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richardrabkin |
What are the five most important things for a budding two finger banjo player to practice (do over and over again)?
Most people who start in a particular skill like learning to play a musical instrument improve their performance of the music they are playing for a limited time, but beyond this point the number of years playing is a poor predictor of improvement.
Continued improvement is not an automatic consequences of more experience "performing", that is playing particular pieces of music. Musicians who aspire to improve further seek out a particular type of experience that is called "deliberate practice" . These are exercises designed for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of the playing of an instrument, for making some action go into "muscle memory" and be able to do it without thinking about it. These exercises are usually done routinely even by very skillful players.
For example, three things that come up again and again is 1. the necessity of listening to experts play 2. not depending on tabs ("getting off the book") 3. working with chord shapes to figure out a piece of music from listening to it. These are not exactly practice on the instrument, but more ear practice. What are similar things with the instrument. itself?
The question assumes that, although, no individual knows exactly the answer, opinions of multiple people often yield an accurate analysis. So if enough people respond, the most popular answers might be interesting and surprising. Try not to look at what other people say.
(One famous example of this "wisdom of crowds" was the finding of a missing submarine in thousands of square miles of ocean by averaging the guess of multiple scientists although no one individual guess was close to where the submarine was found.)
Richard
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