I’m still teaching my friend, Tony, some banjo playing. He is keen to have a go at the Ballad of Jed Clampett (theme tune of The Beverly Hillbillies), which was composed by Paul Henning and performed with the banjo part laid down by Bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs. The original is in the key of A (Scruggs seems to be using a capo on the video I’ve seen of his performance) and runs at a speed that I don’t think either Tony or I would easily keep up with. Over the years quite a few people have created their own version of the piece and they do have some variations, so I’ve worked with a few, along with a few executive decisions of my own and created a version (currently titled The Ballad of Jed Clampett(ish) – PDF download link) which we’ll have a go at tomorrow.

It’s certainly banjo music and has a number of licks and patterns characteristic of the bluegrass style. As well as working it out, writing it out had some challenges. I was using Musescore for this one and the best approach I found for the slides and pull offs was using semiquavers followed by a quaver. I couldn’t figure out a neater way to indicate the way they all seem to want to blend the second note with an open string, often just a semitone away.

I was also in two minds about the chords. They aren’t always strictly linked to the notes played but this style of banjo is quite free and easy with scattering extra notes about as a stylistic effect rather than following strict rules of harmony. Again, I took some inspiration from some online sources but allowed myself the liberty of making some tweaks, both to the chords and to the notes, which is why there is an ‘-ish’ on the end of the title!