Hammer-ons, Pull-offs, and Slides

Somehow I have made it 20 years into playing tenor banjo without giving much consideration to the embellishments known as hammer-ons and pull-offs. I have kind of been doing slides, but not that much. This summer I am making it my goal to learn what hammer-ons and pull-offs are [they are fret-hand ornaments that help us play a note that is not picked] and practice implementing them in the Celtic and contra dance tunes that I like to play. 

My first question is why do these embellishments? I guess the answer is that hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides, as well as triplets and double stops, are stylistic tools that can be used as variations to help spice up a tune. It is also said that hammer-ons and pull-offs can create a smoother sound called legato.

I was looking for lessons on how to do hammer-ons and pull-offs in the context of fiddle tunes and found these posts by mandolin teachers Mando Mike and David Benedict. 

Mando Mike uses the well known tune Red Haired Boy to demonstrate where these embellishments can be inserted. https://www.mandomike.com/post/red-haired-boy-with-added-ho-po

David Benedict separates hammer-ons and pull-offs into two separate lessons:

https://youtu.be/wkxLn1OELtM?si=2jGcXTh2VvUm0454

https://youtu.be/W7xQdZ2H8N0?si=SeB-kNBgZsWDm-6r

I find slides to be a bit easier to "pull off". When I say slides, in this case I don't mean the Irish tune type called a slide, which is notated in 12/8 time. I mean the type of slide technique as taught in these videos by Mando Mike and David Benedict:

https://www.mandomike.com/post/after-the-battle-of-aughrim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apF1Up02HR4

I like the way BanjoLemonade does slides on the tenor guitar in this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/qR0iKNz1l7Y?si=QCxe5V4OSWZzP8dA

And that's it!

Featured Article: How To Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice

Yesterday I came across an article from 2016 by Benedict Marsh titled "How to Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice". It may be one of the best music learning posts I've ever come across. You can read the full write up here: https://www.lessonface.com/content/how-learn-any-instrument-using-your-voice

Here are some highlights:

Many people fail to realize that they have already learned how to play an instrument using mimicry once in their lives: their voice.

You learned to make all of those incredible sounds called words in your mother tongue by listening to the sounds around you and copying them through a lot of trial and error. The people around you didn’t show you a picture of the inside of your mouth and say, “put your tongue here”. It wasn’t taught visually. You just mimicked. 

The difference between the students who sing what they are trying to learn and those that don’t is blatant. When someone finally starts singing the part they are trying to play, they figure it out a lot faster. Singing the part connects you to your body, and to your aural abilities in a conscious physical way. It engages you in active listening - so that you are really paying attention to what the part is. You can’t sing a part unless you have really listened to it. This helps you to internalize it. If you have internalized it, it is much easier to bring that out of your body again into the instrument you are trying to learn.

Once I have mimicked my voice, by matching the notes on the guitar, I will notice that the way I am playing it on the guitar, assuming I am a beginner, doesn’t sound quite as fluid as the original. So, then I can start to practice it by singing small chunks of (an) 8 bar phrase and trying to get my guitar to sound the way I think it should sound to most accurately represent the (musical) phrase.

Take some time and connect to your voice. Go slow. Everyone can sing. Pick single notes on a piano or a guitar and try to find them with your voice. Let yourself “suck” and just try to match what you are hearing.

Trying to mimic the sound will change and grow your techniques! If you are playing something and it doesn’t sound like what you are trying to mimic - which you have now learned to sing - then change what you are doing until it does! Stay curious. You will discover new techniques this way; your own techniques.

Try to pick something that will challenge you but is doable for your skill level. It may be hard to navigate these waters at first, but you’ll get there.

Your ears telling you it doesn’t sound right is a good thing! It means you can hear the difference, and soon enough, with tenacity and determination, you will get it sounding the way you want it.

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Is Tenor Banjo More Like Guitar, Mandolin or Banjo?

This post asks the question, is tenor banjo more like acoustic guitar, mandolin, or banjo? 

Mandolin

Some would say that tenor banjo is more like mandolin, primarily because of the tuning. If you already play tenor banjo tuned in 5ths, then it's easy to switch to either mandolin (or mandola) and vice versa. The similarity kind of stops there though. Mandolin has double course strings and a much shorter scale.

Guitar

The guitar is the instrument that replaced the banjo in jazz in the 1930's due improvements in design and amplification. The act of using a pick and flat-picking the way bluegrass guitar players do is quite similar to how Irish banjo players use a guitar pick to pluck melodies. Unless you tune your tenor banjo in Chicago style DGBE, then guitar is going to have a different tuning than tenor banjo. However, the scale length of a tenor banjo, especially a 19-fret/23-inch scale tenor banjo, is closer to that of a guitar than a mandolin. You're only a couple inches shy of a guitar scale length, whereas mandolin is about 9 inches shorter.

Banjo

From a playing perspective, tenor banjo actually shares very little in common with bluegrass style 5-string banjo playing or the old-time clawhammer banjo. There are similarities in construction. Both are banjos by design - a round frame with a skin or synthetic membrane stretched across it, with a neck and strings attached. And both share that lack of sustain. But the playing styles are very different.

In Summary

For decades I postponed getting an instrument and learning how to play it. One of the reasons is because I thought my options were only acoustic guitar, mandolin, or banjo, and I had excuses for why I didn't want to play each of those. Guitar felt too "boxy" and big. It had too many strings and was not comfortable to hold. Mandolin was cramped, too hard to get into tune, and I didn't like the feel of double course strings. Banjo, whether it bluegrass or clawhammer style (which were the only styles I knew of), just seemed like it would be too hard to play.

When I learned there was a banjo that you played with a guitar pick rather than your fingers or finger picks, tuned like a mandolin but with single strings an octave lower, and plucked single note melodies like a guitar flat-picker, I was sold. You take aspects of each...that unmistakable banjo sound, paired with the logic of an all 5ths tuning, and the tactile experience of plucking fiddle tunes so that you can pretend like you are Tony Rice or Norman Blake, all while playing a banjo. Not to mention that it's actually played in Irish music! Who knew?!

Trying to Sound Irish and Authentic

Fiddlers who play Irish tunes are oftentimes intentionally trying to sound Irish. Maybe you were a classically trained violinist or are coming from a bluegrass background, and now you're trying to get that other sound out of your playing and more of an Irish accent into your fiddling. 

I sometimes wonder if the same applies to Irish tenor banjo or if tenor banjo melody pluckers have more leeway? 

If you play basic versions of Irish tunes on tenor banjo, enough to get by in sessions, but you're not really adding typical banjo ornamentation like triplets, are you still playing Irish tenor banjo? 

Or let's say you do all the right things and have a 19-fret resonator tenor banjo tuned GDAE, play with a pick and make generous use of the characteristic triplets of Irish tenor banjo playing, but your repertoire focuses on American old-time, Québécois, and contra dance tunes instead of Irish trad. Are you still playing Irish tenor banjo? 

I also wonder where the line is between trying to sound authentic - as in trying to play with the ornamentation and other tropes that define "Irish" music, and trying to sound authentic - as in trying to sound like yourself even if that self happens to be an American who didn't grow up listening to Irish trad. 

Ultimately, the answer is probably to do whatever you want, as long as it sounds good to you. 

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