I have been working on a new tune for myself for the past 2 days. It is like it finally clicked for me about learning a new song. When I played bluegrass and had a teacher, I was learning note for note tab and sticking to it always. I have been trying to learn to be my own self more since I have started with clawhammer. After a year now, I finally put some of it to good use. I took what Dan Levenson taught me about familiarizing myself with the tune to the point that you are singing it in your head. I knew what the basic tune was on my banjo with a simple tab, but playing the simple tab had no feeling and was too rigid. I have then put the tab away and played it for 2 days experimenting with different ways. Now, after playing it a million times, the song has stuck in my head how I hear it and have gotten my version now. It is not identical to the tab and it doesn't matter. I just realized that the tab is just someone's interpretation of how they think it should sound. Now, I feel enlightened. Oh yeah, and I can't get the song out of my head. It keeps playing in my mind at the grocery store and my fingers tap it out. It was not a major hard song, Angeline the Baker. What an awesome song.
1 comment
on “Learning a new tune”
little ricky Says:
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 @8:02:30 AM
Kool Merit! Keep up the hard work! I myself gave up 3-finer and went to clawhammer, and am thankful that I did. I can learn it much quicker and in my opinion, clawhammer is played with more feeling. I got a lot of help from Mike Iverson and his web page that you can access from his home page. He has instruction and a lot of tabbed songs that you can download and print, check it out. Keep on pickin', er uh...... clawin'! Little Ricky
You must sign into your myHangout account before you can post comments.
'John Hardy' 4 hrs
'Old Spinning Wheel' 5 hrs
'Bartlett Banjo Mic' 12 hrs
