For several years I have searched for banjo tab of traditional oriental sounding music. It started in the early '80s. I was walking the streets of Beijing and on the street corner was an old man with a 5 string banjo playing for tips. He was pretty good and I listened for a couple songs. Everything he played sounded Chinese. he wore 2 finger picks and a thumb pick and picked everything Scruggs-san style. I remember thinking that I wanted to make that sound, but it was tough to keep the tune in my head. You all know the sound. Think of a movie scene depicting China or Japan. Here's a youtubed chinese song. it has a banjo picker (who uses a flat pick that he must drop a lot) but it is skimpy on Banjo. It's nice to hear the er-hu (2 stringed Chinese violin) I brought one of those back with my from that first China trip.
This guy is another flatpicker with a permanent squint. He kind of has 'that sound' http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=UpcPFx4Nn7k
( I had to include this guy. He's probably a Hangout member...) Not traditional Chinese sound, but he's flatpicking too and can outplay some with 4 of his strings tied behind his back.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=nfCBGHbbwhw
So for all of my searching, repeated attempts, all I have ever come up with was this clawhammer arrangement in Double C: http://clawhammerbanjo.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/chinese-banjo-tunes/ Catching Loaches is a nice tune and I have been playing that for a while. it does sound oriental when played right too.
Can anyone come up with tab for 'that sound' for me? I play 3 finger, clawhammer, and up picking, so any tab is good. Maybe someone has found the source of this that has eluded me for so long.
While I am here, I'll try this:
I bet Tom can't make oriental sounding tab for banjo. :-)
Michael