I'm going to offer some parts of Gestalt Banjo Vol. 2 - (tentatively subtitled Fretting Hand Liberty and Internalizing the Mind/ Banjo Connection) here as the muse speaks and I get the draft together. I will put pretty looking tabs as generated in MusEdit in place of these text ones as I get to it. The published document will of course have MusEdit tabs, and also notation. Why... because the more you see notation, the dots and stuff, the less weird, fear inducing, arcane it will be.
There is also the possibility which appeals to me of Gestalt Banjo Vol. ZERO, (Recognizing and Dealing with the Traps to Actually Learning to Play). It won't be pretty or politically correct. Everything in it would be counterproductive to actually learning to play with depth and ease. This would include ingrained and legacy bad instruction methods, incomplete commercial methods, brainwashed social expectations and family pressures and all would be worth serious assessment and subsequent action in order to get the most effective value from existing learning paradigms.
Section ??? - Some Don Reno motifs.
In Follow the Leader, Don connects the diatonic V and VI chords with a (chromatic) passing tone tossed in for the "Follow the Leader" pattern/ riff, then that is moved to imply F, E, C, D as needed. It also has no 4 note, which inherently carries some tension in the major scale.
___7_____9______
___7_____8_____
___7_____9______
___7_____9______
________________
are connected by
_________________
____________7_8__
________7_9______
__7_8_9__________
_________________
All eighth notes except the last note is a quarter note in 2/2.
In the 2 measure riff for E where the tune has moved furthest from the G tonal center is the most complex variation, ear tweaking variation of the riff. He is about to start the journey home to resolving to the root, to G, though the D chord riff. The pulloff is done with 16th notes (in 2/2). All the others are all eighths.
__________________4|_5_6_6-5_4___4-5_4_________
______________4_5__|______p_______h____5_______
________4___6______|___________________________
__4_5_6____________|___________________________
___________________|___________________________
To really get this, get the original recording on King 787: Banjo Special, and subsequent King/ Gusto/ Hollywood issues. Tab and the analysis are a very minimal map of what he played.
This idea shows up as a tag in Hello Dolly and Birth of the Blues , and in and up and down forms in various places like against the V chord in Redskin Rag. He gets a lot of mileage out of this idea.
Dixie Breakdown does not have a single string run...(the Reno arsenal of stuff is much bigger than single string, and to categorize Reno style as single stringing only is flat out wrong).
The 2 measure chunks in the B part imply the chord (say G here) by sounding the chord itself, its 7th, the local VI and back to the chord. Out and return, tension and release, anchored on both ends. The implied local scales are I (no tension) I7 (has tritone) VI (same, has tritone relative to I) and I. Then the whole thing is shifted (next up to C) and repeated in an overall I, VI, I, V, / I, VI, I, V, I pattern.
The ear interprets
G (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
C (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
G (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
D (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
G (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
C (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
G (establish message, create tension, then release, back home),
D (setup for resolve), G (and out).
This same idea is used in Banjo Special, Chicken, and in modified form it is the hook D lick in Remington Ride.
Superb....
To be expanded, Don had about 10-20 nifty things he did to contribute to a unique Reno style. The single stringing is just the beginning........
~Gestalt Banjo Vol. 2~
Section ? - The Tritone Trick
Section ?? - Music Theory Isn't
Last Updated 15 Jul 2006 by PJH
Edited 09 Apr 2007 by WF