If you are a beginning banjo player who is looking to explore the world of banjo online, or someone at any stage of picking who hasn’t dicovered one of the web’s most prominent websites for banjo players, the you absolutely must visit The Banjo Hangout.
The Banjo Hangout is a wonderful repository of banjo tablature, banjo personalities, forums, chat rooms, resources, and many more items, all having to do with the banjo. Eric Schlange is the owner of “the Hangout”, and he has really done a nice job of building up not only a great resource for banjo players, but an actual banjo community. Almost all of the banjo players that I know in my local community are on The Hangout, and I’ve gotten to interact with many banjo personalities on The Hangout. One of my favorite parts of The Hangout is the chat room. I’ve only recently discovered the chat room (although I’ve had a profile on The Hangout and have been visiting The Hangout, for many years.)
One of the biggest uses of the site for me was the tablature repository. I’m an active banjo teacher, and it’s been a huge time saver to go onto The Hangout when I need a version of a song to download for a student. Even learning my own material has been facilitated by being able to access it on The Hangout’s tablature pages.
A fairly recent addition to The Hangout is the video lessons area. You can buy lessons at an affordable rate from some very talented banjo pickers, including nationally known banjo picker Ross Nickerson. I’ve not purchased any of the videos yet, but I probably will at some point.
I mentioned the chat rooms above, and this is definitely one of my favorite areas of the site. I’ve signed in to the chat room a few times now and had some wonderful conversations with some great people. I was also able to help some beginnners during my chat sessions. One thing about the chat room that’s quite fun is the ability to chat via web cam. Thanks to the web cam feature, I got to see some phenomenal banjo pickers pick through some numbers right there during a chat session, and it was a lot of fun.
Take a moment to visit www.banjohangout.org and see all of the features available on the site. Be sure and create a profile for yourself, then look me up and say hi on the site. My username is banjopaul67.