First lesson

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Posted by drummerboy on Thursday, October 7, 2010

Okay, I've wanted to play the banjo for about 40 years. I've owned a banjo for about 8 years. Last night I had my first banjo lesson. I found a good teacher about an hour and a half away. One of my closest friends who has been playing for a long time is taking lessons along with me. It's nice to car pool for the ride, share expenses, and have the time to talk. I'm excited about finally learning this great instrument and plan on doing a lot of practice.

7 comments on “First lesson”

fixdent Says:
Thursday, October 7, 2010 @5:24:21 PM

Good luck on your banjo journey

Oalbrets Says:
Friday, October 8, 2010 @9:07:18 AM

Go Go Go Dave and good luck.

lizmac Says:
Sunday, October 10, 2010 @10:40:55 AM

That's great, Dave. I have a similar story in that I wanted to play the banjo for 37 years and finally got one in Sept 2009. A good teacher will speed up your learning enormously. But you have to travel an hour and a half to get there? I must be really lucky - my bluegrass teacher is half an hour away and my classic banjo teacher is only 20 minutes away!

drummerboy Says:
Sunday, October 10, 2010 @5:10:45 PM

Thanks Liz and the rest of you. There was a guy living very close by but he never returned my email to him about lessons. You are fortunate to have someone close by. We make the trip once every two weeks to minimize the driving, and the drive gives us a chance to talk as old friends do. Feel free to write any time.

kevinwholmes Says:
Thursday, January 13, 2011 @4:33:34 PM

I wanted to play the banjo for a long time too. I started a few years ago when I was 54. I was lucky to find a good teacher practically around the corner from me, and he came to my house to give the lessons. I thought I would play clawhammer but decided to go 2-finger old-time, but play some "guitar-style" too. Have you made a decision yet to start with any particular style since/or before starting last October? Once you get started, practice sort of stops being practice and just becomes what you want to do, as you may already have found out. Good luck. Looking forward to your first video on Banjo Hangout soon.

drummerboy Says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 @6:30:22 AM

Thanks Kevin,

Things have slowed down a bit for me. I've done some traveling, then there was the holidays and I recently changed jobs. Now I'm driving about an hour and twenty minutes each way to work and work evening shift. That means I generally have to leave for work about 1:15 pm., work until 11:30 pm. and drive back home, getting home about 1:15 AM. Figure in 8 hours of sleep and that leaves me 4 hors a day to do everything else I want/need to do. Hmmmm.. :(
I'm doing the three finger Scruggs style stuff. I figure that will keep me busy for the next 20 years or so. lol.
With so many good instructional DVD's out there, a person can do quite a lot without a teacher, but I like being able to take lessons to make sure I don't start bad habits, to take advantage of someone else's mistakes, and to keep me honest about practice time. Right now though with my driving/work schedule, finding another 3 hours for a round trip for lessons is going to be hard to get.
Hope you are enjoying your playing time. It's a great instrument and it seems a lot of great folks around playing it too. Good luck !