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Irish Tenor Banjo for Mandolin Players

by Joe Carr

My recent interest in Irish Tenor banjo music has led me to a lot of great new music for the mandolin. Irish Tenor banjo, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is tuned G D A E - one octave below a mandolin. This makes the tenor banjo very similar to the octave mandolin or octave mandola as they call it in the U.K. Any music played on the tenor banjo is, at least in theory, possible on the mandolin. The tuning is lower than the standard tenor banjo tuning of C G D A that Americans call mandola or tenor guitar tuning.

There are many players of this style from the originator Barney McKenna (The Dubliners) to Mick Maloney, Kieran Hanrahan, Angelina Carberry, Seamus Egan, Gerry O'Conner, and many others. A simple Internet search for Irish tenor banjo or any of the above names will produce a wealth of information. Norwegian multi-instrumentalist Frank Nordberg maintains a website dedicated to the style at irish-banjo.com.

Irish style mandolin players are very different from their bluegrass counterparts. Many Irish players use light gauge strings and may use a thin pick to help articulate ornaments. Ornamentation in this style comes mostly as triplets played with the pick. Left hand ornaments such as the pull-off and hammer-on are not used often. It may be that these quieter sounds don't translate well to the Irish session environment. This may also account for the lack of mandolins at Irish session. Irish mandolin players tend to use round-holed, pear-shaped, English-made mandolins over the bluegrass F model (This is a generalization.) These "Celtic" models trade the woofy chop of bluegrass for a loud, clear treble tone that cuts well through a large acoustic jam. Remember, they are competing with other instruments in the same musical range including, fiddles, flutes, pennywhistles, pipes AND banjos!

Tommy Bhetty's Waltz comes from "Kieran Hanrahan Plays the Irish Tenor Banjo" on the Banner label (BDCD001.) It is a good example of the kind of unusual tune one finds from new sources. Unlike many tremoloed mandolin waltzes, this arrangement is quite "notey" and challenging.

Check out the archives of melbay.com/banjosessions for some more tunes and techniques. Irish banjo music and tabs are easily played on the mandolin. Have fun with the great source of new tunes and ideas.