Just got back from Christmas and New Year's in Hawaii (I won a trip, how's that for luck?) and I'll reply to a couple of posts in one go here.
Are these two tunings, ones that you figured out from listening to Dock Boggs, or are they ones you adapted for your own performance?.... Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Those are Dock Boggs' tunings. If you want the tunings for all his pieces, there's a website called
www.longtimecoming.com that has them all, and a bunch of information besides that.
Dock was the reason I picked up a banjo and started singin. I am only 16 and can't really do much yet espically in the way of figuring out old Boggs tunes. How did you go about doing it? How old are you? How long have you been pickin and singin for? Lastly I know, I know I should learn by ear but could you tab this out I think it repeats itself mostly so it shouldn't be to hard. It would make a kid really happy. Oh ya, what do you mean by tuned low?
First, I'm 32 and have been playing guitar since I was 17 (banjo a little less than that). The trick to learning is to listen as much as you can and get tips from other people that know how to do it. Tab can help some, but I find tab particularly unhelpful for learning most banjo tunes. I'd be glad to try to tab those two tunes out, though, and see if it will help. It may take me a few days, though. I would highly recommend you purchase the tape/DVD "Shady Grove" from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop as it has the only known footage of Boggs playing, so you can see what he's doing; also check out that site I mentioned above. As far as tuning low, I mean that if the banjo was at what's considered "concert pitch," the tuning for "New Prisoner's Song" would be gCGBD. But Boggs (and me, usually) tunes a step low or so to match his voice, meaning the real tuning is something like fB-flatFAC.
Chris
