RevSpyder - Posted - 09/08/2015:  16:35:00

I just watched this video -- youtube.com/watch?v=QhDq2ZNbCy0 -- and I'm wondering what is the advantage, if any, of up picking the first note of the bum ditty vs down picking. I assume there's a reason most clawhammer players don't do this. I'm also guessing there's a reason Pete Seeger did it.

Joe Connor - Posted - 09/08/2015:  17:53:11

By definition, frailing/clawhammer uses a down stroke for that first note. Frailing/clawhhmer is all downstrokes. Is it better? Who knows? It's all a matter of taste. I find that the downstrokes of frailing/clawhammer give a more percussive sound that helps produce a driving rhythm that I like. Others may disagree. Seeger used his banjo a lot as the only instrument accompanying his singing and the up-picking may give a mellower sound that works better for that purpose. The fellow on the tape you referred to is using a resonator banjo, which is an entirely different sound. Most frailers and Seeger disciples use open-back banjos. 

Edited by - Joe Connor on 09/08/2015 17:54:01

Jim Yates - Posted - 09/08/2015:  18:52:01

Pete did as much clawhammer as he did up-picking, but because he began his banjo book with up-picking, which he called "the basic stroke", folks seem to identify this style with him.

To me, clawhammer has a more "driving sound", while up-picking has more of a "galloping sound", but there are times when it would be hard to identify which style is being played in a blindfold test.

Here is an example of Little birdie played in both Clawhammer style up-picking style.



Pete playing Little Birdie   youtube.com/watch?v=8iBlp-3fqmU

Roscoe Holcomb playing Little Birdie  youtube.com/watch?v=-wGgvbHcgyc

minstrelmike - Posted - 09/08/2015:  19:53:27

I don't see any difference whatsoever except that with straight downstrokes, I can go a lot faster than when doing the Seeger-style up-picking. I can get all sorts of different rhythms from it. It's just the direction you're picking the string. Once I caught onto frailing I quit doing the up-picking cause I hadn't been doing it that long.

SteveMurtha - Posted - 09/08/2015:  20:27:56

Pete's playing was so rich and varied that it is a shame to identify him solely with the upstroke boom-diddy. The player he reminds me of the most is Uncle Dave Macon, who similarly plundered( or should I say integrated) an etraordinary range of styles and approaches into his playing. i know Pete was aware of Uncle Dave, and even got some songs from him including Buddy Won't You Roll Down the Line. And of course Pete's brother Mike wrote the book, or rather DVD, on Uncle Dave's style.

phdm - Posted - 09/08/2015:  21:34:47

I would agree with Joe as to the subtle differences between claw hammer/frailing and Seeger's basic strum/up picking.  Claw hammer is, to my ears, more percussive  that Pete's up-picking.  While Pete played in countless styles, he was best know for his basic strum.  Having learned from his book, starting 40 years ago, and done his basic strum ever since, I have come to appreciate how versatile it is. Five years ago I began to do further research on Pete's playing styles which led to developing a one-man show called "Pete: The Songs and Time of Pete Seeger" - sites.google.com/site/petesong...imes/home .  I learned that when Pete's father took him at age 17 to Asheville, NC in 1936  to see the 9th Annual Mountain Music and Dance Festival organized by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, this was where Peter first saw the five string banjo played, by Lunsford and Samantha Bumgarner, They were both from the Asheville area and both  played in an up-picking style, not in the down-picking, clawhammer style.  What I have also just learned from my recent trip to Asheville is that, according to one current author/banjo player from the area,  up-picking was the far more common playing style of banjo in the Asheville area back then.  Thus, when Pete saw the banjo played for the first time by two masters of the regional up-picking style, it changed his life.  Pete apparently assumed that what he first saw in Asheville was how the banjo was to be played and he began to adopt this style as the model for what became his basic strum. If you can find the very few recording of Bumgarner on YouTube and you listen closely, I think you will hear the seeds of Pete's basic strum.  When I first heard her banjo playing, I was amazed - "That's Pete's strum!" I said to myself.

I watched both Pete's and Holcomb's versions of "Little Birdie" that Jim posted - Thanks, they were great.  To my ears and eyes, Pete starts the opening in clawhammer and then seamlessly switches to his fast, basic strum for the verses, and then switches back to clawhammer on the breaks.  Holcomb, I believe, actually is doing up-picking and some single string work with his right index finger, while his other fingers percussively tap the banjo head on each stroke.  The best angle to see this is when the camera is looking down the neck and I believe I see him up-picking with the right index finger.  What do others think?

Thanks,

Peter

janolov - Posted - 09/08/2015:  22:41:28

I think some of the difference is much similar to the difference between four stroke engine and two stroke engine. When playing a "bum-pa-di-ty" you have to move the hand downwards twice and upwards twice, while in in up-picking you only have to move the hand downwards once and upward once. It is the same as four-stroke engine (down-up-down-up in one ignistion cycle) and two-stroke (down-up in one ignition cycle). Even if the two-stoke is simpler the four-stroke have been the most common - both in OT banjo and engines. 

Neil Allen - Posted - 09/09/2015:  04:51:12

I started playing around with this style after talking to a guy in a music shop who said he did it that way because he couldn't get a decent melody note with clawhammer without a pick, and he didn't like picks.

After some experimentation, it seemed to me that this style would be fine for backing up songs or a more chordal approach to playing, but for a more "round peak" style with a driving rhythm and a lot of drop thumb, I just don't see how you would do it because the thumb and finger are moving in opposite directions rather than as a unit in the same direction as in clawhammer.

Perhaps someone who plays this style would care to comment on whether my impression, based only on limited experimentation, is correct.

Jim Yates - Posted - 09/09/2015:  06:07:22

Neil, I agree that down picking seems to have a more driving rhythm, but I found, though I don't do much up-picking any more, that drop thumb is easier when up-picking. If this sliver of memory serves me correctly, I believe Pete introduces drop thumb, which he calls "double thumbing" using an up-picked version of Skip To My Lou.

youtube.com/watch?v=Rrfs2uaGQag

Peter, I thought that Pete stayed with down-picking all the way through, but you may be right.  Roscoe definitely did up-picking all the way through.

He also mentioned in his book that the playing of Samantha Bumgarner was what inspired him to play the banjo.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/09/2015:  06:55:02

Quote from Jim Yates:

...

Peter, I thought that Pete stayed with down-picking all the way through, but you may be right.  Roscoe definitely did up-picking all the way through.

 

---

I just watched the clip again (having already seen it many times) and I am certain, from both the sound and from watching his hand motion on those spots where you can see it, that Pete does down-picking all the way through.

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 09/09/2015 06:56:13

Neil Allen - Posted - 09/09/2015:  07:00:27

That was the impression I had, despite the fact that he started out teaching the up-picking style, although I skimmed through the video very quickly.

hamishpink - Posted - 09/09/2015:  10:24:56

Neil

All of the finger picking styles - 2 Finger Thumb Lead, 2 Finger Index Lead and 3 finger all use the opposing thumb and finger movement. Moving in and out of up-picking into drop thumb, double thumbing and finger picking is a natural and straight forward step - far easier to do than it sounds and without any loss of speed or control. It makes for a more versatile, flexible and interesting playing style.

rendesvous1840 - Posted - 09/09/2015:  16:57:50

There are advantages and disadvantages to all styles of playing. My recommendation is to learn any that interest you, and see where you prefer each. I tend to use up picking more than clawhammer in 3/4 time, though I also use two or 3 finger for waltzes. Sometimes I use up picking for quieter or slower songs, as I feel it suits the mood better. But this is all personal preference, of which we all have our own. In his book, Pete never claimed any one style to be his favorite, he learned from a lot of people and used a number of styles as he saw fit.

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 09/09/2015:  19:59:17

Although they are written in the same rhythm, and technically the rhythm is the same, there is actually a real ,difference in rhythm between Seeger style picking and frailing - even simple frailing without Double Thumb, or Drop Thumb.

The right hand is essentially still in Seeger picking. The fingers move, but the hand does not - except when changing strings or executing a flourish - like unwinding the fingers one at a time on the "Did" stroke - etc. (note - the hand is not completely still for many, but this has more to do with all the decorations that one develops from watching a master - like Pete Himself - play.

In Frailing, the entire hand actually creates the strokes while the fingers do not move at all. Even the thumb moves very little. The only motion within the hand is adjusting the thumb to finger distance as needed to hit the desired string.

Some people do play with the hand just as still as in Up Picking. They end up with a much closer rhythm to Up Picking. This situation has been a result of so many people learning frailing from Pete Seeger's book. The fact that many come from a guitar background and can pick up the basin Strum at 2 in the afternoon, and be using it on stage that evening at 8. Once they have the "Basic Strum" working they simply apply with a downward first stroke. Instant clawhammer, but this method does not produce anyway near the drive acquired by moving from the elbow (or even the wrist).

This is the real problem with book larnin instead of face to face lessons with a real clawhammerer. Too many people have never seen clawhammer played at close range, or have watched other people who learned without ever seeing it really done, so the mistake gets carried to the next generation. It is only now, with so many examples of real clawing available that the situation is slowly beginning to change.

Still I've had people say to me "I think you have to learn clawhammer wrong, in order to learn it right." In other words, they first do downstroke Seeger Strumming, then later when they get out among real clawers, they pick up on the lack of drive and change their stroke. I suspect a lot of this happens subliminally, as I've seen people teaching other people with the hand still and the movement from the fingers even while their own playing is perfect. I always taught it right the first time, and it didn't strike me as a problem.

I should say the few beginners I taught got it right the first time, but the fact is, most of my banjo students already downpicked. They learned from the Seeger book or by taking lessons from one of the many who learned from Seeger's book and never realized there was a problem in learning without a teacher who actually knows the difference.

reese158 - Posted - 09/10/2015:  07:34:45

From “How to Play the Five-String Banjo” by Peter Seeger:

 On “the Basic Strum”:

 “Use the whole wrist, so it’s not just a finger motion.” p.7

“In any case, the whole wrist turns, not just the finger.” p.7

 On Frailing:

 “Don’t just flip your fingers out; use the whole forearm.” p.30

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 09/10/2015:  09:35:07

And therein lies the problem.

quote from the Pete Seeger book:

On Frailing:

 “Don’t just flip your fingers out; use the whole forearm.” p.30

First off, quick sentences like this don't really explain the frailing process. They end up putting students on the wrong track.

Secondly - The fingers are not "flipped out." at all. Frailing is an arm motion and the fingers should not move in relationship to the hand

reese158 - Posted - 09/10/2015:  10:01:10

As we both know, this is not the ONLY sentence Pete uses to describe frailing, but it does show that he taught it as generating from the elbow, which clearly differentiates it from the basic strum. Back in the days before there was a Youtube or a Banjo Hangout, I was able to read this sentence and know there was a difference between how one frails and how one plays the basic strum.

As the other quotes illustrate, as Pete taught the basic strum, it is quite different from:

"The right hand is essentially still in Seeger picking. The fingers move, but the hand does not"

janolov - Posted - 09/10/2015:  10:51:04

Here is how Pete demonstrate the basic strum: youtube.com/watch?v=Rrfs2uaGQag

I don't see that the hand is essentially still, except when he is double thumbing.

Joe Connor - Posted - 09/10/2015:  12:42:04

The problem was that many of us who learned the banjo in the pre-Internet and pre-video days learned frailing without ever having seen someone play that style up close. We had books and we had record albums, but we had no visual resources. Now, there are all kinds of videos where you can get a close-up view of an accomplished frailer demonstrating the proper technique. Those of us of a certain age are very jealous because I suspect we all spent as much time unlearning bad habits as we did learning to play in the first place. 

John Gribble - Posted - 09/14/2015:  19:15:13

quote:

---

Originally posted by oldwoodchuckb

 

And therein lies the problem.

quote from the Pete Seeger book:

On Frailing:

 “Don’t just flip your fingers out; use the whole forearm.” p.30

First off, quick sentences like this don't really explain the frailing process. They end up putting students on the wrong track.

Secondly - The fingers are not "flipped out." at all. Frailing is an arm motion and the fingers should not move in relationship to the hand

---

Actually, it explained it rather well for me. With that bit of information I got it down and I've been doing an adequate job of it for over fifty years now.

I use the up-picking "Seeger-style" when I'm playing behind someone else, adding color. It is easier for me to play lightly that way. I can also play a lot faster with it, though never have the need for that much speed any more. The "two-stroke/four-stroke" analogy is perfect. 

But 95% of my banjo-playing is clawhammer/frailing. I like the drive of it.

Edited by - John Gribble on 09/14/2015 19:30:34

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 09/15/2015:  15:43:21

John,

I used to up-pick song accompaniment, sometimes even switching to clawhammer for a break. I preferred up-picking behind songs, as a less intrusive sound. Carpal tunnel and arthritis put an end to that. I'm just like Uncle Dave Macon (if you were to remove all his talent) age has reduced my options on the banjo (and the guitar). Up picking gets painful rather quickly, four note chords are now very scarce in my playing, but I can still claw away for a couple hours - if I wear my hand brace.

I've learned to play just the barest of single string melodies under singing - and at a relatively low volume. It works for me.

Edited by - oldwoodchuckb on 09/15/2015 15:46:48

banjopogo - Posted - 09/16/2015:  10:38:39

It's been a long time since I used it, but here's my recollection:

I started out with the Pete Seeger book.  The frailing strum (aka "bump-ditty") came hard for me- took me 3 months to "get".

Once I got it, since I'm a singer, liked folk songs, but came along a little too late to get into the folk boom, I just camped out on using the banjo for song accompaniment.  I noticed the up-picking strum in the book, tried it, and liked it for slower, mellower songs.  It seems to allow different phrasing than bump-ditty.  I'm not going to say MORE phrasing possibilities- I rather think it's flexible in different directions.

banjopogo - Posted - 09/16/2015:  10:50:12

I intended to say: "camped out on it for about a year before going on to trying to play clawhammer melodies."

 

JonL - Posted - 09/17/2015:  06:24:51

I will switch from frailing or clawing to the basic strum when I need to go really fast. Unlike pure down-stroke, every motion you make is a playing one, that's the added efficiency that makes the additional speed possible. "Galloping" mentioned above is a great description of the feel. 

I also use a variation to do a roll-like move: finger down -> thumb pluck -> finger up

Joe Connor - Posted - 09/17/2015:  08:34:10

For a real good example of the galloping effect of frailing,  listen to Pete (especially the intro) and the Weavers on Darling Corey.

youtube.com/watch?v=-KIW36rHq3c

Here's a good example of Pete combining up-picking and some nifty single-string work, again with the Weavers. (Don't overlook Fred Hellerman's flashy flat-picking either)

youtube.com/watch?v=QZ5v651bQ1o

mwc9725e - Posted - 09/17/2015:  11:01:30

quote:

---

Originally posted by janolov

 

Here is how Pete demonstrate the basic strum: youtube.com/watch?v=Rrfs2uaGQag

I don't see that the hand is essentially still, except when he is double thumbing.

---

That's what I think, too. I don't understand why some think he doesn't frail down after the initial up-pick. It seems to me that he's doing bum-ditty, except the first note, "bum",  is picked upward. That's also what I understood from his book a few years ago. Have I mis-interpreted something?

Jim Yates - Posted - 09/17/2015:  11:55:08

quote:

---

Originally posted by mwc9725e

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by janolov

 

Here is how Pete demonstrate the basic strum: youtube.com/watch?v=Rrfs2uaGQag

I don't see that the hand is essentially still, except when he is double thumbing.

---

That's what I think, too. I don't understand why some think he doesn't frail down after the initial up-pick. It seems to me that he's doing bum-ditty, except the first note, "bum",  is picked upward. That's also what I understood from his book a few years ago. Have I mis-interpreted something?

---

He certainly does down-pick after the initial up-pick.  I don't think anyone is denying that Bill.  I wouldn't call it a "frail", since frailing indicates all down-picking.  The basic up-picking stroke is up on the "1", down on the "2" and thumb on the "&", giving a bum-ditty strum. 

When a drop thumb is used, it's up on the "1", thumb on the "&", up on the "2" and thumb on the "&".

mwc9725e - Posted - 09/17/2015:  12:58:03

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jim Yates

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mwc9725e

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by janolov

 

Here is how Pete demonstrate the basic strum: youtube.com/watch?v=Rrfs2uaGQag

I don't see that the hand is essentially still, except when he is double thumbing.

---

That's what I think, too. I don't understand why some think he doesn't frail down after the initial up-pick. It seems to me that he's doing bum-ditty, except the first note, "bum",  is picked upward. That's also what I understood from his book a few years ago. Have I mis-interpreted something?

---

He certainly does down-pick after the initial up-pick.  I don't think anyone is denying that Bill.  I wouldn't call it a "frail", since frailing indicates all down-picking.  The basic up-picking stroke is up on the "1", down on the "2" and thumb on the "&", giving a bum-ditty strum. 

When a drop thumb is used, it's up on the "1", thumb on the "&", up on the "2" and thumb on the "&".

---

Yes, I brought that up because someone here posted that Seeger picked up, then brushed up on the "dit" part. That's my iinterpretation and memory of what was said, I don't want to put exact words in someone else's mouth.  To me, the up, brush, thumb for the "bum ditty" would be what's called 2-finger up-picking style.