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Please note this is an archived topic, so it is locked and unable to be replied to. You may, however, start a new topic and refer to this topic with a link: http://www.banjohangout.org/archive/402277
jsinjin - Posted - 03/10/2025: 06:26:53
What I’m sharing is not normal banjo and learn primarily by ear banjo learning. I have been learning notes. Every day I transcribe several songs from guitar tab to a makeshift banjo tab (the notes are right but the fingering is probably off) then make sure I identify every note in that key both on the JSJ “tab” and on my fretboard.
When I play, and I’ve learned 1.25 songs so far, I say every note and in the tab I write I use the piano note signature that I taught myself for 1/4 and 1/8 notes and the occasional full note.
I’m kind of wooden and stiff in my playing without much of the “make it your own” style that good banjo players use. I say each note in my head (I used to shout it out loud to help me meorize) so for a song I literally memorize several hundred notes if I do it without tab. I then work religiously with both strum machine or a metronome to play every note on that beat.
I also have my own notation for bum and ditty and use standard for strums hammers and pull offs or drop thumbs.
But!!!! In my second song which is called Angeline the Baker I actually was able to anticipate the next set of notes because the pattern made sense in the order of the notes from both what I was memorizing and what made sense in the playing pattern. It wasn’t so much what I was hearing as it was the pattern of actual notes made sense for what came in the next measure by the letter pattern.
I realize this is a non standard way to learn to play clawhammer but it’s working for me slowly and it really makes sense to me as I’m learning the songs.
I really geek out watching an oscilloscope (m.elecrow.com/pages/shop/produ...d=207408&) on the phone and seeing each note and the changes in frequency while I play. I’m steadily making progress and recognizing the pattern and making a correct prediction was a huge step for me in the transition from the fifth to sixth measure of Angeline the Baker.
Texasbanjo - Posted - 03/10/2025: 08:05:01
Different people learn in different ways. Sounds like the way you are learning is working for you. Keep up the good practice and you'll get better and better.
jsinjin - Posted - 03/15/2025: 06:16:03
I was able to do it again. I’m leaning a song called “Angeline the Baker” and I still have no concept why the I IV V is used as a basis meaning that I get it but I can’t tell why in key of D we choose to play G where we play it. I completely understand that it’s the fourth chord and how it is made up but if I play a G vs a B of a C it all sounds fine to me. But it since I’ve been memorizing the patterns not by note and chord by chord and I know this song is in that format on the 13th bar transitioning to the 14th I could guess completely that it was jumping to a third string G-D-G which is the forth chord in that tuning (I know everyone knows that but I have to go from memory) and without having learned the next measure the pattern occurred in my head for the next bar notes. I still can’t really hear the song but from memory the patterns are coming much faster now in learning each note from my converted tablature to sheet music.
I also really have liked the sustain that occurs when the instrument is tuned perfectly and I can see it on the iPad oscilloscope. That G chord brush stroke has overtones that come in and out.
Different topic but I’ll mention- was playing with the whyte laydie tone ring in my instrument and I stated taping up different parts of the wave to change the harmonics and I could see the changes in the Low D when the fourth string was really tuned well as I shifted the length of the ridges in the tone ring open and closed. It’s quite fascinating to see how this all mathematically comes together.
