Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Transposing from different picking styles

Howdy folks, hope everyone has had a great week so far! So I found a great version of a worship song called Alleluia by Elevation Worship. The usual guitar player is on banjo, but does a flat picking method which seems to be a popular method with modern worship, country or folk. Any good tips or tricks to transposing from a flat picking style to more Scruggs style? Here’s the video just as a reference! Thanks this forum has really helped my playing a lot!

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Not something I have tried myself. You could maybe pick out the melody notes, add some rolls as fill and build using slides, hammer ons and pull - offs. @Michael_Mark anything to add?

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I watched it a few times and it looks like he is using a regular 5 string (open back) and has it capo-ed at the fifth fret so I’m assuming the song is in the key of C. It also seems like he is playing simple arpeggios with the pick. I would start by figuring out the chord progression and playing simple rolls over the chords in the key of C. Play along with the video a few times to try and nail the pattern he is playing. Just my thoughts.

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Yes… when you’re that quiet in the mix, you can kind of just do whatever :joy::joy:

But yes, like @Firebelly said, it sounds like some basic picking of arpeggios—basically holding the chord and picking notes in a rhythm for ambiance.

At the end (around 3:23 for instance) you can hear him start to play a descending kind of lick—I think starting with the high 5th string, then just descending the major scale.

The banjo here is more for ambiance/vibe and doesn’t play a super heavy musical role.

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Agreed they went with a banjo to get that minor background to it :laughing: sometimes it’s hard to find a place on my worship team on regular sundays cause we have electric guitars; drums and pianos filling space so I try to just find a place, kinda freeing to be able to just do whatever haha!

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Haha, I only played in my church a couple of times, just me and the piano player. No guitars🤣.
Funny story though, it was probably around 2014 I think, and they wanted “leaning on the Ever Lasting Arms” which I didn’t know. I found an online pdf tab and printed it out to learn the song. Last year, after years away from banjo, I started playing again and joined Banjo Ben. I pulled out my old sheet music and the tab I had printed was Banjo Ben’s. I was learning from him before I knew I was learning from him!:pray:t2:

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