument such as a marimba.
-Scale length between mandolin and guitar. Mandolin feels too short and cramped. The guitar neck is too long for me and my shoulder. A short scale tenor banjo is just the right fit.
-Single course strings. I don't like the feel of double course strings on instruments with a similar scale length such as an octave mandolin or Puerto Rican cuatro.
-Ergonomics. No big guitar-like body to have to reach your arm around and wrestle with.
-Lots of sound in a relatively small package. My newest banjo has a 10-inch, open back rim and that's still plenty loud. You can't get that same amount of projection or volume with an acoustic tenor guitar.
-5ths tuning. The tenor banjo is tuned in 5ths which makes sense to me. The other tuning I like is all 4ths, but that wouldn't work as well for playing Irish traditional tunes up to speed. So I'll stick with all 5ths.
-The tenor banjo is generally accepted at Irish music sessions. It may still be looked at askance by a few naysayers, but it's closer to being in the norm than clarinet or saxophone would be.
-Not as common as fiddle or other instruments. At the Irish sessions I go to, I am usually either the only person playing tenor banjo, or one of two. This uniqueness suits my personality.
-Ability to play melodies with no need to re-tune for certain keys. In Irish session music, tenor banjo is one of the melody instruments. No matter what instrument I was playing, I'd be wanting to only play melodies so I like that it can hold its own in that department.
-Something about the sound of it. I do love the sound of a flat-picked guitar or tenor guitar, but if I have to choose one over the other, banjo ultimately wins that competition at least from my own playing perspective. One of the benefits of an open back is if I'm practicing at home and want to muffle the sound I can always stuff a t-shirt or towel into the inside of the banjo pot.
*Why I chose banjo. I had never played any instruments before but back in May 2006, when I was already in my early 30's, I called Elderly Instruments to order CDs by old-time banjo players Riley Baugus and Dan Gellert**. The woman on the other end of the line asked "do you play" and I said no. She said that I should, that's it's fun, so when I got off the phone I researched what type of banjo to get and learned about the tenor banjo, which I had never quite heard of. I chose tenor banjo because I'm left-handed and online forum commenters told me that a vintage right-handed tenor banjo like a Vega Little Wonder or a Bacon and Day can be set up left-handed. I also realized that tenor banjo is the type of banjo used in Irish traditional music and that it's tuned like a mandolin for Irish, so learning how to play GDAE tenor banjo is kind of like secretly learning mandolin. To top it off, I quickly located two local teachers - Josh Bearman and Cleek Schrey - who helped make sure I stuck with it and advanced beyond the awkward beginner stage when so many adult learners give up. There was also a welcoming community of DIY fiddle-tune musicians in the Richmond, VA area that I quickly fell into.
**Next question: why was I buying a couple of old-time CDs if I didn't play that music? Well, I had already been listening to bluegrass such as Old and in the Way, Hot Rize, New Grass Revival, Tony Rice and Yonder Mountain String Band for several years by that point. Then in 2004 and 2005 I visited Ireland, heard Irish trad for the first time, and brought back CDs by West Clare musicians Yvonne Casey, Eoin O'Neill, Quentin Cooper, and Mary Custy. So when I called Elderly to order those old-time CDs I was probably thinking that old-time Appalachian music was the bridge between the bluegrass I had been listening to and the instrumental Irish trad I recently discovered. It had not yet occurred to me that this was something I should try and play. It took a stranger saying I should play to flip that switch!
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