Progressive Pieces for Clawhammer Banjo

After the Civil War, the up picking finger style of playing the 5-string banjo came into vogue – eventually finding its way into the Victorian parlor and, later, college glee and music clubs. The original down picking style didn’t entirely die out, because throughout the reaminder of the 19th Century, new methods for the banjo often included a number of songs in the older two-finger banjo style of performance. Perhaps the most intricate set of songs to appear in the original banjo style were these 34 progressive pieces found in Frank B. Converse’s Analytical Banjo Method from 1887. Those songs, presented in this book for clawhammer banjo, offer a nice mix of banjo characteristic pieces, medleys and new compositions from Converse.