Absolute Beginners: Irish Tenor Banjo. Includes Audio Online

Fantastic book! Very useful, has everything you need to learn the banjo.

Well written in a way that's easy to read even for someone who can't read music . Its explained well so you can follow and read the musical notes when learning from the book .

Not as easy to follow as hoped but I am left handed!

Although I would not say that I am an absolute beginner, I have played guitar and G Banjo for many years, I have only started to play a tenor banjo two weeks ago. This book is a great introduction to this magnificent instrument. I had tried the mandolin but couldn't get on with the double strings. My only negative point with this book would be in the choice of tunes, some are okay but others I could give a miss (Oh! Susannah I think not) fortunately there are loads of tabs on the net to download, Road to Lisdoonvarna, Drowsey Maggie, Banish Misfortune and many more. And if you can't read music there are lots more on Youtube. This book is well worth the investment.

I was hoping this would push me on to really getting to grips with other, more advanced, tutorials. But it did not meet my objectives. First I had to resolve an ambiguity on page 11 where references are made to top and bottom, up and down. The up and down words are about physical movements of the right hand, but the top and bottom words refer to musical sound not the physical position of the strings. The banjo E string is the sound of higher frequency. The E string is physically the lowest of the four strings for a right handed player but called the top or highest string in the text. Quite confusing for a beginner. Second issue I had was that the beginner should really be comfortable with written music. All the written music in the book has a corresponding indication of string and fret number, so there is some sort of alternative support. Having tried this approach and failed, I'm going to try again, but with much lower expectations and much more time committed to the project. I had naively thought that a couple of months of evenings and weekends would show some competence. Now I'll try a couple of hours per day every day and see where I get to in a year.

This is an excellent book. Very easy to follow. Great for beginners to get to grips with.

I bought a banjo for my sons birthday as he already plays guitar and so bouvht this book to accompany it to help him on his way.

A great book. In the end I went for a banjo uke so totally messed up. Perhaps one day I will use it.

Excellent for a person who takes the banjo by first time.

I have purchased several books and DVDs on Irish Tenor Banjo and not found them that great. I was even in Ireland last year and couldn't find a decent book on the instrument. I have had to make do with Mandolin books which at least have the same tuning. That's why I was so glad to find this one. It starts off with scales so you can learn the mechanics of playing. Then it teaches you a few good, easy tunes (a reel, jig, hornpipe, polka, etc.) Then it teaches you ornamentation to make the tunes more interesting. Then it applies the ornamentation to the tunes you just learned. Pretty soon you have a decent repertoire. It comes with a download to hear what you should sound like and play along with. I wish all music books were this well structured. And you can't beat the price.

Beautiful book very helpful.

でもわかりやすいです。

rien à redire... Une amélioration souhaitée ...pour les prochaines éditions ... accompagner les partition avec des tablatures correspondantes ...ça serait vraiment cool...