Five String Banjo for Beginners
HOMESPUN
Taught by Happy Traum
Level 1
90-min. video, Includes music + tab book With this clear, easy, hands-on lesson you'll be picking and singing along with Happy Traum within minutes. He starts with the basics -- the parts of the banjo, how to hold and tune it -- and quickly moves on to teach two-chord melodies to country and folk tunes in traditional banjo style. You'll learn right-hand picking patterns, hammer-ons, slides, pull-offs and other essential skills to use in hundreds of songs, including the favorites taught here: "My Home's Across The Smoky Mountains," "Handsome Molly," "Cumberland Gap," "Jesse James," "Black-Eyed Susie," "Banks Of The Ohio."

Student Review:
"This summer I inherited my grandfather's banjo and wanted to learn to play. I was fortunate to come across your website this summer. I got your Beginner's Banjo tape and was very pleased with it! What a great way to learn. Now I practice scales with Penny Nichols on the way to work in the morning, can mess around with my friends playing blues harmonica thanks to John Sebastian, and am finally straightening out my pick motion thanks to Steve Kaufman. Add me to the list of people who you've helped become better musicians."
About Happy Traum
During the past forty years, Happy Traum's avid interest in traditional and contemporary music has brought him recognition as a performer, writer, editor, folklorist, teacher and recording artist. He has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has appeared on recordings as a featured artist, as a member of various ensembles, and as an accompanist. He has played and recorded with Bob Dylan, Chris Smither, Maria Muldaur, Eric Andersen, Rory Block, Jerry Jeff Walker, Allen Ginsberg, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and innumerable others.
Happy is the author of more than a dozen best-selling guitar instruction books, has written numerous magazine columns and articles, and for three years was editor of Sing Out! The Folksong Magazine. He and his brother, Artie Traum, have been playing as a duo since 1968. Their first two Capitol albums, "Happy And Artie Traum" and "Double Back," are widely considered to be classics. Long-time residents of Woodstock, NY, Happy and Artie co-produced several important records for Rounder, featuring some of the area's finest folk and rock musicians. These included "Mud Acres, Music Among Friends" and "Woodstock Mountains." Happy and Artie's album "Hard Times In The Country" featured liner notes by Allen Ginsberg. In 1993, Happy and Artie released their latest duet album, "The Test Of Time," featuring traditional and contemporary songs backed up by some of Woodstock's finest musicians.
Happy's solo albums include "Relax Your Mind," "American Stranger," "Bright Morning Stars" and "Friends And Neighbors." A compilation CD, "Buckets Of Songs," has been released by Shanachie Records. In 2001, “Bright Morning Stars” was reissued in CD format in the U.S. (Lark’s Nest Music) and in Japan (Slice of Life Records).
Perhaps Happy Traum's most important and lasting musical contribution has been Homespun Tapes, which he and his wife Jane founded in 1967. This dynamic and growing mail order company has a catalog of approximately 400 different music instruction lessons on audio cassette, CD and video tape, taught by top professional performing musicians. Happy produces all of the lessons, and brings to Homespun his many years of experience as a popular and productive member of the music community.