Banjo sheet music

Five-string, tenor and plectrum

The 5-string banjo is the bluegrass and old-time instrument, with a short drone string running only part of the neck. Its music is published almost entirely as tablature.

The tenor banjo has four strings, is tuned in fifths and is the Irish traditional and early-jazz instrument. Irish players commonly tune it GDAE like a mandolin an octave down, which means fiddle tunes transfer directly; jazz players use CGDA. The plectrum banjo also has four strings but a long neck and its own tuning again.

Tablature for one is meaningless on another, because tab encodes fret positions rather than pitches. Standard notation transfers between them; tab does not.

Tunings, and why the tab says what it says

Five-string tablature assumes open G (gDGBD) unless it says otherwise. Old-time repertoire uses a range of others — double C, sawmill, open D — and a tune written in one is unplayable as written in another. Good editions state the tuning at the head of every piece; the free tabs circulating online often do not.

Clawhammer and three-finger are different notations

Bluegrass three-finger (Scruggs) style tab marks right-hand fingers with T, I and M. Clawhammer tab uses its own marks for the brush and the drone-string thumb. Both look like ordinary banjo tab at a glance, and buying a book in the style you do not play is the commonest wasted purchase on this instrument.