Thanks! That’s a wonderful question. I’m actually trying to stay away from the melody as I can…that would be getting in the way of the lead instrument.
Discuss the Banjo lesson: How to Play Rolling Backup for Fiddle Tunes & More!
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I am using the song Leather Britches to practice writing my own backup. I’m getting it but I ran into some difficulty when adding rolls. First of all it was hard to not copy mwhat you did, second of all, I found that I would end up playing square rolls to get my walking notes in. Nothing wrong with square rolls but I was intentionally trying to stick with forward rolls per your level 2 forward roll instructions.
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Here is what I have so far.
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@BanjoBen, So I am confused by measure 4 because measure 5 is still in G. In the chord walking lessons we always walked up or down to a chord. However measure 4 and 5 are still in G, so we are not walking to a chord change for measure 5. After watching the YouTube explanation, I am thinking it is OK to play any note in the G major scale and walk within measures even if there is no immediate chord change. Is that correct?
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I get why it seems you’re in G, but if you look closely, you’ll note that you’re only playing note in the key of D, namely, the 4th open string, which is D.
That’s one of the beauties of playing individual strings picking a banjo as opposed to strumming chords like you would on a guitar. You can play a D variation without actually fretting any strings, provided you pick the right strings.
As you progress, knowing which notes of which chords overlap with other chords will begin to come naturally.
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I must be missing something here because the same thing happens in measures 8 and 9 and I see a G above measure 7. I do not see a transition to D until measure 10.
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It’s about the notes being played in the measure, which all belong in the D chord.
Which strings are being played in the measures that are confusing you?
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According to the tab in the pdf, it is supposed to be the G chord.
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OK. I think I may see the source of your confusion. Notice that the tab starts at measure 3. That’s because Ben creates PDF tabs from TablEdit, and in TablEdit, the first 2 measures are used to set the tempo.
So, you have measures 3, 4, and 5, meaning that measure 6 is the 4th measure. Notice that measure 5 is walking down to the D chord in measure 6. So, just subtract 2 from each measure number and everything should fall in place for you.
I hope that made sense.
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LOL I am going off the number printed above the measure, not the actual measure number. My confusion is that Ben is play a walking backup that goes up and then down to a D within the G chord section. So, in the G chord section, he is playing a lot of E and F#. I am assuming from his YouTube explanation above that it is OK to play pretty much any notes in the Key no matter which chord I am supposed to be playing. I am just trying to understand the limits of what is acceptable for playing notes outside of the chord you are supposed to be playing.
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Yes, in general, you can play any note in the major scale of the chord you’re in and it’ll sound good. Just keep in mind that some notes will sound “gooder” than others. 
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That is my point, those notes are not in the chord that is supposed to be played.
Do you mean any note of any chord as long as you are in the same key?
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You left out the most important part of that sentence you quoted, “the major scale” of the chord you’re in.
So, if you’re in G, you can play G A B C D E and F# and be pretty safe. To expand on this, notice that F is not in the G major scale, but F is part of the G7 chord. That’s exactly why it works as a transition chord to C, because F IS in the C major scale.
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Wow, so much to learn. Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me Mark. I find this music theory stuff very interesting. There are rules to follow and rules you can break as long as they sound good. 
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Ahm peekin that Banjo now, Ben!
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My question is when I go to a song to play backup I look up the chords online and find I dont have a clue of what chords their talking about let alone how to play them, what do I need to do?
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Ben has several lessons on chords here.
There are tons of chord charts online for fingerings.
What specifically are you trying to do?
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Can you clarify what you mean or give an example?
If you always think in the key of G, you’ll be confused when you look up a chord chart for songs in Bb, etc.
You only need to determine what key the song is in, then either listen for the chord changes or transpose a written chord chart. This is why number charts are superior to chord charts; they are universal, no matter what key you are in.
If you know the G, C, D, A, and Em chord shapes, you’ll be able to play along with 94.841% of bluegrass songs.
(I’m 78.437% sure that’s a verified statistic)
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I forgot about the number chart thanks, I looked up a gospel song, and it had chords like em7 g7 b and a,
All the backup I have been learning is G C D. Does this help?
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The 7ths are not really necessary. A lot of chord charts will put 7ths on chords because the melody suggests it… you can ignore those for basic backup. If you have a B major chord in a bluegrass song there’s pretty much no way that it’s in open G, so based on the context of the chords, determine what key the song is in and where to put your capo.
Which song chord chart in particular are you referring to? Posting a link here would help.
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