My First Banjo Recordings!

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milo
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My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by milo »

Last month I found a banjo at a thrift store, and a few weeks later I made my first recordings with it: https://sanderson.band/2021/10/04/a-trip-to-dixie/

The songs were recorded for the intro and outro music for a podcast about a trip I took to the Southern Utah town of St. George, which for historical reasons is known by the locals as "Utah's Dixie." The podcast muses about the use of this nickname, which to the locals evokes a heroic pioneer heritage. But the broader American experience with this name is associated with slavery, white supremacy, and racism. So what should we do with this mixed legacy?

Come for the banjo, but stay for the discussion of race relations in contemporary America.

Enjoy!
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by jeanette_c »

Hey @milo , another nice pair of recordings. Ascribe it to my ignorance of the style, but I immediately heard the narrator of a film, throwing us into a scenery in Utah, possibly historical.
Beautiful recordings. Your acoustic recordings are really nice! I shouldn't be surprised, having listened to quite a few of your songs by now. Still, there's clarity, depth and body to the instruments and they blend very well.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by milo »

Thanks, @jeanette_c. That's very kind of you. Acoustic instruments are so rich in texture, and I just love how these three instruments' textures play off of each other.

If you want to hear more of this sound then spend some time listening to American bluegrass music. Guitar, mandolin, banjo, and fiddle are the principal instruments used in this genre, and they all take turns playing the melody and alternating as rhythm instruments. I don't play fiddle, and don't expect to ever pick it up, but I like playing the other three.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by caprenter »

Echoing what @jeanette_c said - you're recordings of acoustic instruments are really good. Great.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by folderol »

That's a remarkably clean recording. Very well done :D
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by Basslint »

I am not a banjo fan in general (I do like bluegrass and Americana, though, and the occasional Bela Fleck gig) but sounds great! :D I like the production but the banjo sounds lo-fi while the guitar does not IMHO. I know the banjo has a bit of a boxed sound due to the resonator but I can't get over the boxiness. Is that because of eq'ing?
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by milo »

There's only a touch of EQ on the master bus, along with a gentle compressor and Dragonfly Hall dialed off just a touch from the default setting. (Actually the order is reverb -> EQ -> compressor -> then a brick wall limiter with no input gain.) All of that is applied to all tracks equally, so I think what you're bothered by might just be the tone of my banjo. :)
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by Rainmak3r »

Really nice sound! Is a banjo harder to play than a guitar? I've always been curious, since my only reference is Steve Martin :mrgreen:
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by Basslint »

milo wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 1:40 am I think what you're bothered by might just be the tone of my banjo. :)
Probably so, I am not a big fan of the instrument in general, as I clearly stated in the previous post :lol:
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by milo »

Rainmak3r wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:40 pm Really nice sound! Is a banjo harder to play than a guitar? I've always been curious, since my only reference is Steve Martin :mrgreen:
I'm kinda new at it, so it's hard to say. Probably not harder, but different. The technical skills are very similar to fingerstyle guitar. I doubt your heavy metal skills would transfer very well to banjo. The note positions and chord shapes are all different, and I haven't figured out how to leverage that very well yet. I'm sure there are tricks I haven't discovered.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by psyocean »

Interesting! Music is like a delicious piece of cake. Golden times!

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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by GMaq »

Hi milo!

Wow you went from 'buyer' to skilled player very quickly! Great recording, a perfect setting for this rootsy kind of music!

I enjoyed the podcast as well, a thorny complicated issue to tackle for sure, you've approached things with compassion tempered with common sense.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by milo »

Thanks, @GMaq. I appreciate that. It is a thorny issue, indeed -- so much so that I hesitated to even post this music for fear of being "cancelled." But I am very hopeful for the future.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by bulevardi »

Well recorded!
Want to learn to play the banjo also once in my life.
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Re: My First Banjo Recordings!

Post by oscillator »

That was fun to listen to, and well played!

I once played (tenor sax) in a dixieland band, so many many years ago that I had almost forgotten it. We had a banjo player. It is a great and very rhythmic sound that added a lot of character.

Interesting text about dixie too, thank you!

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