Do you think it sounds better to stuff something in the back of your banjo to make it sound less sustained or do you prefer to have more sustain and not put rags in the back? I kind of like the way it sounds without putting anything in back. I’m playing a no-name tenor banjo with a real skin head if that matters.
I like to dampen the banjo with kerosene before standing back and lighting a match.
Seriously, can you not dampen the strings with your picking hand. That way you can switch between damped and undamped strings.
Somebody said something similar “elsewhere”
https://twitter.com/SeanMODomhnaill/status/1600541670734544896
I don’t play tenor banjo but clawhammer 5-string banjo. Always play with an old cotton ‘t-shirt’ stuffed in the back. It doesn’t dampen the strings the way a picking hand would do. Just cuts down on the tinniness of the sound.
If you like the tone, that’s what matters.
I would think the skin head (as opposed to mylar) would produce a less tinny or bright sound anyway.
Pick gauge and material also affect tone, so it’s worth experimenting with that as well.
“Seriously, can you not dampen the strings with your picking hand. ”
@Donald - I though everyone rested at least the pinky on the skin while playing?
(I’m not a current tenor banjo player, but I remember the sound when I tried playing freehand. It was awful!)
“… can you not dampen (sic) the strings with your picking hand ”
Damping the strings is not the same as damping the head. Damping the strings will shorten their sustain (which is short anyway); damping the head will reduce the volume
(The only reason you would *dampen* the head is to clean off the congealed residue of spilled beer, saliva, blood etc.)
I must confess to not having played a lot of banjo - I think the last time was for a recording four or five years ago. I’ve never been a pinkie on the top player (on guitar) and usually rest the heel of my hand on the bridge when picking to which enables me to damp (not “dampen” - apologies CMO) the strings when necessary (probably coming from my electric guitar playing days some time last century). I also do as lot of fretting hand damping.
I’m with cac - an old T- shirt stuffed between the wooden crossbar and the head works a treat.
I know a few players that play with something stuffed between the dowel (or coordinator rods) and the head. I don’t do that, but I have my main banjo set up fairly quietly. (It will still respond well if I push it hard, though). And I play with my fingers tucked, with no fingers anchored on the head (seems like a great way to damage your pinky after years of doing that!). But the backs of my tucked knuckles do lightly brush the head. If I want a dampened tone, I can dampen the head with those fingers by touching the head with a bit more force. If I lift my fingers completely off the head, it does ring longer (and more obnoxiously). I also change the tone and sustain a bit while I’m playing by changing how far from the bridge I am picking.
Both head material and head tension can have a big effect on the tone and sustain of the instrument, so I just like to set banjos so that they’re not too obnoxious! (I do have a Clareen that I have set up very bright and ringy, but I only generally play that in fairly quiet environments where I’m playing quietly. If I push it, it becomes brash). In your case, the vellum heads don’t tend to get nearly as loud and bright as the modern plastic heads can…
But it really comes down to what you like (and what the people you play with regularly like). If someone suggests you “stick a sock in it”, it’s probably best to listen to them (or at least back off a bit)!
My friend, a clawhammer banjo player has a couple of instruments. One is stuffed with a rubber chicken and the other one with his sister’s (unused) cloth diapers ( I think they’re both on the right side of 70 now). No purpose for the comment, I just find it amusing.
Damp dampen, not sure the right word I should have used.
So having a dull plunky sound is just a matter of preference, not something that sounds more or less traditional?
Although seeing as how a banjo (I’ve been told) has its roots in African gourd instruments and probably is more American in origin than Irish I suppose none of it is traditional.
Ross, some people beyond 70 end up needing nappies again, so that banjo stuffing could come in handy. 😉
What do I prefer? Well I do really love the banjo, because there are some conditions to get that rags-in-the-back sound.
-that is, a quiet deep rich sound with not too much sustain
-really big head with a fibre or maybe skin
-lots of rags inside, or maybe old rubber computer mouse mat glued to the back
-heavy nylon or gut strings
-low tension on the head
-low action
-short neck or higher tension on the strings (not sure which)
-even heavier strings
-I prefer tenor, not so much the 5 string.
-soft pick or finger picking, thumb and first finger, to avoid the click component of the sound
-foot-tapping tunes with lots of lift and lots of rest notes
I tend to think of the “plunky” sound of tenor banjo being more for Old Timey players. If you watch Irish players, they’re typically playing closer to the bridge, and have the banjo set up pretty bright.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL3W3lAENyE
If you watch Old Timey players, they tend to pick closer to the neck, which gives the banjo a rounder tone, with a softer attack and it sounds more “plunky”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLhcmuIs2p0&t=15s
Putting a damper inside the banjo is more likely to lead to a softer sound like that. The people I know that play Irish regularly with something in the banjo tend to have their instruments set up quite bright, so they take the edge off the sound with a damper, but it still tends to come out a bit snappier without too much plunk…
I play clawhammer banjo. A trick I learned from fingerstyle guitarist and clawhammer banjo player Steve Baughman is to take a little piece of painter’s masking tape and put it across the top of the bridge. It mellows out the tone without damping the sustain too much.
If playing into a microphone, I will fold up a towel and stuff firmly but lightly (if that makes sense) below the bridge between the top tension Rod and the head. Great for cutting transients so you don’t have to cut too much treble in he PA and still get a loud and clear sound.
If playing in a bar, screw it. 🙃 No towel.
I play a banjolin (mandolin/banjo) with a skin head at our weekly Irish session. I gently touch the unplayed bass strings with the heel of my picking hand. That cuts down on the echo of the sympathetic string vibrations and gives a much clearer tone.
The skin head makes for very complex overtones, somewhat like a fuzzed-out electric guitar. I find that I have to approach the banjo in the same way as a fuzzed-out guitar: single string lines and muting the unwanted bass strings.
Reminds me of when we had a wind up gramophone. There was no volume control as such and you had to stuff a handkerchief around or inside the sound box.
In order to give my Orpheum a touch more class, I use a roll of the finest velvet. Bank notes work well, too.
No I don’t, but use the heel on my pick hand on the bridge to do that work. Agree that pick hardness and playing tip shape are a factor also.
In a crowded session with lots of players and punters I use a very hard pick shaped to an open ‘V’ with a very sharp point.
It’s harder to play this way but increases the ‘cut-through’ sound. In quieter moments I tend to play with less hardness and sharpness, hitting the strings softer too. Just my 5c worth.
Early on, with one or two earlier TBs I played, I used a towel between the dowel and the bridge to take out unwanted brassiness and volume. That was preferable to removing the resonator, which really seemed to throw me off balance due to the sudden lightness and smallness of the incomplete carcass.
However, over the years (30+) I’ve owned my current Gibson TB-1, I guess I developed a combination of head tension and playing style that let me go from a somewhat bright sound to subdued. I play with a Mylar head.
I know some folks play with the pinky on the head. My version of that is to have the first joint of the pinky finger resting lightly on the head just to maintain alignment of my hand to the plane of the head - without trying to influence the head vibration. Then if I want to play more subdued, I add light pressure from the heel of my hand to the bridge.
A tighter head will be louder and brassier. I don’t own a tension gauge, and having broken heads on previous banjos by over-tightening them, I learned to tune the head just tight enough to fully support the bridge with just a slight sagging under normal string load, and then adjust tighter for tone, projection, and to support the bridge for stable intonation. It’s subjective, obviously. But the point is that damping with cloth stuffed in the back, while not frowned upon, might not be the right approach for the long run.
