https://www.facebook.com/dusttodigit...276995821/?t=0 Hard to sleep after this one. I'll leave a light on.
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https://www.facebook.com/dusttodigit...276995821/?t=0 Hard to sleep after this one. I'll leave a light on.
https://www.facebook.com/dusttodigit...276995821/?t=0
Wow! That's a new (and scary) one - a bass banjo!
That vid was from the early jazz period, plectrum and tenor banjos with a banjo bass...
But before then, when nearly all banjos had gut strings and played marches and orchestral pieces - known today as the "classic banjo" period from shortly after the Civil war until the Jazz period -- mandolins and classical guitars were very comfortable with the banjos of that day.
Personally I thought it was a GREAT old video demo! Love anything old like that with any instrument! The times were sure different-I was born in the wrong era!
Frank Ford posted a video recently about making one, although not that big. Some of the Gryphon staff have a banjo group and the bass banjo player moved and took his banjo with him. Not growing on trees, Frank just built one and documented the process. Probably on Frets.com by now.
Could be worse. This one’s only a four string.
Bela has one. When I heard him play play with Abigail a couple of years ago he brought it along and it is on their first duo cd on at least one cut. When I heard him and Abigail they played 2 1/2 hours of nothing but banjo and vocal. It did not get annoying or tiresome and was really good music.
I don't know what's more cheesy - the instrument, or the guy playing it . . .
and - I can't help but wonder where that thing is now? Can you imagine walking into a Guitar Center or pawn shop and seeing that monster?
One of my prouder moments as an upright bass player was being told they couldn't hear the banjo over the bass. BTW no amplification was used.
Five years or so ago Jake Wildwood built a banjo bass. Not as big as that one but I was impressed. Another project for some day when I retire.
I may have told this story before here. A guy once came to our Scottish/Irish trad session at a local restaurant, with a banjo double bass. I think he made it himself. The shell was a bass drum a couple feet across and at least a foot deep with a single head, the neck was full-size. He was welcomed (it's a friendly group), although I'm sure I wasn't the only wondering how the heck that was going to work.
It turned out that his only experience was in OldTime jams, so he proceeded to loudly thump away on alternating I and V, completely out of sync with the rhythm of the session, and usually missing the mode changes in the tunes. That banjo bass was loud! Louder than any upright acoustic bass I've ever heard.
After a few tunes with everyone grimacing, we eventually told him it just wasn't working. We recommended he spend some time studying up on the music. I think I mentioned Trevor Hutchinson, the acoustic bass player in the Lúnasa band.
It was one of the very few times I've ever heard of someone actually asked to stop playing at a local trad session. I later heard he was also dis-invited to another Irish session in a nearby town. We never saw him again, so I guess he just continued inflicting that sound on the local OldTime jams (not that I think it wouldn't be appropriate, but the guy was just not good at playing the blasted thing).
Someone had a banjo bass at Winfield this year. Saw at least one photo of it.
It actually sounds quite good (to my ears).
I was thinking that this bass banjo would be ok in a session, great even, if the music was varied, some songs etc. It would have to be played maybe just ten to twenty percent of the time.
Might be difficult to design a device that would control the playing time.
Some sort of choke hold maybe.
Or maybe let him lose at last orders?
Problem is that if he’s there all evening in the pub with a huge banjo, threatening to play, it might upset the customers.
It’s the fear.
Gold tone definitely had a banjo bass, but not upright. More like a bass guitar with a banjo body
I've got a GT CEB-5 and really like it. It's a different sound (and tuning) than a bass (octave gDGBd vs EADG), although in the "classic banjo" days it wasn't unusual for cello banjos to also be called bass banjos.
GT originally targeted the CEB-5 line at "classic banjo" and clawhammer players. Mine was originally strung with nylon, but I went through the strings within a week of playing. I'm using flatwound steel on it now...
The bass banjo is played mostly like a double bass would be played, a live, harmonic metronme. A cello banjo sound is more of a melodic accessory.
Here's me playing my CEB-5 with our band way back in 2010:
Wafaring Stranger
Here are some historic bass banjos from my files. The only five-string is the Fairbanks that was at Bernunzio's a few years back. And note that John is not a small person.
I look up World Instruments and see the obukano, "a large bowl-shaped lyre... the double-bass of East Africa" and I think, this and the banjar differ only by a membrane and neck. Both look easier to schlep-along than a washtub or bass fiddle, too. What other bass chordophones might appear at jams?