Lesson #048, Fitting Quarter and 8th Notes in a Measure

Saturday, April 11, 2009


Lesson #048, Fitting Quarter and 8th Notes in a Measure



Hi All,

In this lesson we are going to fit 1/4 notes and 1/8th notes into one measure. We are also going to start on our very first Improvisations.

Lets start by fitting 1/4 and 1/8th notes into one measure. If we start with the thumb pinch we have two beats because we are using 1/4 notes with that. A 1/4 note is equal to 1 beat. Now lets play the alt thumb roll right after it using 1/8th notes. An eight note is equal to 1/2 beat. 2 quarter notes plus 4 eigth notes is giving us our 4 beats. Yeah Buddy.

Its important to break up these rolls later on when we go on to start our soloing so the rolls don't get monotonous. You'll see what I mean when we start to work on soloing.

Lets talk about Improvising now a little bit. We can break up each measure now using 1/4 notes and 1/8th notes to fill up our measures. You can start with any that you like as long as you fill the measure up evenly. When doing this in your practicing you have started on your first Improvisations!!! How cool is that! You are playing what you know....HOW YOU WANT TO PLAY THEM! I can't stress enough how important that is! It is the beginning of great things to come in your soloing and expressing yourself as an Individualistic Banjoist!

Rock On

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In 2009, at the age of 60, I decided to learn to play the 5-string banjo. I searched the internet for lessons and struck gold when I found David Cavage's free banjo lessons at Musicmoose.org. His video hosting site revver.com was having some serious problems at the time so I downloaded as many of the lessons as I could whenever they became available. Revver.com stopped operating shortly afterwards and, sadly, Musicmoose.org is no more. I contacted David early 2020 and he told me he no longer had the original master videos and feared they may have been lost forever. This amazing course of free banjo lessons, from absolute beginner to advanced player, is too good to be forgotten, so this is my attempt to get David's work back out there again so that he can teach, inspire and spread the joy of banjo pickin' to more generations of budding musicians, just like he did with me. I've rounded up all the Moose stuff I could find and put it here, so start pickin' and enjoy!-------MooseHerder.