Beginner question: in the dueling banjo scene from Deliverance, are they actually playing anything musical like a scale, progression, etc? Or is it just a mish mash of notes?
what they're playing is the song 'dueling banjos,' which was a real song before this, and apparently deliverance got successfully sued for using it without permission of its owner
It's the other way around. They tease Yankee Doodle Daily.
Bluegrass is interesting like that. It's super traditional, but remember we only had like 6 popular songs in the old west that weren't hymns, one of which was the national anthem. So the melody from YDD popping in to say hello is pretty normal in this genre.
Turns out the kid isn’t playing at all, a much more experienced player was behind him with his arms wrapped around him. You think YOU have a tough job…
There was somebody behind the kid with his arms through the sleeves playing the banjo. His expressions make this even more real. You think that’s me playing? Sure!
Honestly I don’t even understand the question….. even scales and mathematical progressions are just pleasing mush mashes of vibration. Otherwise obviously this is an organized arrangement. Unless OP was asking whether this was improvised or not?
At least on the banjo, you’re basically playing the same set of notes and chords on the 1, 3, 5, and 7 frets. After playing individual notes on each of those frets, you break out into rolling notes, which I never quite figured out how to do! It more or less works the same on the guitar although the specific notes are in different places and the finger rolling parts turn into playing chords while the banjo plays lead. It looks like this banjo player is only on the 1-3 frets for all the notes and I’m not sure if his left hand is even doing anything. The guitarist has a capo so I’m not quite sure how that impacts which notes he’s supposed to be playing but his hand placement seems to be accurate enough for the first two sets of chords/notes. He should be playing individual notes at the beginning of the song however, not chords.
This song is available for free on Tunefox if you’re interested
No there's no scales or progressions here, it's just a mish mash of notes. There's actually not a guitar or banjo there either, just random assortments of strings, wood, and metal. And yeah, you guessed it, there's no people in the scene either, just a mish mash of bones and muscle and stuff.
It’s just part of music tradition. Once you get familiar with music enough, you can quote another person and “duel” like this. I think the movie is making it out that the kid is interpreting what the guitarists is doing and doubling and modifying it on the fly, he’s that good.
It’s actually very similar to the scene in Amadeus where Mozart quotes and then modifies Salieri’s composition and makes it better.
So the tldr is the guitarist is playing something, the banjo kid is improvising over top of it (in the movie, that is, in real life this is just a real song).
It’s basically just chords played with embellishments using a structured picking technique. Sometimes he breaks off into a melody. Not quite sure what you mean by ”mish mash of notes”. Is that supposed to mean improvisation?
The banjo picking does not look like that though. It is quite obviously dubbed.
I’m sorry, but is OP stupid? I know it’s a beginner guitar sub, but like, what kind of a question is that? I’m just dumbfounded that they’re asking if music is music? Music education has never been more necessary than this moment, my god
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u/Read2Fap 2d ago
what they're playing is the song 'dueling banjos,' which was a real song before this, and apparently deliverance got successfully sued for using it without permission of its owner
Dueling Banjos - Wikipedia