Hooks & Nuts

"What is the best 5^th string banjo capo?" This is one of the most common questions we get asked here at the Deering Banjo Company. 

The topic of classic banjo recordings from the early 1900s came up recently as a customer called a few weeks ago asking what banjo he should buy that would...

The quest for that certain banjo sound has been discussed and written about for decades.But the language of the “mechanics of banjo sound” has not always been...

If you’re familiar with learning a folk instrument, you have most likely heard musicians refer to music as a language. And you may have seen good musicians...

A beginning banjo student called us a while back to ask us to address how to hold the thumb of the fretting hand. She tried to hold her thumb in the center of...

Beginning musician’s struggle with this concept: play the music how you “feel” it. What does that mean? How can that be quantified?

I have a number of students who have trouble understanding the difference between the key of a song and the tuning of their banjo or they feel they can only...

I was in a conversation the other day where a musician said to me, “I decided not to play banjo in our band because we don’t want to ‘look like’ we’re...

As most of us know, standard tuning for a 5-string banjo is an open G tuning (G,D,G,B,D). Open G tuning means that if we strum all the strings without fretting...

I don’t think over fretting is a commonly used term, but what it essentially means is:  Pushing strings harder than necessary on fretted instruments.