Blank banjo tab paper
Five-line tablature staves for five-string banjo, spaced generously so there is room to mark the picking hand above the numbers.
Opens with these settings already loaded. Change anything you like, then download as PDF, PNG or SVG.
The fifth string is the odd one
A five-string banjo's fifth string is a short drone starting at the fifth fret, tuned to a high G — above the string next to it, not below. Banjo tab shows it as the top line of the stave, matching its physical position closest to the thumb, and its fret numbers only make sense from five upwards. A 0 on that line means the open drone, not an open full-length string.
Roll patterns need room above the stave
Scruggs-style playing is built on right-hand rolls — forward, backward, alternating thumb — and a tab is close to meaningless without the picking indications. Thumb, index and middle are marked T, I and M around the notes. Leave space for them when choosing your stave spacing; 3.5 mm gives a stave tall enough that the letters do not crowd the fret numbers.
Write the tuning at the top
Banjo is usually in open G (gDGBD), but double C, sawmill and open D are all common, and a tab read in the wrong tuning produces the wrong notes from correct-looking numbers. Noting the tuning at the head of the page takes five seconds and is the single most frequent omission in shared banjo tab — including in a good deal of published material.
Printing it accurately
This only measures correctly if your printer doesn't rescale the page. In the print dialog set Scale: 100% — not "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". If you're not sure it worked, print the calibration page, measure the ruler on it with a real ruler, and it will tell you exactly what your printer is doing to the page.