What is Irish Tenor Banjo (new version)

In celebration of 20 years playing music and 15 years writing articles on this blog, I am revisiting some old posts and trying to reevaluate them based on how I look at music now while also jogging that beginner's mind.

In 2015 I wrote a post called What is Irish Tenor Banjo. You can read that here. Nowadays I would be a lot more succinct and loose in my definition of this.

I would say that "Irish tenor banjo" is the process of using a banjo (usually a tenor banjo) to interpret the traditional jigs, reels, hornpipes, slides, slip-jigs, and polkas that are commonly played in Irish sessions. It's also a playing style that has some mechanical similarities to the melodic side of bluegrass guitar flatpicking. Norman Blake, for example, would have been a great Irish tenor banjo player. Due to the staccato nature of their chosen instrument, Irish tenor banjo players make liberal use of an embellishment known as the triplet. 

That's really all that needs to be said about it. It doesn't really need to be defined any more than that. 

There's no reason that the variety of approaches to Irish tenor banjo playing can't be as wide as the gap between say Jerry Garcia and Steve Vai. I just hope you would have the good sense to come over to the rootsy, playful, relaxed, swinging, spontaneous, and interactive side of things and favor that over technical skills, flashy technique, and overly precise arrangements.

Playing beautiful melodies is just as important as playing at blazing fast speeds.

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