The Early Minstrel Banjo: Technique and Repertoire

Deep and wide, but certainly not a simple tune book or tutor I am delighted with this book. I was already somewhat familiar with the history, the music, and the times, and I am incessantly curious - so this was a great choice for me. Once the author got interested in the subject, he's stuck with it like a dog and a bone, collecting informa. The Early Minstrel Banjo I bought this book and am totally lost. It clearly has huge potential but why are the tunings of each piece not mentioned? Every tab I have ever seen describes how the banjo is to be tuned for that particular piece such as, "gDGBD" being the most common. However these are not any. Round Wound said The Minstrel Bible. This is a great book. There is one tune to a page, so it's nice and big and easy to see the tab. The tab isn't all messed up with ornaments. Occaisionally, there is a little dot over a note that tells you that that note is played with the index finger. If there's ever doubt about

Featuring more than 65 classic songs, this interesting book teaches how to play the minstrel banjo like players who were part of various popular troupes in 1865. The book includes: a short history of the banjo in the US in the antebellum period, including the origins of the minstrel show; info on the construction of minstrel banjos, evolution of the lower-pitched minstrel banjo tunings, and idiomatic techniques peculiar to the minstrel banjo; chapters on each of the seven major banjo methods published through the end of the Civil War; songs from each method in banjo tablature, many available first time; info on how to arrange songs for the minstrel banjo; a reference list of contemporary gut and nylon string gauges approximating historical banjo string tensions in common usage during the antebellum period (for those Civil War re-enactors who wish to achieve that old-time "minstrel banjo" sound); and an extensive cross-reference list of minstrel banjo song titles found in the major antebellum banjo methods.. (Banjo)