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Country Music Online - Free MP3 Downloads - Ringtones - News, CountryMusic Videos |
 | | The family of banjos today includes four-string tenors (similar to the standard banjo but with a shorter neck and no fifth string), plectrums (so called because they are played with a plectrum and in form identical to the standard banjo but with no fifth string), and six-string guitar-banjos. |
 | | Most common now is the five-string banjo, on which the "fifth string" is a short string usually tuned to function as a high drone or "chanterelle." Five-string banjos may be found in open-back folk or old-time types using gut or steel strings and also in resonator-backed variations, almost always steel-strung. |
 | | It was refined in America into two major styles: the flat-top, perfected by 1850 by C. Martin of Nazareth, Pennsylvania; and the “arched-top” (with a top carved in the manner of a violin), invented by Orville Gibson of Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the 1890s. |
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