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Play the chorus melody Country Roads, take Me home on the five string banjo – free video lesson.
Total running time 4 minutes.

By the time you complete this free tutorial, you will be able to play part of this favourite campfire song. Literally everyone knows this!

Broken down one note at a time you will see closeups of both Right- and Left- hands, with every pick stroke and fingering position explained in detail.

This instructional video is suitable for absolute beginners. You only need to use the four basic Left Hand positions you can find everywhere in the beginners section of this website.

For the Right Hand technique, the Melody is slow enough so it’s not really important which fingerings you use, just go with what feels most comfortable to start with. It’s a great idea to use all the Right Hand fingerpicking options – Thumb, Index, and Middle fingers – right from the start, but don’t feel embarrassed if you find it more convenient to sound the strings with just one preferred finger (or thumb) over and over to start with – that’s ok!

This enduringly popular spiritual song is easy to play on the five string banjo. In fact you will only need to use one finger of the left hand!
Total running time 8 minutes.

It makes sense to use the strongest, Middle finger of the fretting hand. You are playing on the 2nd fret of the 3rd and 4th strings.

Only two of the easy LH positions required!

We are keeping to a simplified version of the melody so that your fingerpicking options are more open. It’s great to sing the melody yourself while you play the notes on the banjo, this will help you develop your musical knowledge and understanding more quickly.

If you think you can’t sing? Get a friend to sing along while you play. It’s never too early to start jamming with other people.

No pressure! You can just play on your own if you prefer. Practice is important and it’s especially important to be relaxed and confortable all the time when you are playing the banjo.

If you’ve ever wanted to play Dueling Banjos, it’s a lot easier than you might think.

You can learn to play the Walk-Up-and-Down part of it by watching this free video.

Like everything else on this page, you only need the simplest hand positions!

Click the button below to get extra help, including tablature, practice loops and more.

• 1) Using the open strings. It’s much easier for a beginner to play ‘Down the neck’ meaning with the LH (fretting hand) close to the peg head or nut part of the instrument. The 5-string banjo is normally tuned to a G major chord (Standard tuning) so you’ve got a huge headstart if you play songs in the key of G. Most of the songs on this website are in G to make it easier for beginners. Most of the notes in Amazing Grace can be played on open strings!
• 2) Familiarity. It’s going to be easier for you to work out how to play your first melody on the banjo if you already know the song. This is why we’ve selected well known songs like Amazing Grace, Country Roads and Dueling Banjos to give away as free video tutorials.
• 3) The number of fretting fingers/ positions required with the LH. A lot of the songs in the Banjo Academy can be played with just one or two LH fretting fingers! For example the walk up and down in G part of Duelling Banjos only needs you to use the Index amd Middle fingers. Start off easy with songs that only need a few fingers to play, gain musical knowledge and confidence by playing something you know, then add extra fingering positions later once you are ready!
• 4) The simplicity of the Picking strokes and Rolls required with the RH. There are many different picking patterns and rolls you can play. If you want to play Bluegrass, you will eventually need to learn many different patterns to get those amazing cross-rhythms the banjo is renowned for. To start with, it’s much easier to use simple picking patterns like the Square Roll. You can play hundreds of songs using only this one simple pattern, in fact that gives you an authentic banjo style called Thumb Lead.

Want to add those exciting extra notes and sound like a real banjo player?

First, you have to make the melody even simpler…

Up until now (Country Roads, Amazing Grace) you’ve been using all the RH fingerpicking options (Thumb, Index, Middle) to play melodies, and that’s a great way to help you get familiarity with the banjo.

But you want to be a real banjo player! You want to get that sparkling Bluegrass sound that rattles along at a hundred miles per hour!

It’s a lot easier than you think. Get the first lessons free right here on this website.

The secret is to make it even simpler to play the melody by using only the RH Thumb to pick the melody notes.

Then you’re going to use the Index and Middle fingers to add the extra notes.

Usually, those extra notes will be on open strings, so you can get that extra sparkle into your playing without complicating the left hand.

Not every song is suitable for this technique. We’ve identified a whole set of songs for you that can be played in this simple, authentic banjo style.  You can learn more on the Thumb Lead page, which you can also reach from the ‘More Help’ menu at the top of the page.

Directly below you can find a complete free video lesson to show you how to play a great easy song, I’ll Fly Away. You will be picking all the melody notes with the RH Thumb. This will make it easier to add the sparkly extra notes later on.

I’ll Fly Away – free video lesson using Thumblead. This song was made popular by the film ‘Oh Brother Where Art tho.”
Total running time 6 minutes.

I’ll Fly Away is another traditional gospel song that is well known and loved around the world. In this free lesson for beginner banjo players, you will learn to play the entire verse part. Like Old Plank Road and Dan Tucker, the Melody of this song can be played using only the Thumb of the picking hand (RH). You will see that demonstrated from 0:50 to around 5:00

At the start of this video, I first show how to play the song with the fancy extra notes, the Pinches and Rolls. It’s a lot easier to do this than you might think, and I will teach you that in the Banjo Academy. You can also purchase I’ll Fly Away as a separate song learning package. Click the button below to purchase this classic song.

Thumb Lead style makes it easy to add the extra pinches and rolls because all the techniques fit together like Lego bricks.

Not every song is suitable to be played this way, but if you can find a song that works in Thumb Lead style you’re halfway there already!

Here at JoffLowson.com we’ve done the hard work for you by trying out thousands of potential songs and making teaching videos for the songs that are not only easy to play, but also help you learn quicker.

Songs that are suitable for beginners simple Thumb Lead usually have the melody on the middle three strings of the instrument, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th strings.

I’ll Fly Away and Cripple Creek (Part 2 – chorus) are great banjo songs that have the melody played entirely with the Thumb and are easy to play for beginners.

Six of the songs in the Banjo Academy are taught entirely in this wonderful pre-Scruggs style, which can be performed equally well with 2- as with 3-fingers.

You can also get started with this rootsy authentic banjo style with the free Cripple Creek videos. 3 videos total running time 30 minutes.

To develop your playing beyond the Old-Time Thumb Lead style, you need to add some more rolls into your right hand repertoire. What better way of doing it than by using this simple trick I learned from Snuffy Jenkins, who was one of Earl Scrugg’s teachers.

Rhythmically it fits into the beat just like Square Roll and Pinch, but it gives a different sound and also allows you to play melodies higher up on the 1st string.

The Snuffy Roll is followed by a gap and a Pinch. This makes it easy to switch back to Thumb Lead, so you can integrate this technique into your playing. This technique is used in the High Part of Cripple Creek, where we use it once to play the most catchy part of the song.

In the Banjo Academy, you will learn how to play an entire song with this roll – Man of Constant Sorrow.

Man of Constant Sorrow – easy banjo song. This song was also made popular by the film ‘Oh Brother Where Art tho.’

This song was originally made famous by the Stanley Brothers back in the 1950s. They are well worth checking out if you are new to this music. The song has a higher melody which is played on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings – you don’t play the 4th string at all.

You can use Thumb Lead for parts of this song, but when the melody goes higher, I like to play it using the Snuffy Roll as well as Pinches. You can hear what that sounds like in this free video.

My buddy Kit and I tried several different ways to start this song. Eventually we settled on a simple turnaround played by Kit and then I come in with the vocal. You can go straight to the start of the song by using the video bookmark.

You only need two of the basic left hand positions for this song.

These banjo demonstrations help you learn melody. Learning melody is the first step to playing the banjo, and I wanted to create something totally for free, so here are a bunch of tunes to help you do just that! Most of these songs will be in a G-major scale using the simple left-hand positions and the open strings.