Private instruction · plectrum & tenor banjo
The four-string banjo, taught as the precision instrument it actually is.
A working studio devoted to the pre-bluegrass four-string tradition — CGDA tenor, CGBD plectrum, and the orchestral idioms that preceded the folk revival. Curriculum built around right-hand mechanics, tone production, and the plectrum literature of 1920–1948.
Approach
Most four-string players arrive with a right hand that has been quietly sabotaging them for years. Stiff wrist, buried pick, inconsistent attack angle — the instrument rewards none of it. The work begins there.
Lessons are technical before they are musical. We measure pick depth in millimeters, we film the right hand from three angles, and we track tremolo rate against a metronome until the variance is gone. Only then do we open the repertoire. This is not the fastest path to sounding like something; it is the only path to sounding like anything that lasts.
Instruments taught
- Tenor banjoCGDA, standard
- Tenor banjoGDAE, Irish tuning
- Plectrum banjoCGBD
- 17- & 19-fret necksboth accommodated
- Resonator & open-backboth accommodated
Curriculum
Students progress through four roughly-defined tiers. Movement between them is determined by measurable benchmarks — pick control, chord-change accuracy under tempo, sight-reading fluency — rather than by calendar time.
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I
Foundation
Pick grip geometry, anchored vs. floating hand debate resolved for your physiology, down-up alternation at 60–120 bpm, first-position triads across all four strings. Introduction to chord-melody as an organizing principle rather than a technique.
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II
Tremolo & voicing
Sustained tremolo at variable dynamic, closed-position chord voicings in twelve keys, single-string melodic work, reading in treble clef through the second position. Introduction to the dance-band repertoire — waltzes, fox-trots, and the early medley form.
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III
Repertoire & arrangement
Arrangement of popular-song standards for solo four-string banjo. Chord substitution, inner-voice movement, melodic ornament. Study of the published solos of Eddie Peabody, Harry Reser, and the Paramount and Vega catalogs of the late 1920s — in the public-domain transcriptions we maintain in-studio.
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IV
Performance craft
Program construction, stagecraft, working with accompanists, amplification choices for acoustic four-string banjo in mixed ensembles. For students pursuing public performance: mock recitals in the studio, recorded and critiqued frame by frame.
About the studio
Harlan Mews has taught the plectrum and tenor banjo for twenty-seven years, the last nineteen of them exclusively. Formal training in classical guitar at the conservatory level; detour through ragtime piano; arrival at the four-string banjo in 1996 after hearing a restored cylinder of Vess Ossman and deciding, reasonably, that the instrument had been misunderstood for most of a century.
The studio is a single room in a converted mill building on the North Shore. One wall of sheet music, two metronomes that disagree with each other by one beat per minute, a 1927 Paramount Style C and a 1931 Bacon & Day Silver Bell №1 that students are welcome to play during lessons. Coffee is available. Small talk is not discouraged but is not subsidized by the clock.
On the question of bluegrass
The five-string banjo is a different instrument, with a different literature and a different right hand. It is taught beautifully by many people elsewhere. It is not taught here.
Students who eventually wish to add the five-string will find that a disciplined plectrum right hand transfers usefully — but that transfer is their project, not ours.
Engagements
Lesson format
Fifty-minute sessions, weekly cadence strongly preferred. In-person only; the right hand does not travel well over video compression. Students are expected to practice between thirty minutes and two hours daily depending on tier.
Availability
The studio is at capacity through the current term. A short waiting list is maintained for students introduced by existing or former students. By appointment, by introduction.
Workshops
Two weekend intensives per year, one on tremolo and one on chord-melody arrangement, are offered to intermediate and advanced four-string players from outside the regular roster. Announced to the studio list and filled through that channel.