5 String Banjo Tutor Books

Over 650 bluegrass, blues and jazz licks in Scruggs, single string and melodic style. Learn to use licks to create solos, play back up and expand your musical understanding and knowledge of the fingerboard.

The Absolute Beginners award-winning method has been designed to make learning the 5-string Banjo easier than ever before!

Tony Trischka presents his groundbreaking guide to the melodic (chromatic) Banjo style, made famous by the great Bill Keith. The technique allows the Banjo player to create complex note-for-note renditions of Bluegrass fiddle tunes, as well as ornamenting solos with melodic fragments and motives.Book and Online Audio

First Lessons on Banjo is an ultra-easy instruction manual for beginning five-string banjo played in the three finger style in G tuning. It can be used by those with no previous experience with the banjo or music of any sort. It is so basic it can be used even by small children.

The book features very detailed descriptions of even the most basic aspects such as wearing the picks properly, the correct picking motion, and noting the strings properly. These are aspects that are so basic most manuals skip over them. There are many detailed photos, several from the player's point of view, not from in front of the banjo.

This Book & CD pack provides the intermediate clawhammer (5-string) banjo player with a fresh repertoire of 21 traditional and 5 original tunes as played by the author with the Boiled Buzzards Old Time String Band. The book briefly addresses clawhammer basics with a few pages of exercises and scales before presenting the tunes.

This comprehensive book contains 139 solos for the 5-string banjo. Arranged by Neil Griffin, Mark Barnett, Karl Kurth, Carl Jackson, and Bob Forrest, this book is the perfect resource to expand you repertoire of solo pieces.

With its wealth of information on how technique can be tastefully applied, Back-Up Banjo is the definitive book on the subject of banjo accompaniment.

Pete Seeger. The basic manual for banjo players, with melody line, lyrics and banjo accompaniment and solos notated in standard form and tablature.

This handy book shows left-hand fingering photos, notation, and diagrams for all of the basic 5-string banjo chords in G tuning (GDGBD). The sections are arranged alphabetically, grouping all chords with the same root in a section.

This book presents an extremely comprehensive collection of 5-string and plectrum banjo chord forms for G and C tunings.

This unique book of scales and arpeggios for banjo by John Bullard covers all of the major and minor keys. Written in tablature and standard notation, this book brings banjo players the same practical and time-proven system of study common to other classical instruments. Students will learn the scales and arpeggios and apply them in flowing, musical exercises.

A comprehensive repertoire book of fiddle tunes adapted for banjo, in easy to read tablature, by the renowned player and teacher of the 5-String Banjo, Tony Trischka. For the early picker to the advanced player, this book and its companion online audio will enable the player to learn by example and broaden their technical range.

Fiddle tunes have been adapted for Banjo since the early 1850's. The explorations contained here include a large collection of popular American fiddle tunes and a section of Celtic tunes played in the three major Bluegrass Banjo styles. These Bluegrass, Old Time and Celtic banjo traditions will expand the players' knowledge of the instrument, and deepen their understanding of bluegrass and traditional music.

A comprehensive 96-page, large print perfect-bound chord dictionary for today’s banjo player. Contains hundreds of chord forms ranging from major, minor and dominant 7th to the various extensions such as minor 7b5, minor/major 7, 7#5, etc.

This handy book shows all of the basic banjo chords in photo and diagram form. The front of the book contains a section of bluegrass G-tuning chords, and the remainder contains C-tuning.

If you want to learn traditional music on the 5-string, this book by Peter Flanagan is for you. There's no extraneous confusing detail and the straight forward approach using tablature means you're playing something recognisable within minutes. Soundtrack available.

This book is a "hands-on" approach to music theory with lots of playing examples for the Banjo. Music theory does not have to be mysterious or difficult. In fact, taken a little bit at a time, it’s easy and fun! Each of the approximately 50 lessons in this book has a limited scope, but by the time you complete them, you will have a thorough understanding of the basics of music theory as applied to the Banjo.

Many musicians, including some that are technically quite advanced, never break away from the printed page to learn by simply listening and re-creating. The common name for this process is "playing by ear". With some basic guidelines, any musician with rudimentary skills can teach himself or herself to play by ear, adding a new dimension to their playing skills.

Leads the banjo player step-by-step through working out songs for the five-string banjo from basic melodies in both Scruggs/bluegrass style and melodic/chromatic style. Each section contains exercises and examples for improvising. Furthermore, this book teaches how to arrange music based on concepts of combining rolls and licks. Janet Davis' books are praised because they teach so well! This is one of her finest. In tablature. Includes access to extended play audio and video downloads online.

This handy book/Online Audio pack will get you playing all over the banjo fretboard in any key! You'll learn to: increase your chord, scale and lick vocabulary; play chord-based licks, moveable major and blues scales, melodic scales and first-position major scales; and much more!

Newly updated and revised, this easy-to-use beginner's guide is a continuation of the banjo basics and techniques taught in Book 1. The material in Book 2 not only reinforces and strengthens Book 1 instruction, but also features many new songs, techniques and rolls to learn and play.

Covers: right-hand rolls and patterns; playing back-up; melodic style banjo; fiddle tunes & reels; solos and licks; new hammers, pull and slides; banjo chimes; scales & modes; using a capo; and more!

The accompanying online audio contains 63 tracks of full-band demos for every song in the book!

Mel Bay's highly acclaimed, best-selling premium manuscript paper. Twenty-four sheets (96 pages) of 10-stave paper printed on beautiful, cream colored, high grade, heavy paper. Every detail in the production of this premium paper has been carefully planned and implemented. Probably the best value in manuscript paper on the market.

This method is designed for learning the finger style five-string banjo in a larger musical context than previous single style based methods. The Modern 5-String Banjo Method builds the theoretical and technical foundations needed to play in many styles.

With this volume, the reader is pleasantly surprised with two books in one- Section One by Alec Slater, and Section Two by Lisa Schmitz. Alec's portion is intended as a guide for the clawhammer or frailing banjo player with some previous experience in this style. He stresses the fact that this style of music can be fully learned only from within the oral tradition in which it grew. The instruction included here is meant to provide a review, and not to take the place of qualified teacher.

The melodic style is a beautiful three finger picking style which can be traced to the early 1900's and became a fully accepted style for playing the five-string banjo in the 1960's, and is today an integral part of the three-finger style of many banjo players at all playing levels. Plus, the songs arranged in this style are easy and fun to learn. Although the melodic style may sound impossible with all of those notes coming from it, surprisingly you will find that it is not that difficult to learn and no previous musical knowledge is needed. This course covers the melodic style from the very basics of this picking style to the advanced techniques and provides many fun toplay and well-known songs arranged in the three-finger melodic style for upper level beginning players through advanced level players. Includes access to online audio.