Banjo | Jack Hatfield | Beginning | Period 2 | Week 2 (July 13-18, 2025)
Playing with recordings
Beginner backup using pinches and first position chords
Three- and four-finger moveable chord shapes
Vamping backup
More rolls introduced
First position roll backup
Fill licks
Faking a solo
Singing while playing
Jamming etiquette
Basic music theory and learning by ear
Counting time
Where chords come from
A system for finding major, minor, and seventh chords
The chord numbering system
The probability system for learning chord progressions by ear
Learning by ear vs. tablature
Setting and achieving goals
About the Instructor
Jack Hatfield has been picking banjo since he was seventeen years old. After a career teaching private lessons, writing Banjo NewsLetter columns and Mel Bay instruction books, organizing several USTA tennis teams, running his banjo shop and annual Smoky Mountain Banjo Academy, and performing around East Tennessee, he retired from his banjo camp and day-to-day operations at Hatfield Music, leaving the business in the capable hands of favorite sister Jane. He is still available to answer customer questions and perform banjo setups.
Jack still appears at various banjo workshops and camps, directs the annual SPBGMA banjo workshop in Nashville, and performs with his bluegrass band True Blue, his Americana band Hatfield’s Heathens, and his jam-grass band Acoustic Tone Zone. Since retiring from his business, Jack has been performing, practicing banjo forty hours per week, and working on a solo banjo album. The project will showcase many recently-discovered approaches to banjo technique and include a few of the more than one hundred original tunes he has written since 2016.