After toying with the banjo for the last couple of years, i recently decided to get into a bit further and bought a Gold Tone frailing banjo at palm guitars in Amsterdam. This decision was taken while I was on a recent Dutch tour playing guitar for singer-songwriter, davie Lawson. I found myself in Amsterdam with a day off, and what better way to spend a day off in Amsterdam than to have a few beers at Mulligans Bar. Whilst in Mulligans, I got talking to fiddle player, Siard De Jong, who was getting a tenor banjo imported fro him by Palm guitars so I went over the canal to have a look and buoyed on by half a dozen pints of continental strength beer felt the courage of my banjo convictions like never before and bought a Gold Tone OT-800.
Anyway, the point of this isnt to boast about a new instrument but mention the best music instruction site i've ever found on the web. I often look around at other peoples instructional sites (as I have one of my own!) and found a site run by banjo player Tony Spadarro called Rocket Science Banjo. On Tony's site, you can download a 300 odd page PDF of very detailed instruction on all points of playing clawhammer banjo, which is enhanced by audio and video tutorials. And the charge for all this...nothing... There is a button to donate $20 to the site at the side of the page which I decided to do as everything is of such a high standard, and in return for this I got a personal email from Tony and several hundred more tunes and instructional notes. I'm just trying spread the Rocket Science banjo word...
