Songs · Banjo · Intermediate
Fisher’s Hornpipe
Traditional (British, 1700s), long played by Southern old-time and bluegrass musicians · Hornpipe, printed in many collections from the late 1700s on
Banjo · old-timethree-finger rollsG major4/4 time16 barsopen G tuning
Arranged: Teddy Rook Book: three-finger banjo in G, moved up from the fiddle’s F and down an octave; the first half of the B part goes up the neck to the 7th fret.
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About this piece
A bright hornpipe that came over from the British Isles and stayed in the fiddle and banjo repertoire of the South. In this arrangement almost every eighth note is a note of the tune, picked T I M without using a finger twice in a row. In bars 9 to 12 the left hand moves up to the 7th fret, where a D chord lies across the top three strings; in bars 13 and 14 the fingers fall into C and G roll shapes.
What it practices
- every note of the tune with three fingers
- hammer-ons, pull-offs
- up the neck at the 7th fret
- backward roll shapes
- G, C, Am, D and D7
Chords in this song
Each link opens the chord finder with more ways to play that chord.
Where the notes come from
Melody checked note by note against “Fisher’s Hornpipe” in Ryan’s Mammoth Collection (Boston, 1883), as transcribed in ABC at MIT (trillian.mit.edu, contributed by John Chambers). Moved from F to G and down an octave; the fiddle’s sixteenth notes are our eighth notes, and the pickups are left out. Every note of that version is in our tab at its time, except where a bar ends with a held note. Chords are ours.
How to practice with it
- Listen first. Press Play and follow along. The note being played lights up in the tab, in the notation and on the fretboard, and the chord being played lights up in the row of chord diagrams.
- Learn the chords. Press each diagram to hear it, then practice changing between them slowly.
- Slow it down. Use − and + to set the tempo. 60% is a good place to start; the notes keep their pitch.
- Loop the hard part. Under More…, turn on Loop, pick the bars, and play them a few times in a row. Count-in gives you a bar of clicks before it starts.
Click a bar in the music to start from there. Space plays and pauses. Left-handed? Turn on the left-handed view: the chord diagrams and the fretboard are mirrored to match your instrument. Tab reads the same either way: the top line is always the first (highest) string.