Playing Irish tenor banjo

Here are a few tips gleaned from my experience of learning to play Irish tunes on a banjo. If you haven’t heard that kind of thing much, look for some tunes featuring Barney McKenna from the Dubliners, or Gerry O’Connor. Or at a pinch, listen to my trepidatious attempt at playing Tenpenny Bit here.


When I first heard the set of tunes called The Dubliners Fancy on the back of the Pogues/Dubliners Irish Rover 12” (remember those?) I decided straight away that one day I’d play that set on the banjo. That instrument propelled the tune rhythmically as well as carrying the melody. Or rather, when we talk about banjo, it’s more a case of grabbing the melody and throwing it at people, rather than just carrying it. The banjo has such a punchy sound, I reckon it must be the most ‘punk rock’ of all the acoustic instruments.


Types of banjo


Anyway, at that point I thought I could just walk into a shop and grab a banjo and start learning. I didn’t realise there are different kinds of banjo, so I thought Barney was using a 5-string one like Earl Scruggs. Nope, that’s a 4-string (tenor) banjo, I found out later.

There are even different models of tenor banjo. Eg. some have 17 frets and some have 19, some are open-back and some have a big wooden resonator bowl. Mine is a 19-fret Tanglewood with a resonator bowl. Doesn’t really matter, as far as I can tell they all do the job, just pick one that makes you look cool in a mirror.


So now I could go to a shop and ask for a 4-string tenor banjo and start learning, right? Nope, turns out that many tenor banjos aren’t set up for Irish-style playing straight off the bat. Well, not any that I could find anyway. Maybe a shop that specialises in folk instruments will have something for you off the shelf.

The tenor banjo that I bought was set up for use in something like a cool old trad jazz band, and it was tuned CGDA, but kick-arse Irish-tuned banjos are GDAE. So you need to tune your banjer a fifth higher. But you can’t just tune it up like that with the factory strings, because the tension is so much greater. You need some heavy Irish tenor banjo strings. I asked around and didn’t have much luck. So I ended up buying mine from Elderly Instruments in good ol’ Lansing, Missouri!

These 13-gauge John Pearse strings are specifically made for Irish tenor banjo. You can get 12s and 11s too, but I like these big suckas.

There’s not a lot of string-bending involved with Irish tunes, so heavy strings are fine, and they’re great for projection and tone.

For more information on various banjos, try this.

Tunes to play

Here’s a place to find some tunes to play: TheSession.org

You’ll soon see that there are usually 15 different versions of each tune, so if you want to play with other people, ask them to point you in the right direction before you spend a whole lot of time learning a different one!

If you’re like me, you’ll have to learn note-by-note and then internalise the tune, because I can’t read music all that fast. It helps if you’ve heard the tune somewhere first so you get the rhythm right. Reels are 4/4 time (boom-chick-boom-chick). Jigs are generally in 6/8 “double diddly time” (di-duh-ly, di-duh-ly). Slip jigs are 9/8 “triple diddly” (di-duh-ly, di-duh-ly, di-duh-ly).


This site is full of Irish banjo tips: Irish-banjo.com

In my next post I'll tell you how to make your own banjo pickup so you can play through a PA system!