Chords for Banjo Lesson Beginning Bluegrass Banjo - Cripple Creek

Tempo:
95.6 bpm
Chords used:

A

G

Bb

D

C

Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Show Tuner
Banjo Lesson Beginning Bluegrass Banjo - Cripple Creek chords
Start Jamming...
Well that was Cripple Creek played at pretty much at the speed that it's usually played
at and now we're going to break it down and learn how to play Cripple Creek and we'll
have our first tune under our belt with both the left hand fingering and technique and
the right hand fingering and rolls and what have you.
Now the right hand we just spoke about, roll patterns, really they're things that we do
to build up the right hand execution but when we add the left hand fingering for things,
techniques that we're going to learn right now, slides, pull offs and [D] hammer ons, then
we call those licks and that's pretty much how people are going to [C] communicate with you
as a banjo player, what lick do you use on this tune or where [Abm] do you play that lick and
the lick is simply what you do on the right hand, some kind of right hand pattern with
how you finger the left hand.
Now let's start with the basic slide on the left hand and I'm going to show you one that
we use just in all the time really and especially when we're playing Scruggs style and a slide
is when it's two notes, we want it to be two distinct notes so on the left hand let's do
a slide on the third string, we're going to put our middle finger behind the second fret
and once again you want to get it directly behind the fret so that it sounds better and
clean and [A] when we strike the note we simply slide one fret up to the third fret, that's
what the slide is, alright I'm going to strike the third string with my thumb on the right
hand [Bb] and slide to the third fret from the second fret, [A] two notes, you [E] don't want to
get like that, you don't want to mute the string or lay the wrong way, [Bb]
then [G] maybe hit
the next note.
Okay that's the slide, the next main technique that we see all [F] the time with the left hand
is a pull off and that is simply, we'll do that again on the second fret of the third
string, we finger the string at the fret, strike it with the right hand, in this case
I'll strike it with [A] my thumb and [G] pull, I'm pulling off, I'm pulling from the second fret
of the third string to open and I'm pulling towards the second string, now at first when
you do this you'll be kind of getting hung up a little bit, hitting the second string
and what have you so it does take practice, you have to sit there for about 800 hours
and just do that or [A] they're two distinct [G] notes, as you play the more you play the more you'll
build up calluses on your fingers as well and that will help, Scruggs used to say get
it behind his [A] fingernail [G] maybe and pull off, similarly a push off is just [A] pushing the other
way, if I hit the string and push towards the [G] fourth string, that's a little harder
when you're going from a fret to open, push offs are used mainly when you're maybe fingering
at [Bb] the second fret and [A] strike on the third [A] fret and push, [G] so we've got the pull off,
the push off, the slide and actually the one other technique is the hammer [C] on and I'll
do that, that's where you strike the string and hammer on to a fret, so I'll strike the
fourth string with [D] my thumb [E] and hammer on to the second fret, all of these techniques
mean that you are making two [A] notes out of one hit with the right hand, you're not going
for the slide, [Bb]
[A] you're going, [Bb] so you want to make sure you get these techniques very [Ab] cleanly,
[G] so that we can hear the two notes because as you speed that up that will get lost [F] if
you don't do it clean and very [N] properly.
Well now we have the right hand techniques, the
roll patterns and we have the left hand techniques, the hammer ons and pull offs and slides and
even some of the partial chord positions, so we're ready to learn Cripple Creek and
we'll do that by thinking of our count, a big thing that we have to know when we start
these tunes is where the tune comes in on what beat, so Cripple Creek happens to come
in on the off beat, the two and and we're going to place the ring finger on the left
hand on the second fret of the first string, okay and with the right hand we're going to
do what we call a pinch, that means we're simply hitting more than one string at the
same time, you can pinch two or three strings, in this case we're going to pinch the first
and the fifth string, we've got the ring finger on the second fret of the first string and
we're going [Em] to pinch and then slide up to the fifth fret, we won't be striking the first
string again at the fifth fret, so we want to make sure that that's a very clean, so
we hear the two notes that I spoke about before when we slide, so we've got that second fret
and if we're counting one and two and one is when we get to the fifth fret of the [Gm] first
string, okay and then to continue we hit the fifth string and we go back to the first
[D] string open, then the second [B] string open, now we're going to [G] that C chord we practiced
before and we lay all the fingers down at the same time, the optimum is to not put the
ring and then the index and then the middle, but when you practice making the chord positions,
lay all the fingers down at the same time and you're in that C chord, second fret one,
first fret two, second fret four and on the right hand we go five, two, one, five, [C] fifth,
second, first, fifth, then we pick our fingers up, we're going back to G, so we [D] hit the first
string open and then [Gm] we pinch one and five, so we've got the first half of the [Eb] first part
of the tune, tunes are instrumentals and songs are simply tunes with words and so in the
same way that we talk about songs with the verse and a chorus, with the instrumentals
we name the parts, A part, B part, C part, whatever, so Cripple Creek has an A part and
a B part, we have just played through the first half of the A part [N] of Cripple
Key:  
A
1231
G
2131
Bb
12341111
D
1321
C
3211
A
1231
G
2131
Bb
12341111
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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Well that was Cripple Creek played at pretty much at the speed that it's usually played
at and now we're going to break it down and learn how to play Cripple Creek and we'll
have our first tune under our belt with both the left hand fingering and technique and
the right hand fingering and rolls and what have you.
Now the right hand we just spoke about, roll patterns, really they're things that we do
to build up the right hand execution but when we add the left hand fingering for things,
techniques that we're going to learn right now, slides, pull offs and [D] hammer ons, then
we call those licks and that's pretty much how people are going to [C] communicate with you
as a banjo player, what lick do you use on this tune or where [Abm] do you play that lick and
the lick is simply what you do on the right hand, some kind of right hand pattern with
how you finger the left hand.
Now let's start with the basic slide on the left hand and I'm going to show you one that
we use just in all the time really and especially when we're playing Scruggs style and a slide
is when it's two notes, we want it to be two distinct notes so on the left hand let's do
a slide on the third string, we're going to put our middle finger behind the second fret
and once again you want to get it directly behind the fret so that it sounds better and
clean and [A] when we strike the note we simply slide one fret up to the third fret, that's
what the slide is, alright I'm going to strike the third string with my thumb on the right
hand _ [Bb] and slide to the third fret from the second fret, _ [A] two notes, you [E] don't want to
get like that, you don't want to mute the string or lay the wrong way, [Bb]
then [G] maybe hit
the next note. _ _ _ _
Okay that's the slide, the next main technique that we see all [F] the time with the left hand
is a pull off and that is simply, we'll do that again on the second fret of the third
string, we finger the string at the fret, strike it with the right hand, in this case
I'll strike it with [A] my thumb and [G] pull, I'm pulling off, I'm pulling from the second fret
of the third string to open and I'm pulling towards the second string, now at first when
you do this you'll be kind of getting hung up a little bit, hitting the second string
and what have you so it does take practice, you have to sit there for about 800 hours
and just do that or [A] they're two distinct [G] notes, as you play the more you play the more you'll
build up calluses on your fingers as well and that will help, Scruggs used to say get
it behind his [A] fingernail [G] maybe and pull off, similarly a push off is just [A] pushing the other
way, if I hit the string and push towards the [G] fourth string, that's a little harder
when you're going from a fret to open, push offs are used mainly when you're maybe fingering
at [Bb] the second fret and [A] strike on the third [A] fret and push, [G] so we've got the pull off,
the push off, the slide and actually the one other technique is the hammer [C] on and I'll
do that, that's where you strike the string and hammer on to a fret, so I'll strike the
fourth string with [D] my thumb [E] and hammer on to the second fret, _ all of these techniques
mean that you are making two [A] notes out of one hit with the right hand, you're not going
for the slide, [Bb] _
[A] you're going, [Bb] so you want to make sure you get these techniques very [Ab] cleanly,
[G] _ _ _ _ so that we can hear the two notes because as you speed that up that will get lost [F] if
you don't do it clean and very [N] properly.
_ Well now we have the right hand techniques, the
roll patterns and we have the left hand techniques, the hammer ons and pull offs and slides and
even some of the partial chord positions, so we're ready to learn Cripple Creek and
we'll do that by thinking of our count, a big thing that we have to know when we start
these tunes is where the tune comes in on what beat, so Cripple Creek happens to come
in on the off beat, the two and and we're going to place the ring finger on the left
hand on the second fret of the first string, okay and with the right hand we're going to
do what we call a pinch, that means we're simply hitting more than one string at the
same time, you can pinch two or three strings, in this case we're going to pinch the first
and the fifth string, we've got the ring finger on the second fret of the first string and
we're going [Em] to pinch and then slide up to the fifth fret, we won't be striking the first
string again at the fifth fret, so we want to make sure that that's a very clean, so
we hear the two notes that I spoke about before when we slide, so we've got that second fret
and if we're counting one and two and one is when we get to the fifth fret of the [Gm] first
string, okay and then to continue we hit the fifth string and we go back to the first
[D] string open, then the second [B] string open, now we're going to [G] that C chord we practiced
before and we lay all the fingers down at the same time, the optimum is to not put the
ring and then the index and then the middle, but when you practice making the chord positions,
lay all the fingers down at the same time and you're in that C chord, second fret one,
first fret two, second fret four and on the right hand we go five, two, one, five, [C] fifth,
second, first, fifth, then we pick our fingers up, we're going back to G, so we [D] hit the first
string open and then [Gm] we pinch one and five, _ so we've got the first half of the [Eb] first part
of the tune, tunes are instrumentals and songs are simply tunes with words and so in the
same way that we talk about songs with the verse and a chorus, with the instrumentals
we name the parts, A part, B part, C part, whatever, so Cripple Creek has an A part and
a B part, we have just played through the first half of the A part [N] of Cripple

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