Posted by scottasmeltzer on Friday, September 11, 2020
Hi BHO,
ive been playing the banjo for 3 years now. I'm trying to correct some things with my playing. The biggest thing is my right hand. I need to get more control of it. I feel like there is something I can do during my practice times to focus in on my right hand.
I understand a lot of you will say keep practicing rolls. I get that, I was wondering if there was any other practice techniques the members do to correct, or work on right hand control.
thanks, Scott
3 comments on “Right hand practice techniques”
thisoldman Says:
Friday, September 11, 2020 @7:56:19 AM
Eli Gilbert has 2 videos on right hand technique on youtube that might help - pretty basic so you might be beyond those ideas, but maybe there is something in them that might help. One of the things I did when I first started playing Scruggs style was to come up with as many roll variations as I could. There is the standard forward roll (strings 3-1-5 for example) and there are many other variations as well -- what they have in common is that they all move "forward". You can do the same for backward and forward-backward rolls. Playing those variations (like different forward rolls) one right after the other really helped me concentrate on where my fingers were going. So, once I got comfortable with the different patterns, I might do a measure of a forward roll pattern, followed by a different pattern for one measure, then a third pattern and so on. You could do this by having the patterns set up ahead of time (like in tab), or as I progressed, as I would be playing a roll I would decide what the next roll would be (sort of improvising as I went along). Go to the "learn" section (upper left side of this page)., use "roll" as a search term, and check out "banjo practice rolls" for some ideas.
thisoldman Says:
Monday, September 14, 2020 @7:15:28 AM
Clarification: Got to thinking about this. When I made the suggestion of playing rolls, I should have said that I played only (variations) of forward rolls in the beginning. Personally, I have to play new patterns many, many times until I don't have to devote much brain power to what my fingers are doing so I can concentrate on other things (like what my fretting hand is doing). Did the same with variations of forward-backward rolls, and backward rolls. Once I was able to play those automatically, then I worked combining different rolls.
randywhitebanjo Says:
Thursday, October 22, 2020 @9:10:12 PM
Hello Scott. I have some videos that might help. just getting back to the basics with your right hand is the best way to get in the groove. I have about 5 or 6 basic rolls on my site youtube.com/watch?v=JX_Knaqu2pE.
randywhitebanjo.com/
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