Banjo For Dummies. Bill Evans
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Fingering G, D7, and C Chords
The first time you discover how to fret a chord on your banjo is a very big moment in your burgeoning playing career. Whether you're blazing through a banjo breakdown or accompanying a campfire singer, chords are essential to playing the banjo. In this section, you master the three basic chords used in thousands of songs. If the world suddenly seems like a much better place after you've successfully fretted each of the chords in this section, that's a good indication that you were born to be a banjo player.
After you've mastered each chord by itself, try moving from one chord to the next, in any order that strikes your fancy. Strum with a downward right-hand thumb motion across all five strings a few times for each new chord and strive for a clear, ringing sound from each string for all three chords. This stuff is pretty exciting, isn't it? You'll put these chords to use later in this chapter.
The G chord: Real easy
Although people very seldom associate the banjo with Zen, you really don't have to fret anything at all to play the G chord, grasshopper! A G chord is just the sound of your right hand strumming the open strings in G tuning (see Chapter 2 for more tuning info). You could use your left hand to wave to your adoring fans, but I think it may be a little early for these kinds of grand gestures.
The D7 chord: A little harder
For the D7 chord, you place your middle finger just behind the 2nd fret of the 3rd string and your index finger behind the 1st fret of the 2nd string. Try strumming down across all five strings with your right-hand thumb, starting with the 5th string and striking each note down to the 1st string. Try a slow strum to check the accuracy of your fretting on each individual string, but then don't be afraid to go wild with some fast strumming to strut your stuff!
The C chord: More challenging still
The C chord is a bit harder than the D7 chord (see the preceding section) because you use one more left-hand finger to fret this chord. Here, the left-hand index frets the 2nd string, 1st fret — just as with the D7 chord. However, now you move your middle finger to the 4th string, 2nd fret, and you also need to fret the 1st string at the 2nd fret. Be careful that you fret the 4th and 2nd strings with enough of a vertical angle with your left-hand fingers so you don't block the sound of the open 3rd string.
Your hand should look something like Figure 3-7 when you fret the D7 and C chords.
Photographs by Anne Hamersky
FIGURE 3-7: Here's how your hand looks fretting the D7 (a) and C (b) chords. Note the position of the thumb.
Checking Out Chord Diagrams
Looking for an easy way to remember how to fret a chord with your left-hand fingers? A chord diagram not only communicates which strings are fretted for a particular chord but also where on the fingerboard you put those fingers and which left-hand finger you use to fret each string.
Reading a chord diagram
If you're already familiar with reading chord diagrams for the guitar, you’ll find that banjo players use the same system. If you turn your banjo around so that the fingerboard faces you, that's how the banjo neck is represented in a chord diagram (check out Figure 3-8 to more fully break down the parts of a chord diagram):
From left to right, the vertical lines represent the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st strings on your banjo. Most banjo chord diagrams don't include the 5th string, because you rarely fret it, especially when you're just beginning to play.
The top horizontal line represents the banjo nut. The nut is what guides the strings from the fingerboard to the peghead. One way to think of the nut is as a “0” fret, because your banjo strings are open at this location on the neck.
The second line from the top stands for your banjo's 1st fret, and the line below that represents the 2nd fret, and so on.
The black dots that appear on the vertical string lines indicate behind what fret and on what strings you should fret.
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