Intro to Melodic Style, Part 1: Playing a Major Scale Melodic Style

This lesson is part of the course Bluegrass Banjo with Bill Evans.

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Learn to make your banjo drive the band or play sweet melodies, with solos to well-known songs and tunes, backup techniques, and more.

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Blue Ridge Cabin Home

In this lesson, you’ll start adding roll patterns to the melody of “Blue Ridge Cabin Home.” Every melody has a rhythm and when Earl Scruggs was working out his breaks, he tried to keep the melody’s rhythm intact as he added the roll patterns, letting the melody dictate what kind of roll to use. Bill shows you some ideas for choosing rolls. For example, if you have a melody note that’s held out for a long time you can try a forward roll, and when the melody notes are closer together you can try an alternating thumb roll or a forward reverse roll. Bill walks you through an entire solo here, with embellishments and fill-in licks.

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Intro to Melodic Style

Intro to Melodic Style, Part 1: Playing a Major Scale Melodic Style

Intro to Melodic Style, Part 2: “Devil’s Dream”

Intro to Melodic Style, Part 1: Playing a Major Scale Melodic Style

Melodic-style banjo is a way of playing the banjo that was developed by Bill Keith and others. It involves playing a scale by alternating notes on adjacent strings, allowing the notes of the scale to sustain into one another and thus creating a very smooth sound, in contrast to the two-finger method of playing scales used by Don Reno and others. Today’s banjo players often combine the two techniques. In this lesson, you’ll get started with the concept by learning a G major scale played melodic style.

Melodic-Style Major Scale (Available to subscribers)

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Intro to Melodic Style, Part 2: “Devil’s Dream” →

Previous Lesson

← Whiskey Before Breakfast, Part 2: Backup

Next Lesson

Intro to Melodic Style, Part 2: “Devil’s Dream” →

Previous Lesson

← Whiskey Before Breakfast, Part 2: Backup

Next Lesson

Intro to Melodic Style, Part 2: “Devil’s Dream” →

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