If anyone is searching for the TLDR, the actual thumb lead part starts @10:05

Your lessons get better and better. Crystal clear ( 'woodshed' is new to me too, but  totally obvious in context) and exceptionally well-paced, with those ground-laying preparatory exercises. A pleasure to watch.

Thank you Tom. Greetings from the UK. Your ‘Engine of Clawhammer’ analogy really resonated with me. As a beginner with clawhammer getting the basics down has in itself been a journey. This lesson is above my grade but my takeaway was the clawhammer ‘engine’ helping to ‘de-mystify’ an instrument is the key to it all. Thankyou.

Oh yes! The skippy makes everything so funky and delicious to play. Really looking forward to practicing this technique. Also, I didn't know about Dan Gellert, he is so fantastic! I just listened to him playing Poor Rosy on a fretless. Beautiful.

Cooool. I really like your YT banjo lessons. Yo u are taking banjo teaching to the next level ❤️

Thumb lead equals mind blown

This is so freaking beautiful! Thank you. You rule. ❤🤩🪕☮️

Many Thanks Tom. Greatly Appreciated. STP

You talkin bout my homie Frank Lee!

Call it what you will, I'm just glad someone is advocating for the removal of notes in banjo arrangements! Things are becoming awfully dense out there in banjo tab world.

I wonder if its helpful for some to think of the first note as a dotted-quarter. It's hard to call the "silent" note anything but a ghost note in my mind because like you said it's not technically a rest either. I tend to arrange fiddle tunes exclusively so I'm used to looking at the actual music. Funny how our musical backgrounds influence banjo jargon. Great lesson!

Hi Tom one of the things I struggle with the most playing clawhammer banjo in double C and in open G is playing in different where perhaps I am not playing the melody. Playing backup clawhammer banjo seems to be quite difficult for me especially when in jams I'm expected to change keys easily like others.  Do you have a video talking about this that you could point me to?

Hello Tom.  Thank you for the video. I found it refreshing. I've been fiddling around with the banjo for a number of years but have been having a hard time finding my way. I'm not really interested in bluegrass or old-time but just want to play along with songs that I like from any genre. This might fit the bill. Does your teaching on Patreon go into detail on how this could be applied to other music?  Thanks, Rick

Hi Tom do you ever find it possible to incorporate a thumb lead technique the pinch into a clawhammer repitoire? I find that sometimes mixing an upstroke as a pinch offers some nice 2FIL type tricks.

I've never heard someone refer to this as an m skip. What's the m for?

The phrase, "Woodshed drop thumb and do a bunch of dities", as an Englishman, is entirely incomprehensible to me. Oscar Wilde made a very erudite observation that we are two peoples, separated by a common language. It is interesting that when the English publish on youtube, that they vary their language to accommodate the American audience, but it is very rare that the Americans do the same for those of us to whom English is a native tongue.