5 String Banjo Music & Song Books

If you're new to the 5-string Banjo, you're probably eager to learn some songs. This book provides easy-to-read Banjo tab, chord symbols and lyrics for the most popular songs beginning Banjo players like to play.

Players with years of experience will also discover tunes never before arranged for Banjo. Explore clawhammer and three-finger-style Banjo in a variety of tunings and capoings with this one-of-a-kind collection of master-crafted arrangements.

A collection of irish jogs in melodic style for the 5 string banjo by Ron Hughes

Art Rosenbaum is one of America's foremost performers and teachers of traditional five-string Banjo playing. He has a long-time interest in the myriad of old-time tunings that give breadth and richness to mountain and old-time Banjo picking, and has learned first-hand from old-timers in the South and Midwest.

This comprehensive collection features over 100 note-for-note skillfully-crafted clawhammer banjo arrangements of old-time Southern fiddle tunes, in clear tablature - with suggested guitar chords at a wide variety of skill levels. It contains most of the tunes played in concert or recorded by author Ken Perlman and renowned Appalachian-style fiddler Alan Jabbour, plus over 50 more classic tunes from Ed Haley, Edden Hammons, John Salyer and many other iconic roots fiddlers. Also included: Instruction on basic and advanced techniques / Tips on improving your musicianship / How to play syncopated rhythms and melodies in clawhammer style / Frameworks for dealing with crooked tunes and modal tunes. Historical notes and picturesque backstories / Ken Perlman demonstrates all tunes and most musical illustrations on 124 online audio tracks *Online Audio Includes: 24 tracks featuring excerpts from recordings of the author performing with the virtuosic fiddler Alan Jabbour, to whom the book is dedicated.

The banjo shares many of the same sonic qualities as a harpsichord, so although it's so closely associated with more homespun genres, the instrument actually lends itself very well to classical music! The pieces in Bach for Banjo are in tablature only with chord symbols, arranged at the beginning to intermediate level for five-string banjo players. As in classical guitar arrangements, the melody and harmony are combined. Most pieces are on facing pages with no page turns required, and beginners can pick through the selections at a slow pace. The book features just the best-known parts of 20 beloved Bach pieces: Air on the G String · Arioso · Minuet in G · Sheep May Safely Graze · Sleepers, Awake · and more.

The 5-String Banjo Fingering Chart includes tuning notes, chord shapes and a photo/diagram of the instrument.

A compilation of favorite solos on Irish, Scottish and New England fiddle tunes arranged for banjo by one of America's foremost clawhammer banjoists, Ken Perlman. Book with online audio link

Traditional Appalachian banjo tunes in tablature. With tunings and all basic right and left hand techniques: drop-thumbing, the galax lick, pull-offs, slide and plucking. Includes Online-Audio.

22 favorites from the fab four arranged for 5-string Banjo in notes and tab, including: All My Loving • Can't Buy Me Love • Come Together • Day Tripper • Eleanor Rigby • Here, There and Everywhere • I Want to Hold Your Hand • Let It Be • Michelle • Paperback Writer • Penny Lane • Something • While My Guitar Gently Weeps • Yellow Submarine • Yesterday and more.

Here is a book of tunes from the Elizabethan era—the great period of English song—set in tablature for the clawhammer banjo. At first glance, it is true, the songs of Shakespeare’s day and the mountain banjo seem to be worlds apart. But the musical traditions are, in fact, related, as Elizabethan songs are the old world cousins of mountain tunes. As a result, Elizabethan tunes are a natural way to extend the mountain banjo repertoire for intermediate and advanced players.

A massive collection of transcriptions representing the history of three-finger style five-string banjo playing up to the style’s culmination with Earl Scruggs coming on the scene. This is a one-of-a-kind resource containing 49 transcriptions beginning with some of the style’s earliest forms up through those that approach the fully developed Scruggs style. These solos, written in easy-to-read tablature, are also a great source of beginner to intermediate level arrangements that players will want to learn. Players will gain a deeper understanding of the structure as well as the significance of the Scruggs Style of banjo playing.

20 Easy Banjo Solos. Strengthen your skills while building a repertoire of great bluegrass banjo pieces! Tony Trischka has personally chosen 20 traditional banjo solos that will teach you new ideas and add to your arsenal of licks and techniques.

Best selling author Fred Sokolow teaches you how to play blues on the Banjo with this instructional book and audio pack.
Includes classic blues tunes like Ain't Nobody's Business, Careless Love, Frankie and Johnny and St. Louis Blues.

18 of the Fab Four's finest for five string banjo!

All it takes is the thumb and index finger! This book allows you to explore this traditional, often easier way of playing the banjo: the original two-finger style. It covers thumb lead, up-picking, frailing/clawhammer (stroke style), and drop-thumb variation techniques and is presented in various tunings with easy to read tablature plus accompanying chord symbols and diagrams with audio tracks online for download or streaming. Includes over 50 songs in the bluegrass, old-time, country, folk and gospel styles. Audio is accessed online using the unique code inside the book and can be streamed or downloaded. The audio files include PLAYBACK+, a multi-functional audio player that allows you to slow down audio without changing pitch, set loop points, change keys, and pan left or right.

In this book, with accompanying CD, Ron Hughes presents 20 of his exciting 5 string banjo arrangements of a selection of Turlough O'Carolan's wonderful Irish airs, jigs and reels.

A fun collection of 25 Disney favorites arranged for 5-string banjo, including: The Ballad of Davy Crockett · The Bare Necessities · Be Our Guest · Bella Notte (This Is the Night) · Cruella De Vil · It's a Small World · Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious · Under the Sea · You've Got a Friend in Me · Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah · and more.

O'Carolan's best-loved harp tunes are notated in a contemporary style that makes them accessible to all instrumentalists. This ideal collection with accompanying audio lays bare 20 classic Irish compositions for melody and backing players using standard notation and chords. For all 5-string banjo players, fretting and picking-hand fingerings are included in the transcriptions which match the play-along tracks. This is Hanway's fourth collection demonstrating Celtic fingerstyle banjo in G tuning. It is part of a Celtic 5-string series that includes Mel Bay's Easy Irish and Celtic Tunes for 5-String Banjo: Best-Loved Jigs and Reels (2012) and Mel Bay's Easy Irish andCeltic Melodies for 5-String Banjo: Best-Loved Airs and Session Tunes (2013). Tom Hanway's pioneering work, Mel Bay's Complete Book of Irish & Celtic 5-String Banjo (1998), was acclaimed by Bluegrass Unlimited magazine (1999) "as 'the bible' for any 5-string player with an interest in this joyous music." The current collection breathes life into the Gaelic classical melodies of Ireland. Access to online audio download.

A Clawhammer Christmas by Dan Levenson is a collection of 30 of the most loved Christmas songs transcribed in tablature for the 5-string banjo in the clawhammer style with chords provided for accompaniment instruments. Written in his clear and traditional style, Dan has finally made these holiday favorites accessible to all clawhammer banjo players with good basic skills. All songs have been written in one of the three basic old-time banjo tunings of G, double-C or G modal. This will allow you to find the tune in a fingering you know and easily capo to your preferred singing key. Build your skills as you entertain family and friends and maybe even yourself! Ring in the holiday season with the joyful sound of the 5-string banjo played clawhammer style and have a double-thumb, drop-thumb Clawhammer Christmas!

40 American folk songs, arranged for the Clawhammer Banjo by Michael Miles.

This songbook includes the well-known traditional tunes She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain, Amazing Grace, When The Saints Go Marching In, In The Good Old Summertime and more.

Complete with full lyrics and easy-to-read chord boxes, this songbook allows Banjo players to pick and sing along to 30 of Dylan's greatest hits, including All Along The Watchtower, Blowin' In The Wind, Like A Rolling Stone, The Times They Are A-Changin' and more.

Exact transcriptions of 21 tunes and breaks by one of the masters of bluegrass banjo.

There's no getting away from it, the 5-string banjo is about as American as apple pie. This poses something of a conundrum for those who love the instrument, but don't wish to be confined to bluegrass music.

With its wealth of information on how technique can be tastefully applied, Back-Up Banjo is the definitive book on the subject of banjo accompaniment.