Banjo | Jack Hatfield | Beginning | Period 1 | Week 2 (July 13-18, 2025)
The anatomy of bluegrass banjo technique
Proper position and finger motion
The alternating thumb roll
Playing songs with one roll and one left-hand finger
Making and keeping a practice schedule
Common beginner errors
Learning without a banjo in your hands
Graduated beginner repertoire list
Suggested listening for beginners
First position G, C, D7 chords
The forward roll
Mixing rolls
Punctuation licks (the pinch, fill roll, and a simple tag lick)
Playing a song mixing rolls, first position chords, and punctuation licks
Using a metronome
Advice on speed vs. accuracy
Basic banjo setup
The forward-backward roll
An easy up-the neck tune (“Cumberland Gap”)
Simple first position roll backup
Tips for tab reading: learning in phrases, looking for repetition, plotting the left hand
Using a metronome
Tips on changing chords/positions
How to change strings and make basic adjustments (banjo setup)
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.