Banjo Plays C# m11

C# m11 spells C# – D# – E – F# – G# – B. A chord chart tells you that much and stops; an arrangement asks what happens to it once the song is actually playing, which is the question this page answers.

The banjo chair carries a three-finger roll behind the singer — a steady stream of picked notes through the chord, filling the eighths a two-feel leaves empty. The left hand holds the shape below and the right hand never strums it: thumb, index and middle pick through its strings one at a time, which is why a banjo chord reads as motion rather than as a block.

Every shape below is drawn for GDGBD, 5 strings, with the open shapes first and the movable ones up the neck after them, and each one plays back so you can hear it before it goes on a record.