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Joff and his excellent trio with Mike Pryor and Dave Brown are doing two concerts you might be interested in. The first one is at Didmarton Bluegrass Festival in Kemble, Gloucestershire.  They are playing the main stage at 1pm on Saturday 2nd September.  If you’ve never been to Didmarton before, this is the UK’s premier bluegrass festival with some great bands to see, lots of spontaneous picking sessions and a jam round the campfire until the small hours.  This is Joff’s favourite festival, he went to the very first one in 1989! The trio are also doing an intimate evening at Pri ..read more

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How to build speed playing the banjo. Hearing a banjo played fast, Bluegrass style, is one of the most exciting sounds in all of music. There’s just so many notes pouring out of the instrument, it’s dazzling. Many people who start learning to play the banjo aspire to play like this. You might think it’s impossible, but deep down inside you know you’d love to be able to play like that! In this article we’re going to talk about all the factors that go into making that fantastic fingerpicking Bluegrass banjo sound, and give you a few tips on how you can achieve it. How can people play the banjo s ..read more

Please allow the video 5-10 seconds to fully load. What are picks? Picks are little metal or plastic things you wear on the tips of your fingers and thumbs to help you play the banjo more easily. There’s a lot of good reasons to wear picks. You will get more power and a better sound. It’s also easier to play fast whilst wearing picks. Some people lack confidence when they first start playing and tend to play very quietly. Picks will help you play louder so you will feel more confident. Getting used to picks It takes a little while to get used to playing with picks when you first start, so ma ..read more

The banjo is one of the most fun instruments to play. A favourite of musicians for years, this versatile instrument is used across a wide variety of music from the twanging country for which it is most well-known, to even finding its way into modern pop and rock tracks. Are you think of learning how to play banjo? Here are some of the great reasons why you should! An Instrument That’s Easy to Play One of the best reasons to learn the banjo is it is one of the most natural string instruments to play. Its standard 5-string set-up is much easier to get to grips with than its 6-stringed brothers l ..read more

Are you looking to take up a new instrument? Then you have come to the right place as the banjo is a fantastic choice for anyone looking for a new hobby! The banjo is a magnificent instrument to play and you may be thinking about all of the different, amazing songs that you will be able to learn to play on it. However, before we get to all of that, one of the first things that you will need to do is learn how to tune your banjo. Just like a guitar, different banjo songs will require you to tune your banjo differently, so if you want to make sure that you banjo sounds amazing when playing for f ..read more