Chords for Man of Constant Sorrow- Banjo Lesson!

_ _ [C#] _ _ _ _ _ _
[E] _ _ [G] _ _ Bum ba dum! _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _
[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [Dm] _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [N] _ Howdy welcome to BanjoBenClark.com.
I'm your humble host Banjo Ben here on your favorite online learning site when it comes
to learning how to play banjo, the mandolin, and the guitar.
I put up a video like this each and every week along with tabs.
I invite you to go check out the site.
I have hundreds of videos, hundreds of tabs over there.
Today we're learning a great tasty version.
It's not too hard but it's good enough to play on any stage or in any jam.
A great version out of the open G tuning of Man of Constant Sorrow.
So if you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, here in a little while I'll ask you to go
visit my favorite website as well, BanjoBenClark.com.
When you're over there you can join as a Gold Pick member and have access to hundreds of
videos as I mentioned.
All the tabs including the one to this.
I have a [G#] PDF tab just exactly as I played it in solo.
I also have the teff file over there which is really cool because you can get the free
teff player and your computer will play the tab for you.
You can control the tempo and everything else.
It's one of the best learning tools out there.
[N] Now on the video I'm going to do about a 20 minute video lesson showing you how to play
each and every note and give you technique and tips for how to accomplish this style.
I have another video where I play it from start to finish very slowly that you can keep
up with as well as four different speeds of guitar rhythm tracks that you can practice
along with before you go to your next local jam.
Show this baby off.
All right.
I also have MP3s for you to download of just open rhythm tracks that you can play along with.
All right.
So you need to be a Gold Pick member over on BanjoBenClark _ .com.
I'd be honored to have you.
Let's dive into Man of Constant Sorrow.
_ We're going to learn this song in the key of G.
It's a very bluesy song.
So what you're going to notice is that as we change through the chords we're not going
to make [A] full chord positions.
For example when we go to C we're not going to make a full C position or when we go to
[D] D we wouldn't make a full D position.
[G] And that's because we're going to use the notes of the G chord, just the open banjo
string to help kind of drone around the melody that we're presenting.
[N] Now this version that I'm teaching I wanted to follow the melody pretty close while at
the same time throwing a few tricks in here and there.
So we're going to see a lot of slides.
We're going to see some hammer-ons.
We're going to see some real quick pull-off.
[G] _
And we're also going to see a lot of bends.
The bends [A] kind of give the version that I'm teaching some [F#] character.
So let's throw the tab up there.
You'll notice that [E] beneath each one of the notes I have our right hand fingerings labeled.
So if it's a T [G]
that means our thumb's playing the string.
If it's a 1 that would be index.
2 would be [D] middle.
And we're going to start on the second [N] beat of the first measure.
And what I want you to do is go ahead and get in position with your index finger on
the first fret of the B string.
And then what we're going to do is play an open [G] G string and then we're going to bend
the third fret of the G string.
_ And we want to bend it up because if we bend down we're going to probably bend it [C] down
into _ that B string that we're going to be [G] playing.
And we want this bend to kind of ring out.
It's going to sound like this.
You _ _ hear how the bend lasts throughout the third note?
_ [C] _ If we bend it [G] down we might mute it.
_ Okay, so we're going to bend up and I encourage you to use two fingers to bend that width,
especially if you're using medium gauge strings.
So we're going to place our ring finger down the third fret, our middle finger behind it,
and we're going to push with both of those to get a good bend.
So there's just those three quarter notes sound like this once again.
[Gm] _ _ [C] _ _ And then we [G] already have our [Fm] index finger down and we're going to use that to do a hammer
on at the very beginning of measure two, this eighth note hammer on.
So don't make it too fast.
It happens over the course of one [A#] beat.
[G] So they're just regular eighth notes.
It sounds like this.
We're just hammering from first to third fret.
Then we're going to start two forward rolls, actually three forward rolls in a row, leaving
that ring finger down.
So let me just play measures one and two together for you.
_ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Gm] _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ And I want you, if you can, to accent _ [D] your middle finger, that open D string.
[Gm] That's where our melody is.
_ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ Now in the third measure, whenever we do that forward roll, we're going to do a [F#] really fast
sixteenth note hammer on this time.
So this time the hammer on does happen fast.
And it sounds like this.
The first four notes of [G] measure three. _
_ _ _ Hear how that goes? _ _
_ _ _ Then halfway through that measure three, we're going to start a backwards roll _ [D] back down
to that bend.
[C] _
[Gm] _ _ [G] And you can bend that one up or you can bend it down.
I think I end up bending it down because we're going to go ahead and release our index finger.
So measure three slowly, sounds like this. _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Good.
When we land on measure four, we're going to do just a quarter note pinch of the G string
and D string.
One and three.
Then we're going to have another eighth note slide with our ring finger from third fret
_ to fifth fret on that fourth string. _
_ _ [D] Then we're going to start a series of forward rolls here.
[G] _
_ _ _ _ Measure four slowly sounds like this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Let's play it slowly, measures one through four.
_ _ One, two, three, [C] four, _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ five.
_ _ [C] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
[Dm] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ Now remember here on the website I have a whole other video where I play the whole thing
slowly from start to finish just like that.
When we get into measure five, we're going to once again do an eighth note ornament.
This time it's a pull off.
We're going to start with our open [Gm] fifth string and then play the third fret on the third string.
We're going to do a slow pull off [D] _ to the [Gm] second fret and then back to the fifth string.
So it sounds like this.
_ [G] _
_ What some of you are going to be tempted to do is make that a fast pull off so it sounds like this.
_ _ We don't want that.
We want this pull off to happen in the timing of eighth notes. _ _
Then do that backwards roll with the bend that we've already learned.
[Gm] _ _ _ _ So measure five slowly sounds like this.
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _