I was snooping around the internet today, reading blogs, doing research, twittering, posting, surfing, etc., and I came across this article that I thought you might find informative. It talks about a nice method of tuning your banjo. The author claims it will make your banjo “perfectly in tune”, but you have to take that with a grain of salt. The article references only having to tune each of the strings once, but therein presents a problem: as you get each string in tune, the others that you’ve already tuned will begin to move a bit due to the changing tensions on the neck and the head. It’s still a good article and it’s something to adopt into your tuning technique, but you’ll have to do the technique more than once to be sure you actually are in tune. And don’t forget: the guitar players will tell you that the actual best way to tune a banjo is with wire cutters. Don’t listen to them; that produces some bad results. I’ve tried it. Here’s the article:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5320241_tune-banjo-accurately-unique-style.html
I’ll be coming out with another blog post today so stay tuned! Just thought I’d share this little article with you real quick in case you find it useful. By the way, I’d love to have your comments on this, so please consider responding to this post. Thanks all, and as I always say: pick ‘em if ya got ‘em! Banjo Paul out.
I found this article very interesting indeed. My very good friend Randy Blankenship of Nashville, Michigan does it this very way. He first finds the D note on the first string, then uses his ear to hear the other strings, ending with a perfectly tuned banjo. I feel that in order to have this kind of ear, you must be playing that banjo regularly, and understand that when the sound is “off”. There is a kind of “wavy” sensation to the ear-and in the air when the notes are not in perfect layered pitch with each other. It’s really an act of perfectionism to attain this level of tuning.