Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Discuss the Banjo lesson: God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/god-rest-ye-merry-gentlemen-banjo

Christmastime is here again, and this year we’re learning a great, familiar carol with a couple tricks thrown in! Toward the end of this one, we go into a banjer pickers favorite tune, Foggy Mountain Breakdown! Merry Christmas!

wouldn’t it be great if there was a full foggy mountain breakdown lesson for each instrument? :slight_smile:

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There probably will be some day. That’s a copyrighted tune. Ben is in the process of jumping through a bunch of legal hoops to be able to teach us copyrighted songs, so stay tuned. I imagine it’ll be one of his first lessons once he gets it all ironed out.

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I have become obsessed with this lessons into video. Being a newbie, I didn’t really understand what was going on with the banjo part at first, and I was on the guitar lesson which doesnt have these comments. Once I saw the comments on the banjo lesson I started to understand. I have been obsessively starting the video from 2:40 to hear the foggy mountain licks. Love it.

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Hi @jchdaniels Johnathan welcome to @BanjoBen 's Forum. Since your new here you may not realise the lesson is divided into several sections you need to scroll down the page below the preview page to find all the parts to the lesson. You’ll also find Tabs in PDF and Tef format and play-along backing tracks to help you practice. Any questions just hollier and someone will offer help to guide you.

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Hi i was wondering how you play the banjo backup for the other parts? We’re doing this as a family at the nursing home and I’m just vamping but wondered what exactly you were doing. Thank you.

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That’s really cool @AlandaJoe! You can pretty easily see what I’m doing there. It’s mostly all vamping during the fast parts and strumming during others, a few scale walks at times to match what other instruments are doing. If there’s a particular time code that you’re curious about, post it and I’ll help you.

Hi @AlandaJoe Erin welcome back to @BanjoBen 's Forum

So for the most part @BanjoBen played pinches, strums and a few isolated filler notes. Towards the ending I think he added a couple of melodic licks, some Scruggs Foggy Mountain phrases. If you study the banjo part in the lesson preview you’ll get a better sense of what Ben is doing. You can also slow down the video and figure out the licks he’s playing.

Also check out this looper which you can use to loop a lick or phrase. * Use the green bars below the video to adjust the size of the loop