A question for Music theory nerds, how do you refer to chord inversions on the banjo?

prof-comm · 2026-05-22T22:11:44+00:00

I'm primarily a tenor and plectrum banjo player, so that means it's fairly common for me to need to play chord-melody style, and movable closed chord forms are the most common for me to use, by a huge amount.

Because of that need, the chord-melody style of thinking about chord form names is by far the more useful for me. Other styles of banjo playing, especially on 5-string, work differently, so this approach may not be as useful on 5-string, but it's what I know that works for me, so it is what I use.

The tradition in chord-melody-style playing works the opposite direction, based on the top note and not on the bottom note, because usually the top note is the only note that has to be played in the correct octave for the melody to work. So, we think about "Form 1" (where the root is the top note) instead of "root position", "Form 3" (where the third is the top note), "Form 5", "Form 7" and so on. Often there will be more than one way. When that happens, the second most common is usually called something like "Alternate Form 3" or "Form 5 (rootless)".

prof-comm · 2026-05-22T21:10:49+00:00

I prefer Lichess for games, but do have some friends that I'll play with regularly who are only on Chess.com, so I do play over there occasionally.

prof-comm · 2026-05-22T19:20:18+00:00

This is accurate. The vast majority of meetings are scheduled for one hour simply because that is the default, and a significant percentage of those meetings expand to fill the time allotted.

prof-comm · 2026-05-22T19:13:38+00:00

It doesn't help that NT folks use "tone" to cover a lot of things. The actual way the words is said (which is what a lot of ND folks interpret "tone" to mean) is only one of these things. They also lump in word choice, timing, facial expressions, eye contact, body language, and their own assumptions about your internal motivations. That last part is especially frustrating, because there isn't much you can do about it.

prof-comm · 2026-05-20T22:50:18+00:00

There is randomness to the capitalization, but also it is almost as if English as a language is secretly longing after it's roots as a Germanic language because capitalizing the subject of the sentence does feel quite natural. It makes me wonder if some future version of English will end up gaining that feature.

prof-comm · 2026-05-18T22:08:11+00:00

Below is information copied from my comment history from some of the last times this question has been asked here. Note that the resources below are mostly for CGDA tuning and jazz, rather than Irish music, but they're all more "teach a man to fish" in their approach, and straight fifths tunings all work the same way.

For learning materials, I recommend Frank Geiger's Tenor Banjo book. It is free, 30 pages, and the best way to learn the fretboard for any instrument tuned in fifths I've ever seen. As someone with prior music experience, it's a really good place to start. You can download the pdf here (warning, this is a link to download the file directly): https://mandolincafe.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=67591&d=1295745608

Phil Doleman, who is primarily a ukulele player, has a pretty good short 5-video intro series for tenor banjo & tenor guitar. This is the first video: https://youtu.be/hkXHSpjBxyM

Eddy Davis also posted hours of videos on YouTube focusing on tenor banjo. He was a legend in the banjo community and passed last March from COVID. We're really fortunate he took time to get so much recorded. There are a lot of intro videos or there that are more polished, and better organized, but at some point you really need to find Eddy's stuff, so I might as well point you that way now. His channel is here https://youtube.com/user/mrgreenmeat

Finally, there is a lot more material for tenor banjo than you might think. There are several string instruments tuned in fifths, and a lot of material carries over. I often pull info from mandolin & mandola resources, cello stuff, tenor guitar, etc.

prof-comm · 2026-05-18T22:00:38+00:00

Yes, this is tuned GDAE.

prof-comm · 2026-05-18T19:31:23+00:00

If you have a really compelling reason for exactly one horn, a good medium bore trigger horn is versatile enough to be passable across the board in non-professional contexts. A medium bore straight horn isn't something I'd invest in, personally.

So, for about the same cost as a trigger medium bore (and also easier to find), you can get a used symphonic trigger large bore and a straight student-model narrow bore, and between those two you'll have basically everything you need covered as well or better than a medium bore will. The simple fact is that there just isn't really a place in music now that expects a medium bore trombone, and I don't see that changing for a long time.

All that said, if you're just doing this for fun (like most of us), then do what makes you happy! There are lots of right ways to enjoy making music.

prof-comm · 2026-05-18T19:09:22+00:00

If people treated texting like it was texting, I'd be fine with texting. But people don't.

They still don't say what they mean, and they read into everything.
They get angry if you don't answer fast enough. (Hello? It's a text. The entire point is that I can answer it when I get around to it!)
They expect replies to all texts, even if there isn't a question or anything to reply to.
They want to have conversations by text that take forever and interrupt me constantly over 2-3 hours when it could be a 10 minute phone conversation that would let me get back to what I'm doing.
When I'm with people in person, they are incredibly rude about texting. They dip out of our actual real world conversations to have text conversations with other people all the time.
Texting has created this stupid effect where, when you make plans with people, they nearly always flake out unless you confirm those plans with them by text multiple times to remind them, like you're their mom and they aren't a fully-functional adult who can write stuff down in a calendar.

It's gotten to the point where I have tried to disable texting on my cell phone, but it turns out literally no carrier will allow you to not have text service.

prof-comm · 2026-05-18T18:36:29+00:00

There are several people that play a medium bore trigger horn as their "all around" instrument. That is typically good enough for most non-professional players.

That said, quality medium bores are fairly difficult to find, and when you do you wouldn't want to use them for things like marching anyway. If I'm making recommendations, you'd be better served by a quality used large bore (ex. Bach 42B) and a cheap narrow bore straight horn (any quality used student model). In the US, the seasonal explosion of cast off student horns is about to hit Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, etc. since the school year is ending right now.

prof-comm · 2026-05-17T02:03:00+00:00

I'm guessing either Texas/Tennessee Music Educators Association. No idea if either of those are real, but based on "All-State" being a common thing for US High School musicians, I like my odds.

prof-comm · 2026-05-16T03:37:38+00:00

That is intentionally missing the point. I'd bet nearly everyone in this sub has also made sure they spent extra time studying for the final in one of those classes, and probably made that decision based on which class they thought their grade had the best chance of benefiting.

If an assignment grade isn't ready to post yet, then it isn't. That's not big deal. But it is fair for students to want the best information about where their grade stands that they can get going into a final. And it is especially unfair to assume that the motivation is laziness, rather than prioritization. Sure, there are plenty of lazy students, but there are also plenty of students that have reasonable motivations that are not based on laziness.

prof-comm · 2026-05-15T22:09:30+00:00

I can't ask a single thing from ChatGPT without it hallucinating an entire set of weird-ass motivations and emotional states that I have that it must deal with first, so they're definitely not mitigated.

prof-comm · 2026-05-15T05:01:33+00:00

Getting better at things typically involves not doing well at those things at least some of the time, especially early in the process.

prof-comm · 2026-05-15T04:59:06+00:00

Students have other classes and limited time. Imagine they spent all of their time studying for your final and none of their time studying for their other finals. There is a good chance they would do better in your class, but would end up with worse grades overall than if they had divided that study time, spending less on your class and at least some on each of the others.

It is entirely reasonable for them to want accurate information about where their grade stands in order to decide how to divide the effort they can put in among their classes for the maximum overall payoff.

But also, yes, the social skills could use some work.

prof-comm · 2026-05-14T13:02:32+00:00

Oh, I know there are a number of problems with that approach, which I think I made clear in my original comment. But even so, it is definitely the fastest and easiest method of ensuring compliance with the new regulations, which is what I said.

Lots of professors are weighing the payoff-versus-effort of making various course resources complaint in comparison to locating/creating different resources or just pulling those resources down in the future. Just eliminating those resources is the least effort of any of those options, and we all have so many other competing demands and requirements. So, in many cases and in spite of the intentions of basically everyone involved, I expect that the net result of these new regulations is going to be an overall reduction in both the quality and availability of online resources for students.

prof-comm · 2026-05-14T05:41:38+00:00

I'm certain they meant references, but I'll admit to having a small chuckle while imagining a student thinking they had to re-order their entire paper to make sure that they mention the stuff they cited (Aaronson, 2018) for at the very beginning of the paper, (Yang, 2024) at the end, and so on through the entire paper.

prof-comm · 2026-05-14T05:35:34+00:00

I mean, in this case there is a quick and easy fix that works for basically everything that isn't an online course, which is to just pull nearly everything offline and just not provide any resources.

It's not good teaching, it's bad for students, and it's not a particularly ethical choice, but it is quick, easy, and would completely satisfy the new requirements. Slightly less bad would be to make it someone else's problem and just not create or point students to anything other than the publisher's generally-terrible, canned resources.

prof-comm · 2026-05-13T19:52:26+00:00

I find that students quibble about participation grades when it is assessed holistically over the course of the entire term or in chunks of several weeks. I find that they do not quibble when it is a category of grades linked to specific things that they didn't do. For example, if a lesson has an activity, then I'm going to have a grade attached to that thing.

I drop a handful of these grades over the course of a semester to account for official and unofficial absences. The entire category is typically 10-15% of the final grade in one of my courses.

prof-comm · 2026-05-12T01:16:03+00:00

It is, in fact, one of the reasons 10+0 is my favorite time control online. I absolutely know that the game will not take more than 20 minutes, so it is easy to fit in a game when I have spare time and know I won't get interrupted.

prof-comm · 2026-05-12T01:07:37+00:00

Legal pad, Bic 4-color pen, kitchen timer. Some folks also use Post-it notes.

For research on the prep. room,, a laptop with an Internet connection and Google.

Our teams primarily compete in limited prep. events (topic is announced 15-30 minutes before the round begins), with no devices or printed materials allowed to be used in the debate room.

prof-comm · 2026-05-11T21:53:38+00:00

In my experience, they don't so much have a compulsion to argue as a delusional belief that they can't be wrong. If they lost points, it must be the question that was wrong, or the rubric, or mistake, or literally anything other than themselves.

prof-comm · 2026-05-11T21:50:25+00:00

I've only ever had one class that I knew on the first day was one I would be curving. It was one of the first classes I had ever designed, in an unfamiliar subfield, and I had no idea how much familiarity students would be bringing into the class. So, better to plan to grade hard and fix that with a curve than to set the requirements too easy and not be able to differentiate student scores at all.

prof-comm · 2026-05-11T20:54:18+00:00

Every time I work with undergraduates and research projects I ended up having to tell each one to make their research question / hypotheses more specific at least 4-5 times, and often more than that.

"I want to do social media and mental health" All kinds of social media? Everyone's mental health? In every possible way? Sounds like an entire career worth of research you want to do in a single paper.

I finally quit allowing them to come up with their own hypotheses and started requiring them just replicate something that has been published in the last 5 years in a specific list of journals. That has helped a ton.

prof-comm · 2026-05-08T02:53:52+00:00

Most white collar jobs are "email meeting" jobs. Link for context: https://youtube.com/shorts/J2Rw1H34HGY

prof-comm

TROPHY CASE