Clunktrip

@Dissonance no worries - I have nothing against the tenor banjo and didn't mind your comment at all. It just hadn't occurred to me that you could make that comparison. More than happy to discuss elsewhere so feel free to PM me. YouTube has changed a lot over the years and now people expect to see polished performances by professional musicians, so this kind of private practice might seem inappropriate to some. Also, I wouldn't want to give the impression I actually wear PJs - I ripped a hole down the back of those ones years ago and had to chuck them in the bin! ?

@Chris Ghent Thanks for the heads up. @Dissonance I've never thought of myself as playing tenor banjo on the EC but... if you say so! I play a bit differently now and have been doing more with the bellows over the last few years. @Peter Laban I'm headless because I didn't need to see my own face - I was experimenting with different techniques and did the video for practice purposes, hence the PJs (embarrassing, but could have been a lot worse!)

Sorry I haven't a clue what kind of music you play, so I don't know if this will be of any help to you. I play Irish music, so maybe some elements of that might be applicable. When Irish musicians use left-hand chords, their reason for doing it is primarily to help accent certain notes in the melody. It's the same with cuts. You don't just cut any note - you want to be cutting to emphasise certain notes. It's the same principle with bass notes and chords, and that may be so for other types of music as well, apart from maybe songs where the harmonies you're creating with chords are probably more important than creating a danceable rhythm. So if it is this that you want to achieve, then I would begin not by stressing about what harmonies you're going to use, but rather by going right back to the tune itself and deciding which notes in the tune are begging to be emphasised. A lot of the time you might decide that the emphasis belongs on the backbeat, but sometimes when there's a long note at the start of a bar, for example, it needs a chord or something to help emphasise it. When you've decided which notes you wish to emphasise, then it's just a case of dropping in any bass note that will fit. A lot of the time a simple octave bass note sounds best, but sometimes others work better. Big fat growly chords often work on those long notes on the downbeat. If you mix up downbeat and backbeat emphasis, then you'll end up with a freer, more creative accompaniment. On the other hand, if you over-emphasise the downbeat, then you'll get a very steamrollered sound, and if you overemphasise the backbeat, you'll get a horrible, disjointed, reggae-like sound. If you emphasise both all the time, then you'll get that oompah effect that you don't want either. The trick is striking a balance, I think. What concertina masters like Micheal O'Raghallaigh have done is taken this to its absolute limits. He is able to play all of a tune - or at least most of a tune - in unison octaves, so that he can then pick and choose freely which ones he wants to emphasise out of the whole set at his disposal.

Hi Ptarmy, it's pronounced as in bough of a tree I feel liberated from thesession.org - it's nice and cheery over here, isn't it? Will take me a bit of time to get used to all the bits and bobs like quoting and using emoticons and stuff. I might end up coming across as a bit staid and avatarless for a while. It's nice being able to do a cyberblink, for example all this time I've had sore, watery eyes looking at that strange yellow colour. Heh. Back to the triplets: I think I read somewhere that ST uses only his index and middle finger most of the time, even when he's playing on the accidental row, so presumably his fingering is always either 1-2-1 or 2-1-2 for same-note triplets. I've always used my ring finger for the outer accidental row where your F#s are, so when I'm doing a triplet there I'd finger it 3-2-3 where "3" is the ring finger. That's not easy to do, and anyway I'm not overly fussed about the end effect. I really like getting a faster triplet using a bellows crunch on the low F#, or sometimes I like to do some sort of short roll involving the E below it when there are anglo players around, just to annoy them because that's a weak spot for them in terms of flexibility with push and pull

I asked Simon Thoumire about this in a workshop a few years ago and he does them using the finger for the key, then the next finger, then back to the original finger. I think. From memory. That's the way I learnt to do them, and after I learnt to do them I overused them for a while. Now I very rarely use them and prefer to use other tricks like slap rolls and variants thereof, or triplets that aren't on the same note. Same-note triplets are no more difficult on the English than the Anglo really (I've tried them on both). The fact that the keys are closer together isn't really an issue I don't think. I have slim fingers though Hello everyone, by the way, never posted here before, only lurked...