Posted by Norm2704 on Saturday, December 8, 2012
Hello all,
This is my first blog ever, and I thought I give you a brief description of my past musical abilities, and how my banjo pickin' has been coming along in the past year.
I've been a bass player (nonprofessional) since I was about 17 years old, so about 27 years I guess, with a little stint somewhere in there where I didn't play anything at all for a few years, And have been playing bass now fairly regularly for the past 2 years now with an acoustic trio (Mostly older pop music and such).
A few years ago, before joining that group I had toyed with the idea of buying either a mandolin or a banjo, and had actually brought my soon to be wife to the music store to "look" at what they had available. Well, I never did end up buying anything, and the acoustic trio thing mentioned above came along, so the banjo/mandolin idea suddenly got yanked from my thoughts, until last Christmas.
Every year, Christmas day, we end up at my parents place for Christmas dinner and gift exchanges, and we, the wife and I had already exchanged our gifts earlier that morning, so all that was left was the family exchanges, or so I thought. Being Christmas, and fully stuffed with Turkey and quite a few glasses of wine, my mom handed me a gift bag from my wife. As I opened it there was a banjo chord chart, and a banjo book and a card and a note which I couldn't read or make out as the excitement of what could be happening (plus the copious amounts of wine) were kinda clouding my eyes over. As I looked up to ask my wife what all this meant, here stands my mom with a brand new banjo case!!!! Needless to say, it was the best Christmas ever, and I love my wife dearly for this wonderful banjo journey she sent me on.
So, now on to the progress part. It's been a long year of trying to fit banjo practice time in here and there where I can, but I'm seeing progress in my roll consistency, speed, and ear development (which I had somewhat anyways, but tuned for a different instrument). My hardest thing still is the D chord but it's coming along. I can pick a few tunes fairly fast, mostly lead parts, but I'm noticing alot of curiosity towards backup now, which I have to work on.
I've read A crap load of the posts on BHO to help my learning process, and I'll be reading a crap more...LOL... As of today I have yet to jam with somebody (using the banjo) but eventually it'll come. I've also noticed that I have a fear or nervousness which occurs when the camera is on..lol... So once I've overcome this, I'll try to post some videos, of what I love doing.... Pickin the banjo..
And the suprising thing too for me, is the more I pick the more I like it and the more I want to...LOL
That's it for now..
Norm.
PS. Margaret (my wife) I love you!!!
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