Lesson #073, When the Saints Go Marching In V

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Lesson #073, When the Saints Go Marching In V

Hi Everyone,

We are going to finish up now with the song ...When The Saints Go Marching In... and we are going to finish using all double stops. The term double stop or stops is usually coined for the fiddle or mandolin, but we can use them on the banjo as well. A double stop is simply using two notes played at the same time. They are two note chords.

To play a chord, we need to play at least two notes together. When they are played together we get harmony, or a chord. We can play Two note chords...double stops.....we can play three note chords...triads.... we can continue to build on the triad as far as we would like........say we were playing the piano........ we have ten fingers........ we can make a ten note chord if we'd like. Chords are quite simple.... you just keep adding different notes to create different colors as you contunue to build. Now the most we can use on the Banjo is Five different notes.... we only have Five strings to work with......and to pick those five notes together we would have to either pick them with all five fingers of our right hand..... or strum them to produce the fullness of the chord.......but.....we can do sooooo much with playing three note chords with the three fingers we use of our right hand. We can leave notes out of a chord and still get the color that we are trying to paint.

Rock On Everyone,

David