Alegria - Posted - 03/13/2018:  00:38:09

I remember reading someone here describing a man that knew a thousand tunes, but could play none. I think I am on that road myself. I am always more passionate about playing banjo when I am learning a tune, but when it comes to practicing tunesI already know I quickly get bored.

Anyone else have this problem? I have made a list of all the tunesI have learned and plan to play through them everyday I have the oppurtunity. Are there better strategies, or should I just keep learning new tunes? My playing do improve as I am learning new tunes, but it takes a while before I can play them with confidence.

Why are the tunes so much more interesting when I don't know how to play them?

tron.miller - Posted - 03/13/2018:  01:52:27

I wasted years just learning tunes then playing them the same way. There’s a concept called “deliberate practice “ that involves setting specific goals and staying mentally involved- which ends up harder and more frustrating than you think.

Consider these: (yes they’re hard)
-ditch tabs completely.
-practice techniques, not tunes
-metronome
-listen to several versions of a tune you know, pick out elements from each performer and swap them in on-the-fly while playing it
-sing while playing
-go to the fiddle hangout jukebox and play along with the fiddler tracks, even for songs you don’t know. For a bonus, figure out the key And chords just from listening.

Playing an instrument it seems to me is like lifting weights: if you’re not always pushing the boundaries you’ll never get stronger!!

Phil

tron.miller - Posted - 03/13/2018:  01:55:38

<p>Oh: and record yourself!! Listen for what is uninspiring and work on that </p>

Edited by - tron.miller on 03/13/2018 01:56:01

Neil Allen - Posted - 03/13/2018:  03:16:48

I know what you mean and I don't necessarily think its a problem unless you are trying to build up a repertoire of tunes to entertain people. There are plenty of tunes that I've learned to play and have just given up practicing because I got bored with them. This was a real problem for me once I got beyond about fifteen tunes to practice regularly - it felt like a real chore having to run through them all. I really enjoy learning new tunes, especially those that introduce some new technique or aspect that I hadn't thought of before. It's what keeps me motivated. The good thing is that I can pick up the old tunes again very quickly if I want to do so.

AndrewD - Posted - 03/13/2018:  04:56:17

Find other people to play with (live idealIy, but I realise that may be difficult in Sogndal). If you can play with a fiddler in a session then you will be forced to play at a tempo dictated by somebody else and to carry on playing even after going wrong. You will also have to find ways of playing other than slavishly following the tab you have learned or it gets really boring.

mbuk06 - Posted - 03/13/2018:  05:22:16

quote:

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Originally posted by Alegria

I remember reading someone here describing a man that knew a thousand tunes, but could play none. I think I am on that road myself. I am always more passionate about playing banjo when I am learning a tune, but when it comes to practicing tunesI already know I quickly get bored.



Anyone else have this problem? I have made a list of all the tunesI have learned and plan to play through them everyday I have the oppurtunity. Are there better strategies, or should I just keep learning new tunes? My playing do improve as I am learning new tunes, but it takes a while before I can play them with confidence.



Why are the tunes so much more interesting when I don't know how to play them?

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This touches on a fundamental aspect of folk music. Historically homespun musicians traditionally sang/played/danced to a core repertoire of tunes and lyrics that not only do they know intimately, but that form an integral part of their local culture. That intimate  knowledge comes from a continual exposure to those tunes and lyrics where they live, typically from a very early age.

In our modern digital world that selective exposure and connection has been lost; or more precisely 'crowded out'. We are subject to huge diversity and disconnection. So instead we have a choice to compete or quietly express: we either try and react in the manner of a batter at practice swiping in crazy uncontrolled fashion at the balls tossed indiscriminately by the automated baseball machine with the speed cranked up way too high, trying to keep up in the doomed attempt to 'impress' and appear 'adept' - and really learn nothing.

Or:  we make a conscious effort to subvert that bombardment and immerse ourselves in a manageable personal repertoire that has relevance and meaning - that teaches us, and imparts connection to, context and identity.

Pardon the repetition here, but if you look at the generation of older traditional folk musicians across genres most played a relatively small number of very familiar tunes often. Old-time is no exception. One of the beautiful aspects of that minimal approach is that knowledge of that tune then enables it's performance to take on a totemic quality imbued with the essence of the musician in whose hands and heart it is passing through.

It's a perfectly free choice. No-one can tell you what to do. But within that choice lies the blunt answer to your question. 

Edited by - mbuk06 on 03/13/2018 05:38:47

Martin Hallett - Posted - 03/13/2018:  06:09:12

Wow. Light shined into my dull mind when I read the reply from mbuk06. Thanks. I want to settle down into the tunes I know.

FlyinEagle - Posted - 03/13/2018:  06:17:43

Sometimes there will be 1 or 2 passages in a song that your current skill set is not quite ready to pull off.

It is OK to move onto different tunes without perfecting the one you are working on. Give it a few months then return to tune you put aside, and you might find you can pull it off with ease.

When you are learning an instrument for your own enjoyment, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.

Alegria - Posted - 03/13/2018:  06:36:42

Flying Banjo Thank you all for good advice!

@tron.miller you are the voice of reason I always try to block out, but you are right about the metronome! This is something I am way to lazy about. About the singing part, I am sorry to say you are completely wrong! I am already tormenting the rest of my family with my banjo, if I were to sing as well I'm afraid I would have bigger problems than bad practice strategies :D Thanks for all the specific recommendations!

@Neil Allen seems like you and me are in the same boat, or at least are riding boats from the same factory. There's something about learning new tunes that just lights my fire, you know? I think it's a lot fun, specially when there are new techniques.

@mbuk06 That was a very inspiring text! Being culturally disconnected I am able to make my pickings. That's after all what I am doing as a Norwegian playing traditional music from another continent. I won't dig myself into a specific cultural hole, but I like what you are saying and it inspires me to dig my own hole with the tunes I know and make it very comfortable there, far away from all the myriads of di stracting tunes.

@flyineagle that's often how it is, you understand me!

Ok out of all the wize words I have made a plan. Thank you very much! I will set a specific goal and give myself a reward for reaching that goal. The goal will be to make the tune I feel like I play the least good into one of the best tunes I play. When I feel like I am there, I will allow one more tune into my culturally mixed hole of tunes.

mbuk06 - Posted - 03/13/2018:  07:46:43

Stian, Norway may not be as culturally remote as you assume. Scandanavian immigrants and their music found their way into the southern mountains too. The 'Appalachian' mountain dulcimer has unmistakeable Norwegian antecedents. The modal and pentatonic/hexatonic structures of Appalachia are heavily influenced by the 5 and 6-pitch scales that are used by pipers; and pipes and bagpipes (of varying size and type) were commonplace in every country in Europe including in Scandanavia. Far from the recent cultural 'branding' that they are somehow an exclusively Scottish 'invention'. I would be tempted to explore those Northern cultural sounds and rhythms that, as a Norwegian, you know in your bones and research where those forms echoed, persisted and adapted across the ocean.

When we engage with and practice what has meaning we relieve ourselves of the treadmill of the endless cycle of discarding what we 'learn' in pursuit of more novelty. 

Edited by - mbuk06 on 03/13/2018 08:02:02

banjered - Posted - 03/13/2018:  08:19:11

CH is such a versatile way to play the banjo, so many directions to go - songs, dance tunes, pop, Irish, all-original. Some people here seem to learn a new tune a week, drop it, and move on to the next, sort of skimming over the surface but in their own fun way. Some take a tune and polish it into their own solo style rendition. Others want as vast a repertoire as possible in order to jam with others at the drop of a hat. Some have such a good ear and playing skills they can pick up a tune by the second go-around and sound like they have been playing it for years, but as soon as the tune is over they may not be able to play any of it, it is a skill unto itself.

Me, I like tab for fiddle tunes. I'll listen to various versions and cobble them together in a way that I prefer and seems to fit in a jam, and months or even years later if the tune comes up again in popularity I can review/relearn it without going through all the versions again. For the most part my focus is using CH to back up my folk songs, AND, to back up fiddle tunes at the local jam. There is no one right way to approach CH banjo (Not like Bluegrass) or as is often cited here on BHO, "It's your banjo Kid. Play it any damn way you like." Ha! banjered

gtani7 - Posted - 03/13/2018:  10:19:35

Depends on what you by knowing a tune. Can you do rhythmic/melodic/harmonic variations on it. Play it reggae, as a waltz, a samba and then in the speed/death metal style? Basically, can you improvise?

hoodoo - Posted - 03/15/2018:  07:18:10

I have a similar problem. I like to begin to learn new songs and then kind of abandon them. I do the same with books, movies, tv shows and so one and so forth.

I've noticed that even though I like to try out a lot of different things at the banjo buffet, I usually wind up playing the same handful of songs, so in time, I get better at them. It may not be a strict schedule or anything, but aren't most of us doing this just for fun?

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 03/15/2018:  11:13:03

quote:

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Originally posted by Alegria

... but when it comes to practicing tunes I already know I quickly get bored.



... should I just keep learning new tunes? My playing do improve as I am learning new tunes, but it takes a while before I can play them with confidence.

 

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You have to remain motivated to keep playing. If you start getting bored, you may stop playing.

I don't really care for "practice" in the sense of exercises, repetitions, etc.  This approach does have its uses in the beginning stages and to isolate problem areas to work on, but to me, learning technique through the tunes is the way to go.  For one thing, I'm pretty sure guys like Wade Ward and Tommy Jarrell never sat around doing a drop-thumb excercise      X 1000.  I think it may have been John Burke who said something like "OT musicians learn technique through love of a particular passage in a tune."  That speaks to something in the music that *motivates* one to work and improve. The key here is that you are learning something new and improving through adding new tunes.  If you end up playing 1000 tunes at a beginner level, that is a problem.  Note that playing simply and playing like a beginner are two different things. 

A lot of the best banjo music is "simple".  In fact, some of the greatest traditional musicians have played with an elegant simplicity because they put the needs of the music ahead of the sort of ego that expresses itself through unnecessary "virtuosity".  Again, a player like Wade Ward or the Irish fiddler Johnny Doherty were exemplars of this.

The most advanced stage of playing comes after one has passed through the stages of beginning technique, and acquiring more advanced technique.  Those are the nuts and bolts of playing.  Real music comes when you are comfortable enough with the style, technique, and tunes that you begin to express yourself through the music.  It takes a lot of playing and *listening* to reach this stage.  This can play into what Mike was saying in his brilliant post above.

In traditional settings, the players may have had access to a comparatively small number of tunes and players.  If there were only a handful of players in your area, and they only knew a few dozen tunes then that was all you had for a source, and it was likely you'd end up sounding very much like the older local players, and play their repertoire.  Hence the development of local styles.  Though this may sound limiting, it made the music much more personal, which is less the case today.  I was fortunate enough to have a father who played, and who learned from musicians in his locale going back into the 1800's.  So, even though a tune like "Cripple Creek" is quite common, to me it has more value having learned it from my Dad than if I had picked it up from the Pete Seeger book.

The advantage of a comparatively small repertoire is that it tends to be worked, re-worked, and perfected over a lifetime.  One can of course reach a high level of playing with the endless amount of tunes available to us these days, but there is always the temptation to just learn endless numbers of "throwaway" tunes.

Jimbeaux - Posted - 03/16/2018:  02:15:12

For me, a great way to feel connected to certain tunes is to play them with other people. Do you have the chance to do that? Also, to read about the history of certain tunes, banjo players and fiddlers. There are just some tunes that I can play 1,000 times and I never get tired of them (some I play with others, some only by myself).

Also, try to pick out some licks from tunes that are transferrable. Many tunes are very rhythm heavy, for example: many tunes have a bar or several bars where you just kind of hold a groove on the 1 chord. There are so many things you can do with bum-dity, bumpa dity, drop thumb, etc. Just look for those and other "swappable" spaces in the tunes you learn.

What I'm trying to say is that when you learn new tunes, think about what you can use from that tune in a tune you already know (and vice-versa). That way you're getting both spread and depth.

OldPappy - Posted - 03/17/2018:  08:14:38

Learning to play "music" is not the same thing as memorizing the series of notes in a tune.

If you are getting bored easily, it is probably because your focus is on learning more tunes, instead of learning to make music.

Whoever said that about someone "knowing" a thousand tunes, and not being able to play any of them must have meant something like this.

Someone can play a tune, hitting every single note in perfect time, and still not be playing "music". Perfect timing, without good syncopation in the rhythm will fall down in front of you dead.

Music will cause children to dance, and old folks tap their feet. The difference between being something dead, or something exciting is RHYTHM, and this is not to be confused with Timing. Both are needed.

Don't know what style of "Clawhammer" you play, but that doesn't matter much, as the same things apply to any music.

Years ago Dwight Diller told me that music was in the spaces between the notes. That made sense to me right away, but it took me a very long while to really understand it.

Timing is on the downbeat, and that needs to be metronome perfect, but there are other parts of each measure, and the "spaces" Diller was talking about are the intervals between these. Making adjustments with those intervals is where SYNCOPATION occurs, and that is the RHYTHM. I think we each have our own rhythm, but that is a different topic.

I used to build hot rods, and could listen to an engine running and tell what needed to be "tweaked". I used to be a good chess player, and I have spent most of my career as a software developer. Now I play music.

To me, what all of these things have in common is they all involve some abstract thought, meaning I understand things by visualizing them. That is me, it doesn't have to be everybody, it is just how my mind works.

So, I visualize music too, and for me that had to happen before I could start getting syncopation into my rhythm.

I think of a tune as having an oval shape, but not a perfect oval. The downbeat is heavier, so the oval becomes more of an egg shape to me.

Some tunes seem to roll forward, some pull backwards, and some bounce, but that egg shape is important to me. It describes the shape of the measure of each note, and also describes the shape of my right hand movement.

I mostly play with a "Double Thumb" rhythm, which simply means the 5th string is sounded each time the hand comes back up from the strike. This seems more balanced to me.

The top of the egg shape is where it starts.

The hand comes down, my index finger strikes the note while at the same time the meat of my thumb catches on the 5th string. The hand comes back up sounding the 5th string at the top of the egg shape, and then very quickly goes back down for the next note or brush. The 5h string is sounded so close before the note, or brush, that it becomes part of the same sound. Your wrist needs to be very loose to get some snap into it, and that is why the top of the egg shape is smaller in my mental picture. This interval is smaller than the the interval between the bottom of the down stroke, and the next up stroke, and that is where syncopation of the rhythm occurs, and why the bottom of the egg shape is wider.

All this may make sense to some folks, and may not to others, but if it helps anyone it was worth the attempt.

Edited by - OldPappy on 03/17/2018 08:57:10

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 03/17/2018:  09:27:39

quote:

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Originally posted by OldPappy

I think of a tune as having an oval shape, but not a perfect oval. The downbeat is heavier, so the oval becomes more of an egg shape to me.

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Makes perfect sense... a very good analogy.

I always conceptualized it as an out of balance wheel that moves a bit quicker or slower during different parts of the rotation.

Alegria - Posted - 03/21/2018:  10:31:36

@OldPappy That's a interesting point of view you are taking. I did a test a few years ago when I was doing a course in communication techniques. The test was ment to map how I prefered to percieve the world. There are four ways. Visual, audio, touch and logic. Apparently it's normal that we prefeer one of these, I came out weak on visual and strong on audio and logic. I wonder if you would score higher on visual perception? The way you describe visualizing music is very strange for me, even if I can understand what you are saying it sort of doesn't make sense. I wonder if this has to do with how we are used to process perceptions?

Another example is my girlfriend who is very strong at visualizing, she tells me she thinks in images. To me this is absurd, I can only imagine images if I concentrate very hard, and then they are blurry at best.

Digression aside, I agree with the message in your post. I think rhythm is very important and I consider it one of my strongest qualities in harmonica playing. I can really dance around the beat as I wish, but I do not feel the same with clawhammer. I haven't discovered the same freedom yet, I feel more locked to the beats.

Alegria - Posted - 03/21/2018:  10:45:01

mbuk06 That is something I have thought about many times. Let's take my dear self as an example. I grew up with more associations to american and british folk music than to Norwegian. This is because the only music I listened to was from the radio or grown-ups playing imported music on the stereo, some of which must have had various degree of influences from folk music.

So with few associations to my own tradition, is it posible for me to have it in my bones? I can see two posible explanation. Musical traditions passed down through generations has somehow been incorporated into our DNA and I have a heridatary compulsion towards Norwegian folk music? Another explanation is that the expression in folk music grew out of the enviroment? In my example it's the harsh weather, deep forrest, fjords and tall mountains that inspires me as much as they did to my ancestors?

I spent some years travelling around with my guitar and during this time I was sleeping rough, disconnected from internet, CD's and other influences. I made a lot of music and I noticed how the music would change with the enviroment. I practiced music as a meditation, closing my eyes and feeling the wind, waiting for the inspiration. Maybe that inspiration came from nature? It could also have come from my emotional state of mind, or from some inner muse, or maybe from a divine force connecting to our realm through a medium we have chosen to call "inspiration"? It's impossible to know, at least for me.

mbuk06 - Posted - 03/21/2018:  15:59:37

In referring to an indigenous music being in our bones, what I'm referring to is an inherent cultural connection that we are able to recognise regardless of, in fact despite, all else we hear that is 'borrowed' from outside. That connection or recognition can be as subtle as rhythm patterns within a folk music that reflect the natural speech patterns of the user-community; any aspect that our ears recognise instinctively when we hear it when others don't. The same is true of lyric and ballad; there are cultural norms and expectations in terms of subject and narrative structure that are characteristic of different communities and formed by the way those communities have been shaped from generation to generation by the one aspect that doesn't change - the natural physical environment; light, climate and the flora and fauna.



If there were such a thing as cultural DNA it would be an apt description. However what that is in practice is really an imbued cultural instinct that is created by early influences we generally take for granted.



As listeners we control the volume and we can choose what we hear and pay attention to. But the sheer scale of intrusion in our increasingly culturally homogenous world gradually eliminates those intimate, subtle local influences that inform distinct geographic cultural instinct and identity, and replace them with structures that are individually consumed in isolation rather than formed by who we are as communities.

Edited by - mbuk06 on 03/21/2018 16:13:36

mbuk06 - Posted - 03/21/2018:  17:28:36

quote:

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Originally posted by Alegria

>I spent some years travelling around with my guitar and during this time I was sleeping rough, disconnected from internet, CD's and other influences. I made a lot of music and I noticed how the music would change with the enviroment.<

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I love your personal observation of what happens when we turn the volume down (or off) on what isn't intrinsically 'us' and 'here'. That is the crucible of music that communicates who we are; rather than a transaction and an 'identification' with who someone else is. When that's experienced within community we have culture.

Alegria - Posted - 03/22/2018:  04:04:51

It makes sense that speech patterns, language and even narrative structures plays a role in this. I have never thought about that before, but I am going to be thinking more about it in the future. Your opinions are well contemplated and they give a lot of food for thought. I thank you for that!