Take This Hammer Banjo Tabs
Flatt & Scruggs
Take This Hammer Banjo Tablature: One Song, Many Styles
Recomended level: Beginner
Learn Take This Hammer on the Banjo. Start out by learning the melody to this old railroad song. You should always learn the melody and the basic chord changes first for any song.
After the melody there's a lot of different lead options for you to check out. If you are into Scruggs Style banjo then you could check out the Basic Scruggs style arrangement. It's simple enough to be approachable for beginners. You can also swap in Scruggs, single string, melodic and even Sonny Osborne style licks to bring the authenticity to this tune.
If you haven't ever tried Two Finger style banjo, you should! It's great for beginners, and presents a lot of new possibilities for players that are only familiar with 3 finger style banjo. The Basic Two Finger arrangement is super simple and is great for beginners, while the Two Finger version incorporates slides, chromatic movement and blue notes.
There's a lot of different options for backup. They are all based on Earl's unique vocabulary, and much of it stems from licks he used in the backup he played for the Flatt & Scruggs Live at Carnegie hall record. Make sure to listen with that. If you aren't familiar with the common chord shapes used for vamping then you need to check out the learning path for Vamping and Closed Position Chord Shapes.
Start with the 6 White Horses Vamping or the Root -> 1st Inversion Vamping. These use a repeating pattern to navigate the chord progression for Take This Hammer. If you are ready to combine these concepts and learn a few more then check outFancy Vamping.
Lastly, if you want to get super official, checkout the Teardrop Style Backup. This is closely based on Earl's playing from the live at Carnegie album and features some great licks.
Learn how to play Take This Hammer on Banjo with this selection of tablatures:
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LearnBasic Two Finger
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Learn to play Take This Hammer on the banjo. This basic two finger arrangement is mostly thumb lead. That means the thumb is playing the melody notes, or lead. Both thumb and index ...
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LearnTwo Finger
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Learn "Take this Hammer" on the banjo. This two finger style arrangement will be fun for intermediate players and above. If you are a three finger Scruggs style player learning to p...
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LearnBasic Scruggs
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Learn "Take this Hammer" on the banjo - Scruggs style. This basic arrangement uses 3 finger rolls and combines melody and pinches to give a basic and accessible arrangement of this ...
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LearnVamping: 6 White Horses Étude
- Difficulty
- Key F
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Learn to play vamping backup for "Take this Hammer" on the banjo. Here, you will learn to use the common "6 White Horses" riff for the different banjo chords in the chord progressio...
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LearnVamping: Root -> 1st Inversion Étude
- Difficulty
- Key F
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Learn to play vamping backup for "Take this Hammer" on the banjo. Here, you will learn to use a 'root shape' banjo chord and slide into, & out of, the '1st Inversion' shape. This is...
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LearnFancy Vamping
- Difficulty
- Key G
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Ain't no doubt about it. This here's fancy vamping. Learn to combine several vamping patterns to create some truly well-to-do backup on the banjo for "Take this Hammer". This one co...
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LearnTeardrop Style Backup
- Difficulty
- Key F
- Tempo 80 bpm
- Tuning gDGBD
Learn to play teardrop style backup for "Take this Hammer" on the banjo. Here, you will learn to use this classic backup style that is played mostly on the first 2 or 3 strings. Aft...