This is a plea to anyone who has ever created a substantial online resource to make provisions for keeping the resource available should anything prevent you from continuing its maintenance. I initially posted this on another web page in 2010, but three useful folk music resources I had linked to…
Mitchell “Mickey” Cochran loved traditional acoustic music. So much so that when he left a successful career as a graphic artist and web programmer, he started his own online music store, complete with free online lessons for many instruments, including 5-string banjo, mandolin, and Appalachian dulcimer. Years ago, I archived…
What’s in a Name? Sometimes shaming and resentment. This includes the name “banjitar,” which certain musicians have used to stress that 6-string banjo players aren’t real banjo players, but rather guitar players who want to play banjo without learning anything. The name needs to be retired. For one thing, the…
This is an account of two well-used student tenor banjos I recently adopted for a demonstration, plus an account of how I put them to use in a workshop at a local festival. It’s provided here as a background to anyone considering a similar experiment with 4-strings, and for your…
By now, many of you realize that I operate over a dozen web pages, some as much as 21 years old. All of them have contact pages for e-mailing me directly from the site, and several have discussion forums. Yes, I get a lot of spam, but I try to…
If you’ve visited my Folk- and Acoustic-focused web page CreekDontRise.com, you probably know that I have a lot of resources for helping people choose the most appropriate banjo for them. On August 13, I’m scheduled to do a short workshop on that topic at a local Folk, Acoustic, and Indie…
Recently I tried to add some tracks to my home page and the software insisted I include a thumbnail of an album cover. I used the only one that I have commercially available at this time, which includes a few tracks that actually date back to the late 1990s. Click…
I don’t need a travel guitar to sit around campfires or to take white water rafting, only to keep in practice when I’m away from home. I have recently adopted a reworked cheap 6-string banjo as my current “travel guitar,” because – in spite of drawbacks that include a Harmony-style…
I’ve used Cakewalk/12-Tone products since I had my first 8-bit MS-DOS PC, and I’ve gradually upgraded to their top-of-the line, although I have to confess that I haven’t even used every annual upgrade, because sometimes what changed the most was features I didn’t use anyway. Now that I’ve been thinking…
I now have more banjos that I can possibly justify, except by selling off a couple. The most recent addition is a Goodtime Artisan, chosen for all the wonderful playability and quality it shares with my bass-line Goodtime, and also because of upgrades, including a more traditional finish, planetary tuners,…
