My teacher, way back when, taught me CH & 3-F at the same time. I had a hard time trying to get used to that weird CH motion with your "picking hand." Wow, it didn't feel like anything designed for humans.
When finally it stopped feeling weird, wow, so much easier to find & render a melody than in the 3F way. Later on I started feeling comfy doing it either way and could even go back & forth while playing a tune. Doing that, of course, is way easier once you turf the body armour, aka finger picks.
Seems like a "while ago" nowadays and my fingers prefer easier activities like play-do with my granddaughter etc.
How did banjoing evolve for you guys?
Edited by - Bart Veerman on 11/24/2024 07:45:38
Clawhammer was difficult for me at first and as a guitar player had no issues with Scruggs style playing those rolls .
Even taught myself to play two finger , thumb and index lead also fairly easy being a finger style guitarist .
The biggest hurdle for new Clawhammer students is sometimes getting the drop thumb down so it is just second nature .
Evolve???
12ish years 3-finger ... pretty much a
... although I did make noticeable, although v--e--r--y s--l--o---w progress when I had an in-person teacher.
Lately I practiced the basic (?) CH stroke for a couple of months but that went nowhere fast, so, after some BHOers advised that 2fTl is the simplest/most intuitive, I decided to see if I can learn a passable 2fTl.
But I still do enuff 3241ing so that ^^ wall doesn't get too far away.
I hope my evolution is still evolving. 
I learned both styles pretty much at the same time. Although I could do okay with bluegrass, clawhammer seemed to come naturally. When I figured out I couldn’t sing,, and was not remotely close to playing finger-style of any kind well enough that I didn’t have to, I gravitated to clawhammer. I still can play 3-finger, but generally, for me, there’s no reason to.
So where did I eventually arrive? Although I know I've posted this before, I do so now for anyone interested in the two styles juxtaposed; the first and third breaks are clawhammer; the second is 3-finger. It's the only such example I have. Probably too rusty to replicate it now
https://www.banjohangout.org/myhangout/media-player/audio_player2.asp?musicid=18105&archived=
Edited by - Bill Rogers on 12/01/2024 21:34:13
My journey has been a mess!
Started off with three finger scruggs style, this was before I knew anything about music in general. I got the grasp of it and could learn songs from tablature quickly, but I didn't know any other bluegrass pickers at the time and didn't necessarily love bluegrass music either, I mostly just wanted to "play the banjo", being ignorant to understand what context the banjo was a natural fit for. After a while I got a bit tired of the bright, loud and repetitive sound I was making.
Found clawhammer and jumped into that. Again picked it up fairly easy and eventually found some musicians I could play with. But the constant re-tuning of my banjo made me feel like I was making very slow progress of actually learning the fingerboard. And some non old-time tunes just seemed unnecessarily complicated to get to work right with the clawhammer motion, so I felt a bit boxed in. Other musicians I met could noodle around in lots of different genres of music which I would have loved to do, but I didn't understand how to go about learning that. So back to Scruggs style I went, because the path seemed more open.
This time I think I bit off too much for me to chew, trying to learn melodic, single string and every other alternative style of playing, before I really mastered any of it. I did learn the fingerboard in open G pretty good though, but still didn't enjoy much of what I was playing when playing by myself.
Got a tenor banjo and took tenor lessons for a while. This taught me a lot about theory and music in general. Developed my notation reading skills too. Got to where I could create my own chord melody arrangements which was very exciting for me. Actually felt like I was getting somewhere as a musician. But the very piercing sound of the fifths tuning, especially the very tight first string, made my ears very fatigued. Thought about moving to plectrum banjo, but never did.
Went back to both Scruggs and clawhammer for a while, but mostly gravitated towards other instruments for my own enjoyment. Played a lot of guitar, ukulele, dobro, steel guitar and a little electric bass.
Somewhat recently, I've fallen deeply in love with "classic" style playing. Three fingers, no picks, nylon strings. Mostly in standard C tuning but sometimes with a raised fourth string, making it standard open g. I love the freedom of playing without a capo and almost no retuning (very similar tunings anyway). It can also sound very nice just played by myself without other instruments to soften or fill out the sound. There's a lot of very pretty music to be found, but the style is also easy to adapt to anything else I want to play. Hopefully I'll stick with it this time, but who knows!
Sometimes I think of how good I might have been now, if I would have stuck to one style of playing, but I guess I'm just not wired that way. I do enjoy the whole research process and problem solving of learning something new though. So, now I'm okay at several different banjo styles, but not particularly good at any. I've enjoyed it all though.
I do agree with the general sentiment here that clawhammer is much easier. It starts off a little more difficult and is less intuitive at first but after couple months I was already playing songs with drop thumbing while my 3F is progressing at a much slower rate. Improvising is a lot easier with CH too because there's less patterns than there are 3F picking patterns. And thats not even getting into the blistering speeds often required in bluegrass.
I started with 3 finger Scruggs style didn't get far before I realised it was old time I wanted to play. Went to 2ftl and it felt intuitive, but so did ch. I stuck with 2F, learning both TL & IL but always ch a bit. I can play certain tunes ch, but stick mostly to 2f, I just like it. Although now, 8 years in, I am thinking about adding the pinky back in the mix, but jot sure if I could.
I've always found it most comfortable to fingerpick a banjo - but like a guitar rather than bluegrass style. I played CH for several years, then quit because I couldn't get it going the way I wanted to, but now I've started up again.
I'm more interested in backing songs than playing fiddle tunes, I guess I should mention. (Thanks to Michael Miles and Cathy Fink for lessons on this approach.)
I like the sound of 2-finger, too - maybe that's next?
D.H.
