Banjo for Dummies [With CD-ROM]

A very easy to read and learn from book, layed out in a logical format but allows for chapter skipping if you have that particular knowledge. To sum up An easy to read, clear, concise informative book worth the money.

I'm a beginner and found this book very helpful. It covers everything you could want to know about banjos, from tips on purchasing one to playing every thing. I am delighted with this purchase and would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn to play this instrument.

my daughter bought me this for Christmas as kinda of a joke. I have been a musician for 40 years and play a variety of stringed instruments and I found this book a great help in learning some of the rolls and such that most banjo players use. Easy to understand and lots of chord charts.

Banjo for Dummies is a very good do it yourself book. Most of the directions are easily followed and implemented. The CD is helpful, but could be improved by looping each track, or by instructing the reader how to loop the sound track. A DVD would have been helpful also.

For someone coming out of the 4- string banjo styles (Jazz Tenor and plectrum banjos) with quite some knowledge of setting up and playing the banjo, it is hard to find fault with anything written in this book. What I already knew is stated clearly and simply, and the stuff i didn't is accessible and of direct benefit for playing the five-string banjo... You even get to understand where the different styles tie in together. Good stuff!!

A little personal background: I've been playing the 5-string banjo since 1979. Started with Scruggs-style Bluegrass, dabbled with Melodics, discovered the joy of Clawhammer (and antique banjos) and then found my `calling' in Classic style (1870-1920). Lately I've been playing a lot of the very earliest ("Minstrel") style. Yes, I also play some Tenor... I bought this book because I'm an inveterate banjo-tutor collector; part of this is because I just love all things banjo and part is that I've always wanted to find the "perfect" banjo tutor. I've been reading thru it for a week now, playing some of the examples, etc. (esp. the Minstrel and Classic stuff, as that's what I've been playing mostly of late). I'm very impressed! I guess I can't really say what I expected of this book. I've had a couple of the computer related ones over the years and, quite frankly, they didn't help me out much. A lot of that was pure 'lack of interest' in the subject matter (boss sez, you gotta learn Mickysoft XXXX but we're not going to really use it...). Of course, there's the negative cachet of "For Dummies"...even though I qualify when it comes to the computer. Still, I expect great things from great banjoists and the track record is a tough one to live up to. Tony T. has all those great banjo books out there, Sonny O. builds awesome banjos, Bill K. makes them tuner things, Alan M. teaches college for gawd sakes. What will poor Bill E. come up with? I can tell you in quite succinct terms: he's come up with a great book. The really scary part is that he's come up with a great book that deals with 5-string playing across the board...Minstrel, Classic, Clawhammer, Scruggs, Melodic, Single-string...its all there, clearly and cleanly discussed, excellent examples and well thought out progressions from simple to complex...and there's a CD included that is jam-packed with slowly and clearly played examples. To cap that, he covers choosing a banjo (and then upgrading later on), setting it up, buying strings, bridges, tuners. travelling with a banjo, etc, etc,...all up to date, web links included. How cool is that? No, it ain't the alpha/omega of banjo books and it doesn't cover everything you ever wanted to know about XXX style. However, it provides an awesome introduction into the world of the 5-string banjo. Quirks: interestingly, he has chosen to interlace the clawhammer and three-finger basic instruction. It was disconcerting at first for me to be playing thru the CH tab for "Red River Valley" and then look at the next page where it starts again...to find out it is bluegrass tab (after I'd tried to CH it). Well, that's really my fault for not READING along and just grabbing tab out of the book. Once I had figured that out, I found it really interesting to play the two versions back to back. Makes you think about how the styles are laid around the same framework. Another quirk (for the OFs like myself) is that the tab is quite small. This is not to say that