Duelling Banjos
The most famous song on the banjo
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Duelling Banjos part 1
Duelling banjos is the most well known tune on the five-string banjo. It was featured in the film ‘Deliverance’ and it sounds good with just a banjo and a guitar or you can play it with a whole band. It’s possible to make an arrangement with just the one banjo but it’s more fun if you can play with someone else and bounce the phrases back and forth, duelling.
The arrangement is a little more complicated than Cripple Creek – there are four short pieces of music that are played round slowly first, then a fast piece and finally you have to play the four short pieces again fast. The four short pieces are called – the G/C/G strum – the opening lick – the walk up and down – the Yankee Doodle lick. You can learn to play these pieces in any order you like.
This video shows you how to play the walk up and down part, which is a good place to start. This piece needs to be played three different ways, in G, in C, and in D. In this video we only look at playing it in G. Once you’ve learnt to play this you can try duelling with Me on just this section if you like.
There are five different audio loops for you to practice with. The slowest is a molasses-like 20bpm and the fastest is at 72bpm, which is the same speed as the Cripple Creek video backing track you can find on another page. Find the speed which suits you best and once you can play the wlak up and down part several times round accurately, try going to the nest faster speed.
Duelling Banjos Walk Up and Down 20bpm
Duelling Banjos Walk Up and Down 30bpm
Duelling Banjos Walk Up and Down 40bpm
Duelling Banjos Walk Up and Down 60bpm
Duelling Banjos Walk Up and Down 72bpm
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Part 2: G/C/G
This is one of the most recognisable parts of the tune, and quite easy to play. You are using on only the easiest version of a C chord so you only need two fingers on the left hand.
Part 3: Opening Lick
This is one of the most distinctive parts of the tune. Play something that all your friends will recognise!
Part 4: Yankee Doodle Lick
The Yankee Doodle lick is the signal for everybody to speed up.
The next piece of music to play after this is the fast section, however you have a few more things to learn to complete the slow opening section.
Part 5: Walk Up and Down in C & D
This is probably the most challenging part of the whole song. You are using a technique called the Barre to transpose what you learnt in part 1 into two different keys, C & D.
Part 6: Complete Slow Opening Section
Once you’ve learnt all the pieces of music in parts 1 to 5, put them together with this video lesson. We are going to do the entire slow opening section pretty close to the way they did it the film.
Part 7: Fast Section Part 1
After you’ve played all the other parts slowly you go into this fast section. In this video I’ve shown you a very simple way of playing it using mostly square rolls, the only new thing you have to learn is the Double D lick.
Part 8: Duelling at Speed
After you’ve played the fast bit you are going to play all the other pieces again, only this time you are playing at tempo. In the slow opening section we duelled by playing one at a time, so you leave a gap while the other person plays.