12/30/2023 0 Comments Banjo 5th string capoI did find that the BH capo works just fine quite by accident on my C-scale Saga Pony banjo on the 7th fret. I did not expend the time or effort to do that to my banjo. The only way the Banjo Highway capo will work all the way up the neck (as advertised) is if you carefully set the action all the way up the neck so that the 5th string is exactly the same height above every fret and it is the perfect height for the capo. Since the string is angled up from nut to bridge, the capo actually works on only one fret. If the string is too high, the capo rattles around and finally flies off like all the others. If the string is too low, the capo will not go under it. The capo critically depends on the height of the string above the fret to work. It works on exactly one fret, and that was not the fret that I needed it for. Even though it stays in place, it makes a racket. It bounces around and rattles when I play, although it does not fly off since it is secured to the string. It scratched up the fret board and also went flying off when I played. I made a capo once out of a machine screw, another trick that is posted on the interwebs. I suspect that it depends entirely on the action at the fret you are using it on. It wobbled around until it went flying off. So to a purist, yes, some chords are impossible, but to a banjo player they are all very possible and effective: Since we are usually playing in context of a guitar and/or bass, we have plenty of external support playing the root for us.I made one of those Bic pen capos once. We have to make these sacrifices a lot given our duplicate strings and restricted instrument range. I don't believe a chord is a chord without it's own root, textbook-wise. Now if you were to grab the 7th tone of that chord, you would have to rearrange and grab it above on the 2nd string (reach up to the C), which means that you are jettisoning the root note. The 5th is unchanging, for reasons explained above. So when fretting a D major chord with the standard "D-shape", you have the 1st and 4th strings as the F#, the 2nd string as the root (D), and the 3rd string as an A. The 3rd and 5th string is tuned to G, an octave apart, and the 2nd string is a B. In standard tuning, the 1st and 4th strings are tuned to D, an octave apart. I'll try to articulate this, and I must assume some banjo familiarity. Regarding your side comments about some chords being impossible: It depends on how much of a purist you are. (See: Robin Smith or Rob Bishline, to start) Do some makers tunnel the 5th string to be properly fretted at 5, but tunneled all the way up anyway? Yes.Hard to play around? Not really, you get used to it being there.This method gives you more freedom on the first string to go around the root note since you can always grab the root itself up on the 5th string. Melodic style playing uses it primarily as a scale note. Then the drone would be in A for a song in the key of A. If we capo up two frets to A, there is usually a corresponding spike or other method to also capo that truncated string down below. Since most tunes on banjo are native to G, having a drone on the root is the best sounding configuration. In traditional Scruggs Style banjo, it is primarily a high-root drone string. If the fifth string were to be extended up to the peghead, it would be an exact duplicate of the first string (both D notes) since they tend to be the same gauges.īut to answer: Having that string truncated at the 5th fret makes it a G note.
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