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Patek style tenor banjo

? What is the "Patek style"? Well, in one sentence it is
Three-finger picking on 4-string tenor banjo retuned from CGda to DGdg or another open tuning.
Note: Irish tenor banjos have to be retuned from GDae to ADad.
And because I assume that this combination of fingerpicking AND retuning of tenor banjo to open tuning has been "invented" by me I named it shamelessly Patek style.

The open tuning of the 4-string banjo enables you to produce sound that is very similar to the old time banjo or bluegrass banjo - the 5-string one:

Old-time česky
+ MIDI files
Bluegrass česky
+ MIDI files
+ TablEdit tabs
+ Capo-logy
Single-string
+ MIDI files
Melodic technique
+ MIDI files
+ TablEdit tabs

Four-string tenor banjo has the "guitar-like" bass-to-treble order of strings - you can adopt also techniques used in guitar:

Travis picking
+ MIDI files
+ polyrhythm patterns
Octaves
+ MIDI file
Swing backup
+ MIDI file
Pentatonics

In the table below is the list of some open tunings together with common chord voicings. All these tunings are derived from CGda tenor banjo tuning without changing the strings:

open G tuning
DGdg
open C tuning
CGcg
C "bouzouki" tuning
CGdg
Low D tuning
DGda
open D major tuning
DAdf#
open D minor tuning
DAdf
DGdg chords CGcg chords CGdg chords DGda chords
coming later
DAdf# chords DAdf chords

And here is the similar table for Irish tenor banjos tuned originally to GDae:

open D tuning
ADad
open G tuning
GDgd
"bouzouki" tuning
GDad
Low A tuning
ADae
open A major tuning
AEac#
open A minor tuning
AEac
ADad chords GDgd chords GDad chords GDad chords
coming later
AEac# chords AEac chords

! Get more from your instrument! If you are flatpicking tenor banjo player, you can now easily play fingerpicking techniques without buying 5-string banjo. Open tuned tenor banjo is also ideal second instrument for fingerpicking guitar player - there is no misleading thin string on bass side, so you can trade the picking patterns from guitar to banjo and back. Here is my list of picking patterns for systematic practice and overview of DGdg fretboard.


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Counter Page created July 2001
Last update Mar 4, 2008
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