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Dueling Banjos banjo tabs

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  • Tablatures
    Banjo Dueling Banjos tab

    From the Top!

    Arthur Smith

    • Difficulty
    • Key
      G
    • Tempo
      80 bpm
    • Tuning
      gDGBD

    This is the very beginning of Dueling Banjos, where the guitar player initiates the duel with the banjo player. In this tab you'll find the first few phrases played at a slow tempo.

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  • Breakdown and Ending

    Arthur Smith

    • Difficulty
    • Key
      G
    • Tempo
      120 bpm
    • Tuning
      gDGBD

    This is the breakdown part of Dueling banjos where the guitarist begins to play in time. It starts out with Phrase #2 and progresses from there into the fast picking part we all know and love. Once you've learned this arrangement make sure you switch out some of the licks to learn alternate versions of this solo.

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More about Dueling Banjos

Written by Arthur Smith in 1954, this song was originally called Fuedin’ Banjos and was first recorded by Smith and Don Reno in 1955. It gained a large amount of popularity in the 1972 film, Deliverance, where it was arranged and recorded by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell. There have been countless versions of this tune by artists such as Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck, and more.

Dueling Banjos features a cheeky duel between a guitar and banjo, as performed in the version heard in Deliverance. The guitar plays phrases slowly and out of time and the banjo matches those phrases exactly. After a bit of dueling, the first tempo is set and the banjo plays a Scruggs Style solo over I, IV, and V chords. Then, it speeds up and the solo is played again but in a more flashy way.

Learn Dueling Banjos with the Tunefox tabs shown on this page. The tabs are separated into two sections so you can more easily learn the different parts to this tune. “From the Top” will guide you through the slower parts of Dueling Banjos and there’s also a video embedded in the tab to help you see how to play the parts. In the “Breakdown and Ending”, you’ll learn the flashy fast part of dueling banjos so you can impress all of your friends at the next jam session. The ending of Dueling Banjos is also very cool, so don’t forget to learn that as well.



Each Tunefox arrangement teaches you how to create your own solos by using a feature called the Lick Switcher. The Lick Switcher features different style licks such as Scruggs, Melodic, or Bluesy and you can swap out measures in Dueling Banjos to learn about improvisation and creating arrangements. To use the Lick Switcher, click on the text "Original Measure" above certain measures in the song. Then select the lick you'd like to insert into the song. You can also click on "Shuffle Licks" at the bottom of the page to see a fully new version of the tablature.

Be sure to check out all of the great learning tools that Tunefox has to offer such as "Hide Notes", "Memory Train", and "Speed Up". These tools can be found in the "Tools" menu at the bottom right of your screen. Want to learn some of Dueling Banjos by ear? Use "Hide Notes" to hide some or all of the notes in the tablature. Once you’re finished learning with the tab use the "Memory Train" tool to commit the song to memory. Then practice with "Speed Up" to improve your technique and speed in no time.

Each Tunefox banjo Dueling Banjos tab contains real-sounding backing tracks. These backing tracks allow you to practice the arrangement you’re learning with an entire band and you can change the volume of the band, banjo and metronome to suit your liking.

When you’ve finished creating your arrangement of Dueling Banjos, export your song arrangement to PDF file. This feature is for members of Tunefox, only.