Tehmina.org

Making ghee

Tehmina Goskar — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:48:06 +0000

Here is how I made ghee, or clarified butter, from good quality unsalted Cornish butter made by Trewithen Dairy, near Lostwithiel in Cornwall. Sometimes mass-produced ghee that you get in those vicious cans taste a little rancid and top-quality ghee can cost a lot of money. For example, a small jar (less than 1lb or 450g) at my local health shop cost £9.53 ! I bought the butter for this ghee for £3.18 (£1.59 a pack).

As well as Indian cookery you can use ghee in breads, cakes, as a base for sauces (particularly for shellfish) and more.

It is a very simple process that just requires a close eye to ensure you reach the clarification stage and don’t over boil the butter. In all it took less than 40 minutes from start to jarring up.

This slide show explains the process (as I did it) but the basic principle is to boil butter gently in a heavy-based pan over a medium heat. I used 500g (2x 250g packs).

As it melts and then begins to simmer a foam or scum will float to the top. Use a clean metal spoon to skim this off.

Milk solids will form and sink to the bottom. It is at the stage that no more milk solids are sinking to the bottom and the butter oil is glossy and gives a beautiful scent of butterscotch that it is ready.

Take off the heat and heave a couple of thorough clean and dry jars ready.

Line a metal strainer with muslin. It might be useful to get someone to help you at this stage. I placed a jam funnel in the jar first and the strainer on top and got someone to hold it steady. Gently pour in the ghee.

The milk solids and residue will be trapped in the strainer.

Wipe up any spills and leave to cool. The golden butter oil will slowly set solid.

When set after a few hours, seal jars with a moistened cellophane disc (used in jam preserving–moist side UP) and a rubber band and screw on the lid tight.

Store in a cool dark place. It will last a few months if kept in these conditions. If you don’t have a cool place in your house, store in the fridge.

Making paneer

Tehmina Goskar — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 23:24:48 +0000

Last week I attempted my first home cheese by making paneer (Indian cottage cheese) from Cornish whole milk.

3 litres whole milk
c.80ml lemon juice
1 square muslin or cheese cloth (c.30cm sq.)

In a heavy-bottomed non-stick pan gently bring the milk to a boil.

As it starts to break bubbles on the surface, stir gently and gradually add the lemon juice. Stir to incorporate the lemon juice into the milk as it continues to boil.

The bright white curds and greenish whey should start separating. When this has happened take it off the heat.

Place the muslin over a colander in a clean sink or large bowl, or use a large sieve like I did.

Carefully pour the curds into the muslin. Beware of the steam as it can scald you.

Draw the muslin together by bringing the corners of the square together and twist so the curds form a ball in the cloth. At this stage I tied it tightly with string and let it rest in the sieve to drain further. The key is to lose as much of the whey as possible.

To drain it further you need to place the cheese under pressure. There are several ways you can do this. I placed the ball in a tray with a piece of greaseproof paper/baking parchment on top to keep it clean when placing weights on top. I used a heavy stoneware bowl into which I placed a tub of baking beans and a few bags of rice. To ensure good drainage you could also place the cheese on top of a flat surface with holes in it like a steamer accessory or oven pizza tray and then place weights on top. Marble or stone mortars are also good as heavy weights. Anything that will place even pressure over the ball.

Leave under pressure for 2-3 hours. Then chill in the fridge or use straight away by cutting it into cubes.

I made mutter paneer from some of the cheese by marinated in chilli, garlic and ginger and tandoor masala and lightly frying with onions, tomatoes and peas. Serving with brown basmati rice and a bit of yoghurt. The rest I grilled with the same masala and ate them on their own as tasty morsels.

Often homemade paneer falls apart on cooking so I think it will take a few attempts to make sure that all the excess moisture is removed from the cheese during the draining and pressing stages.

Making this simple cheese was a fun and really satisfying experience. Not only does it make much tastier paneer than you get in shops but you will be really pleased with yourself that you managed to convert milk and lemon juice into something so nutritious and delicious.

Learning the 5-string banjo pt 6: Overcoming practice blues

Tehmina Goskar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:56:38 +0000

Practising 6 months on

I have now had my banjo six months and recently reached a bit of a plateau in my performance and improvement. Part of this was caused by having to move home during which time my practice time went out of the window and part of it was caused by a sudden lack of direction in my practice. I had learnt a few tunes and can now sight read from tab really quickly. I want to remain focused on getting tunes well played and as near on perfect as I can so I have resisted learning more new tunes but I found my progress in my current repertoire was almost nil.

The problems I was/am experiencing are shared by other beginners, as evidenced recently on Banjo Hangout’s forums. My rhythm was all over the place, I wasn’t hitting my left hand chords and notes cleanly and yes, I am still bumping the drum head with my thumb pick. Last week I finally got back into the swing of practice, and this time practising for 40mins to an hour each time, and I attempt to do this daily, so I feel like I am back on track. I also reintroduced beating out the tempo with my foot, and or a metronome. And I re-watched the videos that go along with my tutorial book, Janet Davis’s You Can Teach Yourself Banjo. I have also started practising plain rolls at the start of each practice again–this is something I stopped doing because I found it boring. Now I find it is helping me keep in time so that in the middle of Cripple Creek I can now keep pace with a beating foot or metronome, rather than it sound like I was launching into a completely new tune.

So I am slowly overcoming my practice blues and I can now play my key tunes: Bile Dem Cabbage Down, Cripple Creek (Scruggs style and melodic) and Blackberry Blossom through perfectly at least every fifth time… To make sure I don’t get so bored of these tunes I never want to hear them again I am also continuing to learn Cumberland Gap. However, I am finding that the pleasure I am getting in perfecting the previous tunes enough to prevent me from wandering off into pastures new before putting the others to bed.

My aim is to record a medley of these beginner arrangement tunes to prove to myself that I really can teach myself banjo…

Learning the 5-string banjo pt 5: My picking right hand

Tehmina Goskar — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:15:45 +0000

Banjo picks

I have long promised a post on my experience with picks and what I am doing, or not doing, to improve my right hand technique.

My banjo came with three standard picks. Two silver nickel picks made by Dunlop and one standard (giant) plastic thumb pick. There is an awful lot of information on picks and picking and so any beginner is sure to be a bit confused if they are seeking advice. I just want to outline my experience here in case it helps or provides comparison for others.

Basically I hated the picks. I followed Janet Davis’s good advice on wearing them, shaping them to your finger and moulding them until they felt comfortable but these things that looked like a torturer’s accessories were just not sitting well with me. I had figured out the art of anchoring a finger to the drum head to at least get the right position but my lack of sensitivity when plucking drove me mad. I hit the head, two strings at once, missed strings and lost good position as my right hand tensed up really quickly.

The good folks at Banjo Hang Out came to my rescue again when I looked up how other people solved the problem of getting used to picks. I learnt a lot about materials and gauges or thickness of the metal finger picks. My set were medium gauge (0.025) and were theoretically adjustable. Janet Davis has a good overview of picks on her site and if you’re in the US you can buy from her online store. I learnt that beginners often get on better with thinner picks, that picks can come in different sizes and women with smaller fingers often prefer to get a small size, and that silver nickel and the alternative, brass, produce different tones. One excellent piece of advice was to try out several sets as they’re not too expensive until you find a set that works. Also, to not give up on picks so easily (although one person advised heading over go the clawhammer family and abandon picking altogether–I of course want to do both). Read the discussion in the Beginners’ Bluegrass Forum on BHO.

After reading up more on different makes of picks, from pricey ones that have special patents attached to them to ones that produce a range of sizes I decided to go for the following and headed over to the website of Eagle Music whose fast and reasonable mail order service is a real asset for banjo players in the UK:

A pair of small size brass split band ProPik finger picks
An adjustable ProPik thumb pick
A pair of adjustable silver nickel 0.013 Dunlop finger picks–the thinnest they make
A standard Dunlop plastic thumb pick

I started off playing with the small brass picks. I got on well with these as they fitted neatly and their split bands made them a comfortable wear. However after a few weeks of practising I noticed that the brass surface slid off the strings as they got shinier through wear, or it could have just been my imagination or bad technique. Whatever it was I was finding them less satisfactory after this time and so changed over to my ultra thin Dunlops. I was much braver with adjusting these and have done so several times, just with my hands. I have since found these much more agreeable, which is just as well, as during my recent house move I lost one of my brass picks! I think my fingers have generally got used to wearing picks, thanks to the comfort of the brass ProPiks habituating me to them.

I haven’t settled on a favourite thumb pick and use both interchangeably at the moment.

So, am I now a champion picker? No, of course not. I still hit the head and the occasional duff string. However my right hand dexterity is improving with each practice. But my thumb remains the main problem. I seem unable to consistently strike the string in a clean downwards motion at right-angles to the string. Consequently, particularly when trying to pick up speed, I often hit the head of the banjo with its point. Returning to the BHO forums a brilliant suggestion was made. Why not try and stick a pad of sticky labels or post-it notes where my thumb goes and keep reducing its thickness until I have trained my hand and thumb to stop hitting the head and strike the string properly. I am about to try this, having just found a small pad that might work.

Other than that I have had a big break in practice owing to moving and I am slowly persevering with, perfecting and speeding up Cripple Creek, including its melodic version which I love most, and learning Blackberry Blossom and Cumberland Gap as I delve into the new world of proper endings. I have also pre-emptively bought a copy of Wayne Erbsen’s Clawhammer for the Complete Ignoramus…

Learning the 5-string banjo pt 4: You can teach yourself banjo by Janet Davis

Tehmina Goskar — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:40:25 +0000

Learning with Janet Davis

It’s been about two months since I first started practising my banjo. I mentioned in an early post how I chose what to start learning. After taking some advice from the good folk at Banjo Hangout I decided to go for Janet Davis’s You Can Teach Yourself Banjo, book and DVD. For UK-based budding pickers, check out Amazon.co.uk for a bargain at the time of writing.

The combination of beginner’s guide and DVD is invaluable to anyone starting out without the benefit of a tutor or playing group. It would have been overwhelming for all the subtleties and tips you can find elsewhere to be included in this book and DVD so you may find yourself, like I did, with questions I wanted answered, such as ‘at what angle should I be aiming for to pick the string?’ Observation is key and the clear footage on the DVD really helps to emulate good posture and positions. The book really works because it is simply written and not full of assumptions about levels of knowledge. Lesson 1 is the ideal primer for those who haven’t come across tablature (tab) before (like me), or who haven’t tuned an instrument before and the basics of what the left and right hand does in the Scruggs style of Bluegrass, three-finger picking.

Taking time to learn the drills

My temptation was to go immediately to the first lesson which taught me a tune, but I am glad I didn’t. It doesn’t take long to read through the introductory lessons and then start with the simple ‘drills’, i.e. roll patterns and laying down the basic chords of C and D7, and alternating these with open G (note: getting C down was very awkward to begin with but now I don’t think about it so it does come with time). The introductory lessons on the DVD reinforces what you read in the book. I don’t think it matters which way around you approach it and now I alternate between the DVD and book at will depending on what I want to do. I find myself flicking back and forth too and re-reading and re-watching parts of the DVD. This has really made me feel at home with these self-taught guides and also slowed me down so I don’t rush through it and start practising mistakes.

Identifying my milestone

Janet Davis You Can Teach Yourself Banjo book

Flicking through the book I identified my first milestone. I wanted to be able to play the simple arrangement of Cripple Creek on page 28 (lesson 14). I have already described my method of practice so I won’t repeat that stuff here. Each lesson that Janet Davis has set out has a clear goal. In between there are some extra tunes to learn, for example, lessons 7 and 8 take you through two tunes to help you with the very well-used forward-reverse roll (Worried Man Blues and Mountain Dew).

Building up to the Cripple Creek milestone

Apart from the chord and roll pattern drills, I started out with Bile Dem Cabbage Down (lesson 4, pp. 14-15). I spent ages on this lesson. I really wanted to nail the tune and get my fingers used to the forward roll pattern and experiment with building speed after I had the notes down. Compared to many other musicians, I am probably relatively slow in getting to the ‘click’ stage. I know my goal and I have a good ear so I know what good, in-time music should sound like, but it takes me a while to assimilate it. I kept playing it slow to get both the ‘machine-gun’ rhythm right and fluidity throughout the tune. I still return to Bile Dem Cabbage Down now to get it even better.

I spent some more time with the three versions of The Old Gray Goose (lessons 5-6, pp. 16-17) but not as long as the cabbage tune. However I did find it useful to hear and watch what people had done with these tunes on YouTube. These lessons were particularly useful in learning different variations of the same song.

I spent less time on lessons 9-10 (pp. 20-21) as I was able to achieve the lesson goals more quickly (playing the cabbage song with the backward roll (lesson 9) and using the mixed roll in Good Night Ladies (lesson 10)). By this time I was desperate to get onto the slides, pull-offs and hammers! Who wouldn’t!

Putting Cripple Creek back together again

Janet Davis You Can Teach Yourself Banjo DVD

Janet Davis builds you up slowly to Cripple Creek by taking you through three major elements of left-hand technique (lessons 11-13, pp. 21-15). With these I found the DVD accompaniment indispensable. I watched and rewound, watched and rewound. The main thing I wanted to get right was the rhythm that these left-hand techniques introduce into the tunes. Lesson 14 on Cripple Creek itself takes you through both the parts, part A and part B. The DVD again was vital to get both the technique and the rhythm right. The split screen shows clearly what each hand should be doing at slow speed and at full speed. Here I found a full-on 3 hour practice session really useful. I could replay, copy, rewind, copy, break it down into the smallest of parts to get it right.

Then I played it all the way through slowly. I could tell my rhythm was not right as I was concentrating hard on my left hand and making sure my slides, hammers and pull-offs could be heard. It’s taken two to three subsequent shorter sessions for it finally to ‘click’ (that was this evening) and now I can happily say that I can play it perfectly (most of the time) and am now going to dwell on picking up some speed.

There are a lot of useful tips in the notes

Many of Janet Davis’s really useful tips are in notes at the bottom of each page. They are easy to miss but they are really handy. She obviously has a lot of experience in teaching and these notes must be a culmination of all the questions and problems her students have repeatedly come across.

So I have had a lot of fun with Janet Davis so far. I have now taken a sneak peak at the rest of the book and watched the rest of the DVD all the way through to see what is in store.

Learning the 5-string banjo pt 3: My banjo practice

Tehmina Goskar — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 20:31:55 +0000

Banjo practice, basic chords

The best pleasure of learning a new instrument is actually beholding the thing itself. Even as a total beginner it was very important for me to choose an instrument I would love holding, looking at and appreciating its finer details. And this is a great motivator for practice.

My banjo practices are irregular at the moment. Work pressures and actually being alert enough to practice in the evenings has meant that I tend to grab 40 minutes here and there. For me, 40 minutes of practice in any one session seems to be about right. I didn’t plan it this way, it just happened. I hear of others who practise all day or otherwise for several hours each week. I do hope to increase my practice time soon, however. And the craving is doing wonders for my motivation! One of the reasons I am getting on well with Janet Davis’s You Can Teach Yourself Banjo is because the lessons are focused and bite-sized.

Tuning the banjo

Although I am not in a regular routine yet I do have particular aims for my practice session. Before a string is twanged, however, I always check the banjo is in tune. I generally do this by ear but often check it with the clip-on electronic tuner I got with my banjo.

Practising the mixed roll

I want to perfect the tunes I learn and / or perfect a particular technique. This has meant that many of my practice sessions have been quite repetitive but I have not felt frustrated. Learning the forward roll, for example, I picked up two basic tunes, ‘Bile dem cabbage down’ and ‘Old Grey Goose’. I am still practising both at each session to pick up more speed and accuracy. Quite often I know I am not practising well if I start slipping up by hitting bum notes or picking poorly. I then either stop or slow right down. I find it much more satisfying to get a few perfect run-throughs at a slower speed than a ropey faster one.

I am now trying to perfect variations in the rolls by trying out different picking pattern drills. This makes me feel more confident about learning the next few tunes in my tutorial book. The other thing I am trying to perfect is getting chords down freely and seamlessly. My main problem here is my wandering index finger which just seems to rise rather than stay hovering over the strings for my next move!

Getting chords down

Finally, I am very conscious of my physical posture and my hand positions. Apart from getting my left hand fingers to behave on the fretboard I am trying to train my picking hand not to tense up and collapse. I use my ring finger to anchor my hand to the drum head, although I know others use their little finger (pinkie).

Perfecting banjo posture

My picking (right) hand is my biggest problem at the moment. It easily tenses up causing me to mis-hit strings or hitting the head with my picks. In fact getting on with picks is going to be the subject of a whole different blog post! I also end up sometimes with a droop, losing the approximate ‘ten to two’ position when holding the banjo.

I like my practices to end with as near a perfect rendition of the tunes I am learning (only the two I have already mentioned at the moment in addition to a couple of variations). I have also begun just to jam and improvise. In particular I know I want to learn clawhammer style also and so just bang out some ‘bum ditties’ using the basic chord patterns I have learnt.

Wiping down the banjo

Before my banjo goes back into the case I wipe it down with a microfibre cloth paying attention to the fretboard where I have been playing, neck and the steel rim of the drum head.

Learning the 5-string banjo pt 2: Choosing what to learn

Tehmina Goskar — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:20:37 +0000

Starting to learn the banjo

You can have a lot of fun researching, choosing and then buying your banjo. I certainly did. I also enjoyed joining the banjo fraternity/sorority at Banjo Hangout and I even joined the Banjo Player’s Union. I too have my 2011 special edition t-shirt and stickers, which I love. But none of the cosiness of the Hangout, with its super jukebox and friendly members is going to make you play the camel of the fretted instrument world.*

Choosing what style to learn

The first thing I needed to decide was which manner of playing the 5-string banjo I should try first: picking (Scruggs or Bluegrass style) or frailing (now more commonly known as clawhammer and the oldest style of playing). When I first got my banjo out I found these YouTube videos for both styles and tried to work with them, just to get a feel for the instrument and the range of sounds it could make:

Frailing or clawhammer

David Holt Beginning Clawhammer Banjo Lesson Tom Dooley

I found David Holt (who also provides a range of DVD tutorials which I would be tempted to get when I move onto learn clawhammer properly) explains things clearly and simply and by the end of event this short video I did feel I accomplished the very basic frailing action. The split screen showing what both hands are doing really make a difference and I found these the most useful video tutorials.

Picking Scruggs or Bluegrass

Banjo Lesson Beginning Bluegrass Banjo – Cripple Creek

This video dives you right into Scruggs style picking as it talks about licks, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs and push-offs. Using Cripple Creek, a tune that you will hear about repeatedly in beginner’s circles (it is what many beginners aspire towards as a milestone of achievement), this Musician’s Workshop video guides you through some basics of creating that unique banjo sound by sounding notes with your left hand, i.e. the slides, hammer-ons, etc. This is only an excerpt from a longer video that has already demonstrated how to do ‘rolls’ with your right hand.

I had heard a lot of the technical terminology on other videos and on the forums and I found this video the most useful in understanding what they all meant. I even tried out some slides and hammer-ons as demonstrated. However I had no real idea bout picking patterns with the right hand, otherwise known as roll patterns or rolls.

Basic banjo chords

Easy Banjo Chords

One of the freebies from www.freebanjovideos.com is a superb introduction to banjo chords. Any tutorial will introduce you to chords almost straight away. The 5-string banjo’s normal tuning is to ‘G’ and this video invites you to learn chords by plain strumming and concentrates on the finger patterns of your left hand. You then progress to D7 and C and E minor. Any new student of the banjo will curse the C chord (I did) when they first try it. But repetition is the only way and this video really helped drill it. Another split-screen video is extremely helpful to absorb what the right and left hand are doing. And it really is easy to strum along to ‘Tom Dooley’ when you’re done.

Choosing a beginner’s banjo ‘teach yourself’ course

So those are three of my favourite videos. I watched them several times, as well as others. My Deering Goodtime Crow came with two finger picks and a thumb pick used in Scruggs style Bluegrass music. Picks are also used for other melodic styles of music that can be adapted to the banjo. I have always enjoyed arpeggiated melodies (notes of a chord played in succession ascending or descending) and so I decided I wanted to learn picking first. Having learned a musical instrument before, I knew that a method and routine with milestones which YouTube videos were not going to provide. So I posted to the Banjo Hangout beginner’s forum for advice. I received many suggestions, including Janet Davis’s You Can Teach Yourself the Banjo, a book which comes with a DVD. I looked up a couple of reviews and placed an order on Amazon straight away for a bargain price.

Not much more than 24 hours later it arrived and I began by reading through the first few pages. What I love about Janet Davis’s method is that you don’t have to be a musician to understand it, nor is much knowledge of the banjo assumed. She points out really important stuff that many of the video tutorials on their own do not, such as how to hold the banjo, sitting or stranding straight, how to wear the finger picks, tuning the banjo, how to read tab or tablature (very easy indeed) and so on. The stuff you really need to get sorted out before you start. I then watched a bit of the DVD and like the video tutorials I have discussed above, it too uses the split screen method to help you understand what both hands should be doing. By this stage I really felt I could go far with just me and my banjo in my living room.

In my next post I will talk about the first few lessons I have followed and my experience so far.

*I read somewhere that a camel is a horse created by committee, much like a banjo resembles a guitar created by committee, with its metal rings, drum head, cut-out finger board.

Learning the 5-string banjo pt 1: Buying

Tehmina Goskar — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 17:25:28 +0000

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Deering Goodtime 'The Crow' banjo

I thought I would continue to chronicle my experience with the banjo in stages. So here is a bit about my experience of choosing and buying one. After a lot of research into other people’s experiences and getting the basics of what kind of banjo would suit me best I created a shopping list:

1. A standard 5-string banjo. I wanted as much choice as possible on learning methods, online, via books and videos and there is more for the 5-string out there than the tenor, or four string or any of the other more unusual banjos like uke banjos and 6-string guitar-style banjos.

Trying out a banjo with a resonator
2. An open-back banjo. These are banjos without a resonator and often without a dense metal tonering. I didn’t need volume to learn and I wasn’t going to be joining a band anytime soon–where extra volume is necessary. I was after an instrument that was light, with a warm tone and that to which I could adapt other styles of music. Open-backs are more normal for those playing ‘Old time’ banjo in the clawhammer or frailing style (strumming), while those with resonators are normal for those playing ‘Bluegrass’ or ‘Scruggs’ style (3-finger picking). But you can happily use both styles on both types of banjo. I tried out some banjos in Cranes of Swansea, both open back and resonators. This was before I even knew how to hold a banjo properly!

3. A banjo from a reputable maker. Here is where you can start splitting hairs, especially when you are shopping in a budget as a total beginner, with little to compare to. Reviews, reviews, reviews. I found the most helpful reviews on Banjohangout. I also found the Folk of the Wood site handy. The videos people put up on YouTube were also invaluable. I was also looking at many of the UK-based banjo suppliers I could find, for example:

Hobgoblin Music – comprehensive listings, several UK stories and online sales, have bought from them before, they know what they are talking about.
Eagle Music – comprehensive listings, UK store is in Huddersfield, Yorkshire but online information wide-ranging, also highly knowledgeable about banjos, particularly those made by US banjo-makers Deering.
Andy Banjo – came highly recommended by other UK-based banjo players, a banjo specialist who even makes banjos to order, excellent listings on his website and open by appointment in Faversham, Kent. He is also a Gold Tone banjo supplier.

4. My choice. I boiled it down to two makes, a Deering Goodtime or a Gold Tone Cripple Creek Series (CC).

I suspect I would have been very happy with either but in the end I chose the Deering Goodtime ‘The Crow’ package. This choice was partly influenced by practical issues and partly because I managed to get a good deal. I also wanted to buy in person, and not online and have to set up the instrument myself. I live in Wales but often visit London and Hobgoblin’s London store was able to get in a Deering Goodtime Crow from one of their other stores for me to try out on a future visit. I also had an old instrument I wanted to part-exchange.

The Crow package was great value for money in my opinion, particularly as I was part-exchanging. UK price listings were much the same, around the £299 mark. This special edition of the Deering Goodtime was made in tribute to Steve Martin’s album of his own banjo music called ‘The Crow’ [It's a great album, listen to it]. The Crow package includes:

-A 5-string open-back banjo, beautifully hand-crafted from Rock Maple and made in California with 3-ply Violin Grade Maple Rim (this is important as it is the rim that regulates most of the sound quality).
-A quality Deering gig bag (well-padded and emblazoned with the Deering eagle on the front).
-Steve Martin’s ‘The Crow’ CD and song book (with tablature).
-A set of picks (one plastic thumb pick, two nickel-silver finger picks).
-An electronic clip-on tuner.
-A Deering broad nylon strap.

In other words, most of what you need to get going.

What Deering Goodtimes have going for them in my opinion are that they are hand-made in the USA with mainly US components. There are major debates about the relative merits of banjos made in China, Korea or Thailand, or those made from parts from the Far East. I think you really have to use your instinct when you are starting out and everything I read about Goodtimes instilled me with confidence. What really made it for me was watching Deering Goodtimes being made and also watching this description of the Goodtime banjo. I knew it was a ‘no frills’ banjo but it is a beautifully crafted work of art in my opinion, it’s very light at less than 2 kg and the lack of arm rest or guitar-style geared tuners rather than the preferred banjo or planetary tuners hasn’t bothered me (yet). That there is no metal tonering is compensated for by the excellent quality 3-ply thick maple rim. I’ll write a full review of my own instrument soon.

It was a close call between the Goodtime and one of the the Gold Tone CC range. I was prepared to make the trip to Kent to try one, and perhaps buy a Gold Tone from Andy Banjo. For roughly the same price I would have gone for either the Gold Tone CC50OT or the Gold Tone CC100. Andy Banjo’s own packages are very good value for money, usually including two sets of top-quality spare strings, a capo (for the 4 long strings) and a pair of fitted capo spikes (for the 5th string) and a fitted banjo strap. One of the reasons I was inspired by Gold Tones was hearing them being played by the wonderful Paul Roberts. In particular it was seeing him play the cello banjo, a new type of banjo made by Gold Tone that inspired me to do something about my long-time banjo ambition. One day I would like to play the cello banjo myself.

Banjos

Tehmina Goskar — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:43:26 +0000

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Stairwell Sisters bango (credit: Vance Dubberly)
They say you know a gentleman by his ability to play the banjo, but his choice not to. Or words to that effect. This and other banjo jokes have not deterred my long-standing interest in the instrument and its music. Recently Steve Martin produced an album that epitomises a banjo lover’s seduction by this peculiar but distinctively quirky musical instrument.

After some years of fascination I have now decided to acquaint myself with the banjo first hand. Yes, I want to buy one and learn it. Tenor or 5-string? Short or standard scale? With or without a resonator, and what of the those still made in the USA such as the Deerings and Gold Tones, versus those assembled from parts made in Asia? I am lured by Saga’s Rovers but what do I know? Not much at the moment but I am looking forward to an odyssey of musical and self-discovery that I didn’t think possible but am now brave enough to try. So far much of my initial armchair research has involved poring over the following banjo sites.

Andy Perkins, The Banjo Works (UK specialist in banjos).
Hobgoblin Music (UK and US folk instrument suppliers).
Eagle Music Shop (instrument suppliers including US Deering banjos).
Gold Tone banjos (well-known American makers).

I am learning a lot from:

Banjocrazy.com, particularly the videos of Paul Reynolds playing everything from Irish trad to Persian folk on the amazing Gold Tone cello banjo.
Banjo Hangout, a great forum with reviews.
Banjo Physiology 101 . A great introduction to banjo terminology, anatomy, tone rings, rims, metal or wood, explained.

Pennbucky to Llangenny, new songs of old times

Tehmina Goskar — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:09:07 +0000

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McKay and Etherton

A couple of weeks back I was introduced to a local group (from the Gower, near Swansea) who have produced a fabulous CD of folk songs in tribute to Swansea’s sailors and coppermen. It is called Pennbucky to Llangenny by Andrew McKay with Andy Baker, Tony Beddow, Joe Parsell, Dave Robinson and Ken Simpson. The 18 track album is a treasure of history explored in song. One of my favourites is Dead Reckoning (hear a sample), a song about old skills made redundant, particularly regarding the change from shipping by sail to steam. Others sing about the art of the ship’s carpenter (Made of Wood), about Swansea’s wealth deriving from brass and copper (Bronze and Brass) and intrepid journeys Welsh mariners made around Cape Horn (they were known as Cape Horners) on their way to Chile and Cuba to collect copper ore to bring back for smelting (Drinks at the Cuba, Pennbucky to Llangenny). The album also includes a nod to the traditional with a set of hornpipes from Mumbles and Greenholme / The Ivy House.

At the moment I am working on a project on the heritage of Welsh copper at Swansea University and in amongst the research, the liaison with other organisations and people, my heart fills with joy when I come across things like this. That history has inspired beautiful music or art or words from people means it is worth remembering and telling to others. I wonder that people won’t learn more from these songs than they will from a run of the mill history book …