Banjo · Chapter 14 of 23
Licks, Fill-Ins and Endings
Bluegrass players don’t invent every bar from scratch. They carry a handful of short phrases, called licks, and drop them in wherever they fit. Here are five to start your own collection.
A lick is a short phrase, usually one bar long, made from a roll plus a left-hand move: a slide, a hammer-on or a pull-off. Licks are the building blocks of three-finger banjo. Learn a few well, and you can play along on tunes you’ve never seen.
The slide lick
The most common lick in bluegrass banjo. Pick the 3rd string at the 2nd fret with your thumb, slide up to the 4th fret, then roll across the open 2nd, 5th and 1st strings. The slide lands on B, a note of the G chord, so it fits almost any bar of G.
Hammer-on and pull-off licks
Two more one-bar licks in G. The first hammers the open 3rd string to the 2nd fret (G to A) and rolls on. The second starts with a pull-off on the 1st string (E to D) and ends with a hammer-on on the 3rd, which leads nicely into the next bar.
A low-string lick
For a deeper sound, let the thumb play on the 4th string: open D, hammered to E at the 2nd fret, then a roll on the open strings above it. This is how a tune’s low part often sounds in three-finger style.
Fill-ins
When the melody holds a long note at the end of a phrase, the banjo doesn’t stop. It fills the space with a roll or a lick on the same chord. Any lick in this chapter can be a fill-in on G; the forward-reverse roll makes a good one too.
Where licks come from
Most licks are passed from player to player, and you’ll hear the same moves in many tunes. Learn them by ear and by tab, then change them a little. That is how every player’s own style begins.
An ending lick
To finish a tune, slow the roll down into a pull-off and close with a pinch: thumb and middle finger together, here on the 4th and 1st strings, both D. Then stop and let it ring.
Put them together
Four bars, four licks, over the chords G, C, D7, G: the slide lick, a forward roll on C, a D7 roll, and the ending. This is the end of the first part of Red Clay Breakdown in miniature.
Red Clay Breakdown
A short breakdown of our own, made from these licks: a high part that opens with the slide lick and a low part on the 4th string. Play each part twice.
Check each lick when you can play it four times in a row without stopping.
- The slide lick.
- The hammer-on lick and the pull-off lick.
- The low-string lick on the 4th string.
- The ending lick with a pinch.
- I swapped a lick into a tune I already know.
Remember
- A lick is a short phrase (often one bar) made from a roll plus a slide, hammer-on or pull-off.
- The slide lick (3rd string, 2nd to 4th fret) fits almost any bar of G.
- Fill-ins keep the banjo rolling under long melody notes; a pinch ends the tune.