Play Along (Jam)
Real tunes flow at you in time — play each note as it lands. Mic-scored.
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Never played before? Start with the big button — your first sound is about four minutes away.
Atlas · An Illustrated Method
The five-string banjo, drawn to a true 26″ neck against an 11″ rim. The short fifth string breaks at the fifth fret to sound its open g drone — the shimmer that defines the instrument. Tuned to open G (gDGBD), it plays a full chord with every string ringing free.
start here · the guided path
A step-by-step course: meet the drone, learn the rolls, find the first chords, and play your first tune. Each lesson teaches one idea and puts it straight under your fingers — no quizzes, progress saved.
∑ The science of the strings →♪ The listening room: why this instrument →
the practice rooms
The rolls in your right hand, the chords under your left, real tunes to play, and the whole fingerboard mapped. Drill any of them freely.
Real tunes flow at you in time — play each note as it lands. Mic-scored.
The five essential right-hand rolls — watch, hear, and set the tempo.
Open-G shapes and movable voicings, with finger and degree colours.
Every chord and scale across the neck — the whole fingerboard, seen.
Train your ear — hear, name and play every interval and chord quality.
the method library
Built on the foundations of the players who defined the five-string — the drive of Earl Scruggs, the melodic banjo of Bill Keith, the clawhammer tradition, and the standards every picker learns first.
the maths & physics of this instrument
It looks like a guitar and it is not one. The soundboard is a stretched circular membrane, which vibrates in stubbornly non-whole-number ratios and gives the banjo its percussive crack. And bolted to the neck is the strangest string in music: one that starts two-thirds of the way up, tuned by a fraction rather than a fret.
Fractions · reciprocals · approximation
The fifth string's nut sits at the 5th fret, leaving 2^(−5/12) = 0.749 of the length — almost exactly ¾. Turn the fraction upside down and you get 1.335× the pitch, within about 2 cents of a perfect 4:3 fourth.
A fraction and its reciprocal, built into hardware, with a real near-miss you can measure.
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Ratios that aren't whole numbers
A circular membrane vibrates at 1 : 1.59 : 2.14 : 2.30 — not 1 : 2 : 3 : 4. Nothing lines up, so nothing sings a clear pitch.
The banjo is the one string instrument whose body follows drum physics, and you can hear that in its attack.
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Patterns · cycles · counting arrangements
A forward roll is a fixed eight-note cycle of thumb, index and middle over five strings, repeating against a drone.
The instrument's entire right-hand technique is a pattern that repeats — the grammar is combinatorial.
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Intervals as counted steps
Open G tuning spells g–D–G–B–D. From G up to B is 4 semitones, B up to D is 3 — a major triad, sounding before anyone frets anything.
Strum nothing at all and you have already played a chord, because the arithmetic was done at the tuning pegs.
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