Have you thought about going back to tabs? Not all of us are musically inclined and have a harder time playing music. My son hears something he likes and can start playing some of it almost immediately on the guitar or piano and he can even pick out the melody on my banjo, which he doesn't play.

As for me, I use tab. If I really like a song I will play it off tab until I can do it smoothly and then I start memorizing it measure by measure. It is kind of like memorizing a speech. I doubt I'll ever be in a band, but I do enjoy it.

When I do try to develop my sense of music a bit I will get on the internet and find the chords and lyrics to a song that I like and play around with it. I've managed to work out some decent arrangements for a few songs like that. But even then I write it out in tab or I would never memorize it.

It sounds like you're doing great. Your progress seems to be on par. It's just slow, learning an instrument. Just be patient and keep doing what you're doing. It'll come.

At a certain point, you will start to "take off". You'll be able to learn a new song every week, which is great because then you can join the TOTW party. It's hard to say exactly when this will happen, but if you keep doing what you're doing it eventually will.

Tabs are helpful tools. I use them. But you want to progress, not regress. Going back will not move you forward. Writing your own tabs can be a great exercise and help with memorization. Copying someone else's homework will not help you learn.

One thing I highly reccomend is taking a video of yourself playing now. And then 3 months from now, watch it again. You will be absolutely amazed at how much progress you're actually making, you just don't realize it because you don't have any benchmarks.

I'm getting old, have two hand injuries, and arthritis, plus a bit of serious carpal tunnel from over 35 years of computer work.I assure you it will come in time with a good teacher...and listen to songs that YOU really want to learn. Having a passion for a song makes you really want to learn it. Kids pick stuff up super quick. I'm the guy that skipped out of music class because they didn't teach stringed instruments whatsoever, and I was a bit high strung. It'll come in time, but the teacher should be able to help and correct any early learning mistakes. Give yourself time. Have faith. Learn by ear. I used tab for picking patterns, then put it down after a while and worked on learning by ear. ...oh. and if your son can be your backup guitar to set a rhythm, let him. I play better with no stress and no people around, but even that is changing over time. ...time...

Ok good! This makes me feel better. I find that I don’t “like” a lot of bluegrass or Appalachian or other music. I love classical if I have to choose something and I recognize most of the classical stuff. I was really impressed by that song called “lost Gander” but it’s pretty up there in terms of skill.

I’m just glad this is all normal. No kids at home though. Wife and I are empty nesters but I bought a membership at strum machine at my teacher’s recommendation. It works pretty well for backup.

It sounds like you are stuck in the strictly right brain approach to playing music. That has it place, to know what the timing of a bum dit-ty is – (bum-pause-dit-ty) and how to actually play it, and where a hammer on or pull off fits in. My first song was Skip To My Lou. I recall when it was just a mechanical exercise, bum-ditting measure by measure, hour after hour just planting that right hand pattern into my brain. Changing chord fingerings without losing the beat was a challenge. I remember going through the motions after months of banging away and one day I realized I was actually playing the tune in a recognizable way instead of just a mechanical exercise. A neighbor walking by (I practiced outdoors sitting under a tree) said, "I wasn't sure if you were going to 'get it' but I hear you have." I suggest you take ONE song that you know the melody and words like the above Skip... or Mary Had a Little Lamb and play it into the ground until you can play it for real – no tabs, no video. Use a tab to start out if you need to until you don't need it. After my terribly slow start without even being able to watch someone play I can now play about 200 fiddle tunes and even more songs so it is possible. Fortunately I had more persistence than reasonable sense, I just really loved the sound of CH banjo which kept/keeps me going. Pete Seeger said it took him more than a year to get comfortable with CH. At present I am off to get about a dozen Christmas songs under my CH belt. Best Wishes to you! banjered

Heck John, I might be able to boost your morale/outlook, although I've got no advice re. switching songs.  About nine years ago I returned from a banjo camp with a tabbed melody [Scruggs style] for "Will The Circle Be Unbroken."  It only took me about three years to kinda, sorta learn it [pretty much daily practice, although practices weren't exclusively WTCBU].  I still do enough so that my level doesn't deteriorate, and I've started to try to add some filler notes [Chuckv97's "easy" tab] but it isn't going any faster. 

Learn a tune a week/month? .... one guy spoke of learning two new songs during one jam session.    For some of us that's a years-long [actually more likely decades-long]  endeavour ... 13 years in and I still haven't "taken off."  [Fwiw, I'm not complaining* or asking for direction to a particular teacher or program, just acknowledging C'est la vie.]

* - well not about my lot in life, but maybe just a wee bit about those that refuse to accept that the spectrum can be as w-i-d-e as it is.  

I haven't checked it out, but apparently a discussion re. "Lost Gander" is in the archives.  https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/296821

I am definitely musically stunted. My only exposure was a brief stint one summer preteen (Im 54) playing piano forced by my mom with lessons every two weeks. I have done absolutely absolutely nothing; no middle school band, no concerts, I don’t even listen to music in the car or running opting for books on tape or podcasts. When people ask “what kind of music do you listen to?” I typically say “not much”.

I just wanted to make sure I was moving at an appropriate pace. I have had advanced physical chemistry students who struggle a great deal with 3 dimensional thoughts in their heads which is a starting point for all of the work. If their goal is a degree in four years in this field and potentially graduate school then not being able to visualize molecular interactions is a severe liability.

I love to play my banjo but I place t music in my life sort of like learning a language when i have never heard any part of that language and there is no similarity between that language and anything I have done before. I am the person who deliberately goes to mass where there is no music or singing, I never had collections of tapes or CDs and the only iPod I ever owned was filled up with podcasts and lectures on physics and math. I don’t sing, know almost no popular musicians (I have heard of Taylor swift and Willie Nelson and other giants because who has not) and I can’t recognize many songs.

I did have cheap seats at the ft worth symphony with my wife for two seasons and we did see the pianists who olay at the cliburn competition and once got to see John Williams as a guest conductor and I’m very aware of his music from Indiana jones, Star Wars, ET and other giant movies.

But when I hear the songs on YouTube where people record themselves playing clawhammer it is quite incomprehensible when they play so fast and so many notes in such a short time. It’s absolutely incredible to me that it sounds so good as a song and it’s very different from how I play the plinking one note at a time trying to find each note and remember what comes next.

But if this is normal I’m good.

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Originally posted by Owen

I haven't checked it out, but apparently a discussion re. "Lost Gander" is in the archives.  https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/296821

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Tom Collins (I support his Patreon page and look forward to his tips) did a study and lesson and entire book on Lost Gander:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=svduOCs7O9I&pp=ygURbG9zdCBnYW5kZXIgYmFuam8%3D

it is way way way above my skill level but I love the way it sounds.

Oops, meant to say left brain approach above which your science background indicates. Music is a way to cultivate the right brain – creativity, intuition and so on. A lot of scientists are also drawn to music as away to have a whole brain working for them. No playing banjo with one-half my brain tied behind my back....Ha! Enjoy the process! banjered

As a teacher, if you came to me with the story, you’ve stated above I would say you should have a tenor banjo tuned in Irish tuning and get a book of classical themes in Melody only, maybe 500 pieces of music in one book and learn to read music playing the one note at a time

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Originally posted by mmuussiiccaall

As a teacher, if you came to me with the story, you’ve stated above I would say you should have a tenor banjo tuned in Irish tuning and get a book of classical themes in Melody only, maybe 500 pieces of music in one book and learn to read music playing the one note at a time

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Ha!   This is the most impulsive thing I've done besides maybe jumping into a really cold river once.   I knew  nothing about music, decided to learn an instrument and went to a fancy music store that had many stringed instruments and people who could show me them.  Lots on consignment and few that would be "beginner".    I didn't worry about cost at all.   I looked at guitars, electric bass instruments, Gibson guitars PrS guitars, Martin, Alvarez, and found on all of those that my fingers weren't strong enough to press down the strings.   When I tried the banjo they were.   They had a number with resonators and without, a Gibson long neck, deering, and the one I bought had no back but the wood was gorgeous.   And it sounded awesome.   And it was much lighter than the resonator backed ones.   So I bought it.  I like it a lot. I had no idea you needed picks to play the scruggs style so I decided to learn clawhammer.  Came here, tried brainjo, tried lots of online stuff then finallly found an awesome teacher who meets me weekly and she has lots of experience with all kinds of students and that's helped a lot.

i always assumed music would be some white haired Mozart looking dude sitting with a quill and writing one note at a time while hearing each note in his head.  I never knew there were themes and patterns and styles.  So I've learned a lot.

If you're playing for others to sing along, all you really need to know is when to xhange chords.

If your goal is to play the notes, I wish you luck AND persistence, since in over half a century, I have never figured out Clawhammer.
I love to LISTEN to it, same as I love riding low and slow in airplanes.
I just don't know how to do either.
Somebody else clawhammers, somebody else pilots, I'm glad to be around it.

Just for me, no singers and I love clawhammer. It’s fun.

One thing I'll add is it's hard, for me at least, to try and learn anything new, while trying to retain what I've learned, due to cold temperatures. This is my first winter with banjo and my fingers are freeeezing, making it hard to concentrate. Roll on warmer weather

Tongue-in-cheek, GS, you might want to try moving indoors. 

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Originally posted by Owen

Tongue-in-cheek, GS, you might want to try moving indoors. 

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I'll give that a go, Owen!!! Seriously, it's bl**dy freezing at the minute (north east coast of England)

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Originally posted by GS

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Originally posted by Owen

Tongue-in-cheek, GS, you might want to try moving indoors. 

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I'll give that a go, Owen!!! Seriously, it's bl**dy freezing at the minute (north east coast of England)

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It's finally cool enough to enjoy the front porch in Texas.

My teacher helped me a lot this week with my problem of being able to change songs.

She recorded on her Patreon all three of the songs we have been working on: “Polly/molly put the kettle on”, “goin down the river”, and “shady grove” each 3x in a row one after another at a slow pace. I am to practice by going through song 1 three times with no break trying to keep up or if I get off then to get back on track. Then song 2 after changing tuning 3 x then song 3 after changing tuning. The key is the practice without my usual perfectionism of 30 minutes of warmup and restarting every time I make a mistake.

This method of practice with trying to match her playing (which is slow for my slow playing) reallly helps.

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Originally posted by jsinjin

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Originally posted by GS

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Originally posted by Owen

Tongue-in-cheek, GS, you might want to try moving indoors. 

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I'll give that a go, Owen!!! Seriously, it's bl**dy freezing at the minute (north east coast of England)

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It's finally cool enough to enjoy the front porch in Texas.

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That sounds lovely! I'll pop round  Good luck with your learning.

It takes time, but as you learn more tunes they eventually get all jumbled up together. I play fiddle, banjo and guitar, I am no great musician, I play for fun and relaxation with my friends and family. Many times I need to hear the first three to four notes to remember a tune.
I have noticed most of the folks I play with have the same issue, they noodle out the beginning and eventually catch the tune and play it.

Keep two things in mind:
1 Frailing (clawhammer) looks easy
2. It's not.

.Supposedly it takes 1000 hours (or maybe it's 10,000) of repetition for one's "muscle memory:" to learn something so one can do it without thinking about it. You're trying to learn something totally new,with no previous experience at all, so it's going to take a while before it becomes automatic.

I dunno, and it's not offered as advice, but when I want to switch songs, I just stop one and start another. 

Since I'm only reasonably proficient at one roll, I can mix-and-match songs, or string 'em together ....... call it a medley and Bob's yer uncle.  

The teacher had a good suggestion! Another trick to try, in order to facilitate the right brain, is listening to your teacher's recording (or others) and humming along to the melody along with it. It doesn't have to be accurate singing, it's more the effort that trains your brain to think about music more like a conversation with linguistic elements than a speech to be memorized. It's not so hard to get the rhythm but it sounds like your ears are not used to music apart from as this challenging puzzle to be figured out. If after humming, you find it even slightly easier to play the CH tune you hummed, try humming a simple melody/rhythm you make up yourself and then trying to play some bum ditty even vaguely related to it. Again, accuracy is not the goal so much as effort, training your ears. I find this kind of thing helps me even though I can't sing at all and have nowhere near perfect pitch. Somehow, it gets me out of my head enough to focus on the melody and rhythm rather than exact mechanics.

It helps big time to have a familiarity with the song you want to learn. You can find most songs on youtube. Listen to a few different versions.

Next learn the chords and either do a straight strum like you might on a ukulele or do a straight bum ditty strum. Play the chords only and sing along, even if you're off key.

Work on memorizing the song and chord changes. When you have that down pat, start adding melody or playing an actual banjo arrangement.

Get someone to play rhythm guitar for you, maybe your teacher if there is no one else.

When practicing, work on one song for 3-5 minutes, then a different one. After 3 songs go back to the first.

Good Luck