Banjo
Tuned G D G B D, low to high. Every chord below opens on the neck as a shape you can actually hold, with the fingering written out and a button to hear it. Every scale opens as the positions it falls into. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing is a video.
The chords are worked out from the tuning rather than copied from a table, which is why they are right for banjo and not just for a guitar. Start with where the notes are if you are new to the neck — the pattern repeats every twelve frets, and that is most of what there is to learn.
- Each string is a fret count from the one below it. Here that runs 5 · 4 · 3. They are not all the same, so a shape shifts every time it crosses strings 3 and 2 or strings 2 and 1.
- The same note again, two strings over. 3 frets up from string 4; 5 frets up from string 3. Learn that shape and one note tells you four.
- E to F and B to C are one fret apart. Every other letter is two. Those two places are the landmarks — find them on a string and the rest of it follows.
- Twelve frets up is the same note. The whole neck is one pattern, played twice.
One note at a time, everywhere it appears on the neck.
This is the part worth memorising. A shape with no open strings in it means the same thing wherever you put it — slide it up one fret and every note in it rises by one. These few cover every chord below; the rest of the page is only there to look one up.
All of them, in case you want a particular one. Each opens on the neck with its shape and a button to hear it — but the shapes above are the part you learn.