Slowhand Sources
Slowhand Sources
Slowhand borrows from clawhammer, three-finger, and tenor banjo styles, but in the end, I think, is something new in the banjo universe. I stumbled upon it by fiddling around on my instruments when I got bored with my traditional clawhammer playing, listening closely to what each instrument had to tell me. Here is what they had to say.
Mandoline Banjo
The oldest instrument I own is this lovely, severely damaged mandoline banjo manufactured by Alban Voigt & Co., probably in the 1880’s. The mandoline banjo was the creation of George Pullman who stuck a five-string neck on a mandolin body. I got this one about ten years ago. The body is cracked all over, and the headstock is gone (replaced by a boxy wooden one), but the instrument still has a sweet sound. I have it strung with Nylgut and play it every morning softly while my wife sleeps. Notes sustain naturally in the deep, wooden mandoline body allowing me to slow down my playing, and I heard how beautiful many clawhammer songs sound when they are played slowly this way—the first step toward the Slowhand style.
A-scale Washburn Banjo
Several years ago I picked up a 1920’s Washburn banjo with a donut-style tone ring pot. It was restored by Gary Schattl who added a modern A-scale neck with stylized inlays based on the old Washburn patterns. It is a lovely instrument with a pure and ringing tone that carries remarkably well. The A-scale neck taught me the next lesson in Slowhand because the shorter neck invited my fingers to create patterns of chords across the entire fretboard allowing me to construct melodies by changing the chord patterns. Instead of picking out single notes of the melody on the G chord in first position, for instance, I could create the melody in variations of the G chord up the neck. It was a liberating discovery!
Ukuleles
My father gave me his soprano Kamaka ukulele a long time ago and it—plus a Kala tenor uke I bought several years ago myself—opened up new possibilities for right-hand strumming. The tradition of ukulele includes a variety of basic strums that have fluid rhythmic possibilities, but it also encourages players to embellish these strokes and invent their own. The rule is to break the rules, encouraging stunning and innovative right hand techniques. Almost all of these strokes combine down- and upstroke motions in myriad combinations, another liberation for this bumpadity clawhammer player.
Vega Tu-ba-phone
My old stand-by is a 1927 Vega Tu-ba-phone with a 11 13/16” pot restored by Wyatt Fawley in 1997 with a modern neck and a flowerpot head. The tubaphone tone ring has a pure sound made mellow by the big pot where notes chime like holy bells.