Description

Start Playing 5-String Bluegrass Banjo. For Real This Time.

If you’ve been trying to teach yourself banjo from scattered YouTube videos and you’re tired of feeling lost, this is the book that will get you unstuck. The Banjo Primer for Beginners is the exact course Geoff Hohwald has used to teach thousands of new players — in private lessons, group classes, and living rooms across the country — since the 1980s. It works because it starts at the beginning and actually stays there long enough for the lessons to stick.

Every page is paired with free online video and audio. You read the lesson, you watch Geoff play it, you hear it at multiple speeds, and then you play it yourself. That’s how people actually learn an instrument.

What You’ll Learn

The Banjo Primer for Beginners starts from zero. No prior experience, no music reading, no assumptions about what you already know:

• Parts of the banjo and how to tune it properly
• How to read banjo tablature — the easy way
• Right-hand rolls: the foundation of Scruggs-style picking
• Left-hand work: fretting, slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs
• Easy arrangements of classic bluegrass songs you already know by ear
• Up-the-neck breaks that sound like the real thing, not beginner exercises

By the end of the book, you’re not just running drills — you’re playing songs.

See Geoff Teach — Free Beginner Workshop

Before you buy, watch Geoff walk through the essential techniques every new banjo player needs to know. This is the same teaching approach you’ll find inside the Primer.

Who Geoff Is, and Why That Matters

Geoff Hohwald has been playing banjo since 1964 — back when Columbus, Ohio was a genuine bluegrass hot spot — and studied under John Hickman. He’s performed with two of Bill Monroe’s guitar players, shared stages with Red Allen, Frank Wakefield, and Hylo Brown, played with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra, and co-founded the Greater Atlanta Bluegrass Band. He’s been teaching beginners the whole time, which means he knows exactly where new players get stuck — and how to get them unstuck.

Geoff also runs Banjo Warehouse, our sister shop in Yellow Springs, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia, where he’s been buying, selling, and setting up banjos since 1980. Meaning: the guy who wrote this book is a working banjo player and dealer with six decades of hands-on experience, not a publishing house ghostwriter.

Buy Direct. Skip the Warehouse.

When you order the Banjo Primer from GeoffHohwald.com, you’re buying directly from us — a small family business in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Your book is packed and shipped by people who actually play banjo, and if you have a question about a lesson, Geoff is the one who answers the email.

Yes, this book is also on Amazon. Yes, it’s a few dollars cheaper there. Here’s what you get by ordering direct instead:

• ✔ Signed by Geoff on request — just ask in the order notes
• ✔ Direct access to the author if you get stuck on a lesson
• ✔ Your purchase supports a small family business, not a warehouse
• ✔ Ships from Yellow Springs, Ohio, usually within one business day

Product Details

• Format: Paperback, 64 pages
• Includes: Free online video and audio access
• Level: Absolute beginner and up
• Style: 5-string Scruggs-style bluegrass banjo
• ISBN: 978-1940301402
• Ships from: Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA

Where This Fits in Geoff’s Beginner Series

• Beginning Banjo Warm-Up Series — build your right-hand foundation first.
• → You are here: Banjo Primer for Beginners — learn rolls, tabs, fretting, and your first songs.
• Easy Banjo Songbook — 19 classic bluegrass songs with jam tracks.
• Easy Banjo Gospel Songbook — 8 gospel favorites with sing-along melodies.
• Intro to Banjo Rhythm & Backup — learn to play behind other musicians.