Banjo: Accompanying Using Alternating Thumb Patterns

Another good way of accompanying yourself or other musicians, mainly people singing a song, is to use alternating thumb patterns on the banjo. I've already shown you the alternating roll which was thumb, indes, thumb-index, thumb-middle. A way you can use this way is where you pluck the second and first string with your index and middle finger at the same time to get this.

which immediately sets up the backing for somebody to sing a song over and you can just move around the chords using the.

mainly the four strings and leaving out the fifth one because the fifth one won't apply to all the chords you play in the open position.

If I was now to play a simple chord progression in the key of G major, let's say I'm going to play G for 2 bars, C for 2 bars, G for 2 bars again and then D for 2 bars, I could play something like this.Try learning different songs in this way and as you get better and better, you can try and put in little extra bits, little rolls sometimes maybe and try to spice up your playing this way.