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Not the inspiration, it is the perspiration. Put in work at whatever can to play wha tyou can, TAKE LESSONS IF YOU AT ALL AFFORD IT, with an experienced player in your area you can meet with, and learn what you can. Decide what things you are now doing that you will stop doing to have time and mental energy and finances to advance in the banjo,
Getting good requires work.
There were all sorts of mysteries about Robert Johnson, the brilliant delta blues singer and awesome guitar player. In the last 5 or 6 years blues scholars and people studying family history figured it out and documented, Johnson didnt meet the devil at a crossroads,
Instead he ended up going to another part of Mississippi. He met a man who was a very good musician with some good musical training who had several daughters one of whom Johnson fancied. Johnson figured out that to have any chance at one of the daughters, he had to listen to what the old man said, and the old man saw talent in Johnson, but wanted him to WORK to become a good musician.
The guy told Johnson he had talent, but needed to work to get better, and set him up to practice the guitar so many hours every day. Got him to listen to recordings of good musicians. Got him to learn a little bit about formal music theory. He made Johnson work at getting better at the guitar like it was his job.
I have been playing acoustic music since I first got a cheap guitar in 1962. The way to get good is to work at it and learn it. The way to get good is to find people who have already gotten good and ask them what they did, take lessons from them. The way to get good is to realize to get good at music is to NOT DO OTHER THINGS WITH YOUR TIME AND MONEY AND HEART AND BRAINS, and focus on music. That is just like everything else.
I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Creative writing, and took many classes on the writing of poems, short stories, novels and screen plays along with fellow students and teachers , and got to meet accomplished writers even one or two Nobel prize winners, and names many people would would know. I never heard anyone I admired as a writer talk about inspiration or creativity, but I did meet a lot of people who told me about organizing my life to work my tail off writing, I did meet a lot of people who wouldnt socialize or go to a party because they had to work on their craft.
Are you willing to put in the time, the money for lessons and superior instruments? Are you willing to miss out on other things that you could be doing instead of practicing and studying and playing music,
The most important thing is are you willing to be a bad player, then a mediocre player, and just an OK player while you work your way up to being a good player.
Do you want it that much?
Finally, the best thing is to start when you are a kid--pitching this to parents, grand parents, and teachers-- Kids are used to not being able to do something, figuring it out, getting along with doing something lousy for a while until they get it right.
Edited by - writerrad on 03/08/2025 07:45:19
“The most important thing is are you willing to be a bad player, then a mediocre player, and just an OK player while you work your way up to being a good player.”
True!
Like any hobby or interest where people invest decades or even whole lifetimes to, ITM has its share of them. And are they wrong? No. Its like the HO train modeler who freaks out if your logo for a given RR on a caboose is 1/2" scale out of placement or the Civil War reenactor who is furious because some of your uniform stitching is clearly machine made! Are they wrong? No. Hard to deal with yes, but if you approach such folks, honestly asking for help, advice on improvement and ideas, they can be a real well spring of information.
ANd advice above - wanna get good quick? Sorry, in music, as in much of life, there are no short cuts. Practice, guided or not, carefully structured to increase skills as they are acquired is maybe the only 'short cut'. ITM is a pretty tough thing to get really right, and you don't want to show up at a hardcore ITM session not knowing tunes dead cold. People who make that investment I mentioned are pretty passionate and the slap down you get might be not so polite. But pulling a good player aside during a break or after the session and asking for tips and maybe 'how do you do that *****' will show that you are respectful of the music, willing to learn to play it right and not just something that kinda sounds like, and maybe even make a playing buddy.
Me personally, I find that hard core structure a bit stifling, I like to interpret music too much to go to many ITM sessions to play. I listen, steal what I like and build from there. OT and bluegrass are much more forgiving in that regard, I find that attitude can be found there too sometimes.
And if you think ITM sessions are hard core, buddy, Scottish bagpipe ones are like next level. Stylistically Scottish bagpipe is incredibly difficult to get right, with many, many rules. Understandable about the precision needed - if all pipes are not playing exactly the same thing it sounds terrible! I have yet to play mine at any session anywhere - my basement is the only place - so far!
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