I have always loved chord melody style playing on guitar, but never tried it too much on banjo. Recently I was working on Star Spangled Banner and Away in a Manger in the intermediate lessons and enjoyed the chord melody parts Ben has in there. I also found Alan Munde’s book, “Arranging Tunes for Solo Banjo” which has amazing chord melody information. With some time on my hands (I can’t play my banjo for a week cause I can’t lift anything heavy), I started thinking about taking some plectrum banjo chord charts I have and transcribing them to 5 string charts.
Most plectrum songs are played in chord melody fashion so the charts show a different chord shape for each melody note. Because the plectrum is tuned, C-G_B-D, I only had to change the C note of the Chords down two steps to a D. After a few transcriptions, I am starting to see the patterns emerge for both common chords and more advanced ones. When I’m able to work on these songs, I think the challenge will be figuring out where to insert rolls to fill gaps, and how to include the fifth string.
Anyway, thought I would share this in case others are looking at chord melody. The plectrum charts might help. Sorry for babbling so much today, but I’m kind of bored.