Banjo · Chapter 16 of 23

Drop-Thumb and Double Thumbing

Your thumb can do more than the 5th string. Let it play after every strike, then let it drop to the inside strings for melody notes. That’s how clawhammer plays fast fiddle tunes.

The basic bum-ditty plays one melody note every two beats. Fiddle tunes have a note on every beat and often between the beats too. Two thumb techniques fill that gap.

Double thumbing

Instead of strike, brush, thumb, play strike, thumb, strike, thumb: the fingernail on every beat and the thumb on every “and”. The finger can now play a melody note on every beat. The thumb usually stays on the 5th string, which rings like a bell between the melody notes.

Drop-thumb

Now the thumb drops from the 5th string onto the 4th, 3rd or 2nd string to play a melody note on the “and”. The rule that makes it work: the thumb always plays a string below (nearer your face than) the one the finger just struck. Strike the 1st string, drop the thumb to the 2nd; strike the 2nd, drop to the 3rd.

Listen to the second bar: the strikes play E, D, B and the dropped thumb plays B, C, A between them. Every eighth note is now melody, and the hand still moves in the same steady clawhammer arc.

Putting it together

Real tunes mix all of it: bum-ditties, double thumbing, drop-thumbs, hammer-ons and pull-offs. In Soldier’s Joy (clawhammer, open D tuning), the A part is double thumbing on the 5th string; the B part climbs the 1st string with hammer-ons and pull-offs and drops the thumb onto the 2nd string. Play bars 1–2 of the A part first:

This needs open D tuning (f♯ D F♯ A D), explained in the next chapter. Played in open G, the notes would be wrong.

Try it. Play the drop-thumb exercise slowly until the thumb finds the inside string without your looking. Then learn the A part of Soldier’s Joy two bars at a time, once you have retuned to open D.

Check each one when it feels even at a slow tempo.

  • Double thumbing: the thumb on the 5th string after every strike.
  • Drop-thumb: the thumb drops to an inner string and comes right back.
  • I can play the two bars of Soldier’s Joy in “Putting it together” without stopping.

Remember

  • Double thumbing: strike on every beat, thumb on every “and”.
  • Drop-thumb: the thumb plays the 4th, 3rd or 2nd string, always below the string the finger just struck.
  • Hammer-ons and pull-offs fill the other gaps between beats.

Songs that use this

@teddyrookbook GitHub