Earl Scruggs And The 5-String Banjo [楽譜]

This is an update to my review of the original edition. I've been using the new edition as a teaching aid since I discovered it a few months ago. I used the original edition when I was learning myself. Most of what I said in my original review still stands, except Earl has addressed the flaws.

This book was (and is) the de-facto standard for bluegrass banjo. It covers: the history of the banjo, how to read tablature, how to play the banjo (three-finger Scruggs style, of course), tablature for 44 banjo classics (mostly bluegrass), a great chapter on how to build a banjo, and finally a short biography of Earl.

If you don't know what "three-finger Scruggs style" means, you need to listen to some clips of Earl to make sure you are getting what you want. There are numerous styles of banjo playing (Scruggs-style, Clawhammer, Frailing, melodic, etc.) Bluegrass is mostly done in Scruggs-style these days, and Scruggs-style is probably the most common banjo style heard in any modern music.

I couldn't give the original edition of this book five stars, based on several weaknesses, particularly for someone trying to learn banjo without a teacher. My opinion is that these weaknesses have been corrected (for the most part) in this revised edition. If you have a basic understanding of musical timing, and have a banjo in your hand, this book will get you going. Like I said about the original edition... it's a much better resource than Earl had at his disposal as a kid, and look how far he's gone.

Major changes in the new edition:

1. There is now an accompanying CD. (No more scouring the web for the old LP or cassette.) The content is, however, the original audio content. This may be the weakest point. The audio tracks don't give beginners enough of the slow versions of the lessons. Earl starts off slow and ramps up to a fast speed too fast. I would have preferred seperate clips at slow, medium and fast speeds, rather than clips that change tempo. Also, the songs aren't on the CD, only the lessons. (If you order the audio CD Foggy Mountain Banjo by Flatt & Scruggs along with the book, you'll have a good many banjo instrumentals to gauge your progress by, since most of those tracks are in tab in the book.)

2. Enhanced timing overview. Still probably not enough to learn music timing on your own, but enough for a teacher to help you through.

3. Updates (through 2005) on Earl's biography. Really intersting stuff.

4. Corrections to numerous errors in the original tablature.

5. A major change to the tablature format. The standard notation has been removed altogether, and the timing notation is now integrated into the tab (as the way most modern tablature is.) In the original edition, you had to scan up to the standard notation to get timing cues. In my opinion, the new tab is much more readable.

6. This edition adds over a dozen songs to the song section. (Additions include American Made-World Played and Pick Along)

Complete song list:
- American Made-World Played
- Ballad Of Jed Clampett
- Bleeker Street Rag
- Blue Ridge Cabin Home
- Broad River
- Careless Love
- Carolina Boogie
- Carolina Traveler
- Cripple Creek
- Cumberland Gap
- Dear Old Dixie
- Earl's Breakdown
- Flint Hill Special
- Foggy Mountain Breakdown
- Foggy Mountain Chimes
- Good Times Are Past And Gone
- Ground Hog
- Ground Speed
- Home Sweet Home
- Hot Corn, Cold Corn
- Instrumental In D Minor
- John Henry
- Little Darling Pal Of Mine
- Lonesome Road Blues
- Loraderojost 111 Breakdown
- My Cabin In Caroline
- Nashville Blues
- Old Folks
- Pedal To The Medal
- Pick Along
- Pretty Polly
- Randy Lynn Rag
- Reuben
- Roller Coaster
- Sally Ann
- Sally Goodwin
- Shuckin' The Corn
- Silver Eagle
- Station Break
- String Bender
- Train Number Forty-Five
- Yonder Stands Little Maggie
- You Bake Right With Martha White
- Your Love Is Like A Flower

As far as the lack of standard notation, this isn't bad for learning the banjo. If you've played a stringed instrument at all, you know that most notes can be played in several different ways. (example: G is open 3rd string, as well as 4th string fretted at 5th fret.) You really need to know precisely which string and fret the note is on to learn these lessons. The tab is explicit, whereas the standard notation is subject to intrepretation. Tablature is the preferred notation for banjo.

In summary, anyone who plays the banjo should own this book. I would up my rating to 5, but Amazon doesn't let me change the rating in an edit.

This book presents too much information too quickly. I'm a music teacher, and if I were to teach somebody banjo, I'd use a different book. The material just isn't sequenced properly. All of the tunes are fairly advanced, and there's not really any songs that a beginner could play. All there is for beginners is boring, repetitive exercises. The material on chords and music theory progresses far to quickly for most newcomers to the subject to understand. Earl Scruggs is certainly a master of the instrument, but his pedagogical techniques leave much to be desired. The book might be useful to somebody who has some background in music and some experience with a stringed instrument, like guitar. It also has a lot of good information about the instrument in general - it's construction, history, etc. One other thing - the binding makes it almost impossible to lay the book flat, which is very frustrating when you try to put it up on a music stand.

I strongly recommend "Earl Scruggs and the Five String Banjo" to anybody interested in learning the banjo, or other string instruments for that matter. It has a clear, common sense approach to learning music that is useful to all musicians. The book has helped many of my friends and me to become accomplished banjo players. However, as one of the other reviewers pointed out, it does contain a few errors in the tablature. There is a cassette tape associated with this book, which I highly recommend purchasing, if available. It contains music for each tablature being played by Earl Scruggs starting at the beginning of the book. This will help smooth out any inconsistencies in the tablature and will teach the importance of good timing and sticking to the melody. Very few people can match Earl's perfect sense of timing on the banjo.