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This particular page was created 23/11/2003 and last updated 28/11/2004
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| | Irish dance tunes are often quite fast with lots and lots of notes. That means you need a fixed fingering system (which finger fingers which note) to be able to play confidentally. There are two differnet fingering systems used for the irish banjo, chromatic (or "guitar") fingering and diatonic ("fiddle" or "mandolin") fingering. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. In the end it's all a question of the scale length of your banjo and the size and dexterity of your fretting hand. We have to make a choice at once:
Take a measuring tape and measure the scale of your banjo (that's the length of the sounding part of the string, from the nut to the bridge). If it's - 54.5 cm (21.5") or less, you should go for diatonic fingering unless you have unusually small hands.
- 57 cm (22.5") or more, go for chromatic fingering unless you have very big hands.
- somewhere in between, you probably should use chromatic fingering, but you could try the alternative too.
If you don't have a measuring tape at hand, or can't figure out how to measru the scale length, there's another method: count the number of frets. If your banjo has 17 frets or less, it's a short scale tenor banjo suitable for diatonic fingering. If it has 19 or 20 frets it's a long scale tenor banjo and you should probably go for chromatic fingering. If it's got 22 frets or more, it's a plectrum banjo and you definitely should use chromatic fingering.
Diatonic fingeringDiatonic fingring means we use one finger for each note in the scale. This is the system used by smaller instruments like the fiddle and the mandolin. On larger instruments like the guitar it simply isn't practical since it requires some serious stretches. The tenor banjo is a border case.
The system is:- The first (index) finger plays all the notes on the first and second fret
- The second (middle) finger plays the notes on the third and fourth fret
- The third (ring) finger takes care of the fifth and sixth fret
- The fourth (little) finger plays the seventh fret (although there rarely are any)
That's all there's to it!
Chromatic fingeringChrmatic fingering is for the bigger instruments where you can't expect each finger to reach over two frets. The principle is even simpler than diatonic fingering: each finger takes care of one fret. On the tenor banjo we nearly always play in "second position," that is:- The first (index) finger plays all the notes on the second fret
- The second (middle) finger plays the notes on the third fret
- The third (ring) finger takes care of the fourth fret
- The fourth (little) finger plays the fifth fret.
How about the first and sixth fret? Well, we have to cheat a little and stretch out the first and fourth finger for those notes. Don't worry, you won't see these notes for a while and there'll never be many of them.This should sort out the left hand's work for now. Time to look at the right hand.
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