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Originally posted by Nopix

I'm not here to argue, Ken.

I think you found a real issue 'upthread' where the OP was not known to listen to music (accept on occasion)

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I wasn't arguing. I was adding on. Expanding.

I totally agree practice is the differentiation between jammers and bands. I was listing some of the stuff bands practice. Should have expressed it better.

My 1980s bluegrass band would spend time composing intros and endings for some of our songs then practice them to get them to come out like we wanted and so we'd remember. We also arranged when instruments would come in. Nothing like you'd ever hear at a jam.

Our cover of Steve Goodman's "The Dutchman" is an example.

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Originally posted by EEB

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Developing the ability to play by ear makes repertoire redundant. We just listen and play. 

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Maybe for old time, where you can get some of the melody after multiple passes through. With bluegrass I think it helps to know how some of the songs and tunes go.

The more I observe, the more this seems like a mistake. Tonight I watched dozens of the instructors at Midwest banjo camp play music that was so fast and so incredible I could barely keep up. It was their concert. But I realized that learning to play banjo is kind of like trying to run a sub 10 second 100 meter dash except the best way to train for it is to watch and listen to other people run. It just doesn’t work for me for some reason. For most of the people here, the combination of the jams and the reverend of the musicians are the focus of their joy in playing banjo. I’m realizing I just don’t like music. I’m impressed by the art form and the way everyone moves their fingers so fast but I imagine it’s like watching chess when you’re not that interested in that activity. This has been a good bit of introspection and the camp has a lot of nice people. My teacher is great and I love to practice and learn music theory but I just don’t like the music that much independent of the artistry snd capability of everyone. I’m most impressed they spent 20-30-40 or 50 yesrs honing their art. It’s not the people or the art form. I wouldn’t like reading if it was passed from person to person orally via performance.

It’s like you’re trying to learn to cook but don’t like to eat …

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Originally posted by jsinjin

I think that right now it’s just not the best way for me to learn to play banjo. It’s such an incredibly high bar at this point I’m just not getting anything out of the jams. I keep trying to find an analogy but imagine you have never lifted any weights and the people around you are Olympic weightlifters doing advanced workouts and this is their only opportunity to do the workout and they need their focus. I’m at a point where guessing the tuning or getting to it can take me looking thjngs up and twisting the pegs forever and I normally play at very very slow paces in the 20-50 bpm. The songs I can listen to but they’re really incomprehensible to me with again, billions of notes, instruments coming jn and out, fiddles are incredibly loud, guitars move at high speeds and most to the banjo players just play so fast. It’s just not an enjoyable thing for me.

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I empathise completely with the frustrating experience you're having. No-one should talk down their own musical choices and preferences. There's no 'fault' with playing at a slower tempo at home. The fact you went to the session suggests you would like to play with others.

Your post highlights and reinforces how a generic, 'one size fits all' approach to music fails many people and worse, teaches that the attendee is the 'problem'. In attempting to fit yourself to that careless template  your confidence takes a dive and you doubt yourself - exactly the opposite of what you need to develop and progress.

Do you have a friend who plays music? Maybe the two of you can get together in your own time? That would naturally get you used to the sound of another instrument in 'your' musical space. Take one thing at a time rather like you learned to swim as a kid. No healthy nurturing parent throws their child into the deep end of the pool as an 'introduction' to the water. That would be a form of cruelty and abuse. The 'getting used to' is integrated over a period of time. As your confidence is nurtured, so you develop the relevant facility for comfort - and pleasure - in that new environment.

'Slow jams' are loosely, 'sort of' meant to do this 'getting used to' but too often they don't. Because the real basics of early exposure you would do in the shallow end with a parent have not been attended to.

Intimate, unhurried space.

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Originally posted by banjomobob

It’s like you’re trying to learn to cook but don’t like to eat …

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Both are adult, 'further down the line' concepts. Actually we all gained our gradual, incremental introduction to 'food' from our earliest days.

Gastronomic delight and cookery came much later and developed from that foundation of familiarity. Right there is the analogy with music.

No matter if we're 23, 43 or 73, in relation to music we need to start over as infants. 

John/original poster, do you play along to Strum Machine?

Or use learning materials such as the Books by Mary Gordon and Hillary Dirlam tha have the banjo tab and chords in the book. They also supply music to play along with. It used to be CDs now it's online. Do you play along with music at home? Have you tried to make your own jam if you can't find others with whom to play? Have you tried to find a guitar player and a fiddle player to play with?

When I was a school kid, I was Snowballed/Steamroller by a band. Basically invited to be embarrassed.
50 years looking back, those pecker-heads were just playing three chords. They may not have even understood what they had done? It probably set me back ten years. Now, ten years seems like a blink. I don't know if there's a moral in there? But at one time, I was you. It took twenty years plus the right folks around me, for it to click. I watched a deal last night on cognition. There really is a stream of sorts. Everyone is tied together. If it weren't, there'd be no songs nor music. How bout that?

 

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Originally posted by EEB

I empathise completely with the frustrating experience you're having. No-one should talk down their own musical choices and preferences. There's no 'fault' with playing at a slower tempo at home. The fact you went to the session suggests you would like to play with others.

Your post highlights and reinforces how a generic, 'one size fits all' approach to music fails many people and worse, teaches that the attendee is the 'problem'. In attempting to fit yourself to that careless template  your confidence takes a dive and you doubt yourself - exactly the opposite of what you need to develop and progress.

Do you have a friend who plays music? Maybe the two of you can get together in your own time? That would naturally get you used to the sound of another instrument in 'your' musical space. Take one thing at a time rather like you learned to swim as a kid. No healthy nurturing parent throws their child into the deep end of the pool as an 'introduction' to the water. That would be a form of cruelty and abuse. The 'getting used to' is integrated over a period of time. As your confidence is nurtured, so you develop the relevant facility for comfort - and pleasure - in that new environment.

'Slow jams' are loosely, 'sort of' meant to do this 'getting used to' but too often they don't. Because the real basics of early exposure you would do in the shallow end with a parent have not been attended to.

Intimate, unhurried space.

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As a guy who is very much low man on the totem pole w.r.t banjo, all ^^ sounds good to me, 'cept I wonder (?) about "...suggests you would like to play with others..." as, IIRC,  John has told us on many occasions that that is in no way an objective of his.

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Originally posted by jsinjin

I realized that learning to play banjo is kind of like trying to run a sub 10 second 100 meter dash except the best way to train for it is to watch and listen to other people run. It just doesn’t work for me for some reason.  . . . I love to practice and learn music theory but I just don’t like the music that much

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Did you learn your native language by studying grammar and learning to read before you started speaking? Or did you learn language by imitating the sounds of people talking to you -- including vocabulary, grammar, syntax, usage, and idiom -- so that by the time you were three or four years old you were essentially fluent in your native language? I'll guess you had been speaking, reading and writing for years in elementary school before your language curriculum included the first actual grammar lessons.

Likewise with music. And especially an instrument like 5-string banjo -- both clawhammer/old time and three-finger/bluegrass styles -- in which how it's played is as important as what is played.

Learning by watching, listening and repeating makes the most sense for these modes of playing. That's because banjo is not playing literal melody or only melody. It's accompanying itself with chord tones or other harmonizing tones wrapped around the melody or passing notes in between the melody, and the occasional hit of the open fifth string whether it's in the chord or not. In clawhammer, it matters what part of the stroke is making what sound.

These styles of banjo music do not easily lend themselves to written standard notation, for several reasons but in my opinion mostly because: there's more happening than the melody, the melody in most cases isn't as complete or literal as it would be on an instrument such as fiddle or anything played with a flat pick, and position on the fretboard matters (which of several options for the same note you're actually supposed to play). That's why the most common form of written banjo music is tablature: it represents how and where to play the notes, not just the notes and when to play them.

I appreciate your personal preference for understanding theory, which is good in the long run. But I believe it is absolutely unnecessary to know theory in order to play songs in clawhammer or three-finger. The earliest theory you might need can be presented just as useful information: Keys and chords and the note names of the strings. Not a whole lot more.

Later on -- and for some players, "later" is years -- is time enough for theory to get into the why or be more fully explained. Even then, only as far as it helps the player. I've often said that people who have been playing for years, who can play by ear or do OK at jams, but think they don't know theory, actually know more theory than they realize. Again, this is the same as language. We all know our language's grammar long before we're taught the names for the parts of speech or get formal instruction in rules we've been following for years.

Where am I going with all of this?

One place is something you've said several times these past two years, which is you bought your banjo with no particular idea of what type of music you wanted to play on it, or what type of music (and method of playing) is typically played on a 5-string banjo. You've admitted you probably bought the wrong instrument. I agree 100%.

You've told us several times that you assumed music is written out and musicians simply play it as written and the instrument doesn't matter so much.  I don't think you've ever conveyed the understanding or realization that standard notation music doesn't apply to clawhammer banjo, and why that isn't so. 

A version of banjo more in line with your assumptions about music would have been a 4-string banjo -- either tenor or plectrum -- on which you could have taught yourself the locations of the notes, taught yourself to read music, then played literal, linear, melodies (one note after another) with a flat pick. You could also have self-learned to fret and strum chords. Baritone ukulele, tuned like the four highest strings of guitar, might have been even better. Then you would have had a world of printed music in every genre in all the songbooks (or "fake books") with guitar chords and melody lines.

There's still time.

So here is how a weekend went at a big banjo conference camp. I can play the basic bum ditty. Quite well also hammer on drop thumb pull of alternate string pull off and every chord on G D C A and even some weird turnings. I can be told any tuning and jump tout. So a beginner class of bum ditty training is no help. But every other. Class I sit and the I structo says hammer on ditty bum ditty and I’m left guessing what string and trying and I’m cursing for every single lot wife every bar for every measure. It’s a total guess. Same thing with the jams. I go and I can listen to it’s fine. People at the beginner jams will even yell out the chords which I know but I bit I’m just guessing whether it’s right then or in a moment or where and I just play the chord or some other fretted note within the chord. I truly guess what chord is being played for every song all the time. I can memorize any song you give me. Not from tab flour from analyzing it note for note in YouTube and wringin.
That does me no good when a fiddle plays. I can barely even recognize a tune. A lot of the classssnstart with someone playing the fissile tune saying “isn’t that an incredible version by Tommy Jarrell and it literally sounds nothing like the plunky song I’ve learned. I sit on the outside of every jam beginner mostly and just sort of guess what might some next. And pretend to strum. I don’t want o actually strum because my guesses are probably wrong. And yes I completely know 1-4-5. In every tuning. Have them memorized up and down the nec and can find them in seconds but guessing which one comes next makes no sense. One one five fine one one five gets sung and that’s fine but the next part is different and I’m guessing again. There are people who say fine the melody but I’m guess f which notes are the melody. And if I listen to a song 25 times I’m guessing the melody 25 times. It doesn’t make any sense to me how these tunes are put together and I get it, it’s music but I have no formulae or road map and it all just aonnd like notes.

I’m going to log off this forum for a while and rethink what I’m doing. It’s not he music or the banjo or the time or the practice, it’s me and a mental block of some sort. This frustration isn’t healthy for me and as Ken says there is still time and other creative things I can do like sketching or painting. I’m sure a lot of people pic this up easily but I am not and to be honest as everyone keeps pointing out. The music isn’t “energizing” or fun for me to listen to. I keep thinking. “I can’t wait until this song is over so I can go back to something productive for me like my lectures or articles.it is deudhery to listen to. That’s probably the biggest reason to shift thinking, the music style just isn’t fun any more than opera is fun.

Hi Ken (Old Hickory),

Thank you for articulating the purpose of a banjo; your description is detailed and gives the big picture from between the lines that is rarely (never) acknowledged.  This topic should be 'boilerplate' and the first thing printed in the instructional books or taught by "professional instructors".

Best, Kam

that was a mess.  Was typing while walking.  
 

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Originally posted by jsinjin

So here is how a weekend went at a big banjo conference camp. I can play the basic bum ditty before I attended.  After two years of lessons I'm good at that . Quite well also hammer-on drop thumb, pull off, alternate string pull off, and play every chord on G D C A and even some weird turnings. I can be told any tuning and jump to any chord immediately. So a beginner class of bum ditty training is no help. But every other Class I sit and the instructor says hammer on ditty bum ditty and if im not directly watching, I’m left guessing what string and trying to hit it while everyone else seems to know just by feel.  and I’m guessing for every single note of every bar for every measure. It’s a total guess. Same thing with the jams. I go and I can listen and the listening is fine. People at the beginner jams will even yell out the chords which I know but I but then  I’m just guessing whether it’s right then or in a moment or where and I just play the chord or some other fretted note within the chord. I truly guess what chord is being played for every song all the time. I can memorize any song you give me. Not from tab but from analyzing it note for note in YouTube and writing out my own version of sheet music and then memorizing it.  I have taken the advice and never use tab. I didn't even pick up any tab handouts at the classes I took this weekend.
All of that work does me no good when a fiddle plays, and heaven help with the mandolins playing so many notes I'm not even sure the timing signature has a term for the 64th notes they play.   I can barely even recognize a tune. A lot of the classes start with a song that is being taught and someone plays the fissile tune saying “isn’t that an incredible version by Tommy Jarrell" and it literally sounds nothing like the plunky song I’ve learned. I sit on the outside of every jam (beginner mostly) and just sort of guess what might some next. And pretend to strum. I don’t want to actually physically strum because my guesses are probably wrong. And yes I completely know 1-4-5. In every tuning. Have them memorized up and down the neck and can find them in seconds but guessing which one comes next makes no sense. One-one-five-five-one-one-five gets sung and that’s fine but the next part is different and I’m guessing again.   I took a class by Lucas Pool and he and the group were hearing the melody and humming and all I could think was (how thebhell did they do that so fast). There are people who say find the melody but I’m guessing which notes are the melody. And if I listen to a song 25 times I’m guessing the melody 25 times. It doesn’t make any sense to me how these tunes are put together and I get it, it’s music but I have no formulae or road map and it all just sounds like a bunch of notes and always does.   Believe me I want to do what yall are saying and just hear the melody but what I hear is loud fiddle and loud mandolin and many many notes and all my practice just falls flat because the songs sound nothing like what I've practiced 10,000 times.

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H@ll, very few people can hear an Oldtime fiddle tunes' melody. Let alone the chord changes. Sometimes there's only one monotonous drone.
I don't play Oldtime fiddle tunes much, and I play fiddle by trade. Don't even get me going on Tommy Jerol. Adios.
I'll be over here playing,
Country
Bluegrass
Jazz
Rock
Blues
Western
Fusion
Americana

Tongue-in-cheek, IF you like painting, you could use the banjo as a canvas (?).  Last evening we were at an art exhibition put on by our yocal arts group/council.  One artist's submissions were paintings on the shafts of scythes.   I know one non-artiste who thought they looked pretty good.  

Edit: Although my singing (?) is apparently passable, I can't/don't/??  make a significant [banjo] contribution to the monthly jams we go to in the next town up/down the road.   It's $5 to get in, though I'm not sure if it's a fundraiser of sorts or they just don't want to lose money.  The lunch is easily worth $5, but the real kicker is that  "musicians" get to the food table before the spectators.   Works for me!!  

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Originally posted by EEB

The OP highlights a sadly ongoing issue which is the lack of practical help and nurturing to bridge the gap between playing alone and playing with others. Of course it is possible to make this transition alone. There are strategies and aspects that can be practiced that will help. But most, to a greater or lesser extent, flounder unnecessarily. Typically these attempts get partial and intermittent 'windows' of joining a tune. A frustrating hit-and-miss experience of sessions.

But this transition - to full on-the-fly fluidity and independence - is so much more smoothly and efficiently achieved with nurturing and mentoring. I can say that with confidence because we do it. The simple reason being that the necessary skills required are acquired progressively in situ. They can be taught, but not in the transactional way that technique is taught. The acquisition process is different.

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Old Hickory (Ken Norkin) and you have just about completed "The Banjo Study Guide" book, providing the missing chapters between the Ch1introduction-Ch2banjoparts and Ch3rightlefthand-Ch4tablature, of every banjo book written...

If I could have read and understood this thread, with a tiny amount of useful in-person verification, twenty years ago; I could have shaved at least ten years off of the most painful parts of my total curve.  

Please write a book.

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Originally posted by Nopix

H@ll, very few people can hear an Oldtime fiddle tunes' melody. Let alone the chord changes. Sometimes there's only one monotonous drone.
I don't play Oldtime fiddle tunes much, and I play fiddle by trade. Don't even get me going on Tommy Jerol. Adios.

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An example of a traditional philosophical approach to playing a banjo:

The banjo plays the 'fool' to the fiddle's 'straight man'; it's our unspoken job to affirm and prance around/thru the fiddle (lead) while making the rhythm. 

Playing/hearing the exact melody and chords are sorta-negotiable as long as we support whatever the fiddle (lead) is doing...

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Originally posted by jsinjin

. . . as Ken says there is still time and other creative things I can do like sketching or painting.

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I meant there is still time to learn an instrument the playing of which conforms to your assumptions about music: It can be played off of sheet music in which one note follows another in a linear melody. So knowing the names and locations of the notes is definitely required (if you play from music instead of tab). Yes, there's a bit more to it than that in adding expressiveness, dynamics and other musical elements. But if picking out a melody would satisfy your musical desires and interests, 4-string banjo or baritone uke would be an easy way to go. Baritone uke would also be easy on the fingers.

For what it's worth, 5-string banjo in either clawhammer or three-finger is not the best of instruments to begin on if one has to learn both the instrument and music at the same time. That's because of the nature of the instrument as I described at length above.

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Originally posted by jsinjin

So here is how a weekend went at a big banjo conference camp. 

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By the way: Good for you going to Midwest Banjo Camp!

I was signed up to go in 2021, then of course it didn't happen.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=oMFR7kEj...1&pp=oAcB

Here is an example by my teacher and I can ask her for a tutorial on this tune and probably get her to at least teach me a basic version.

If I showed up at a jam and heard this at this speed for the first time, how would I pick out the melody and join in with no knowledge of the tune, beat, or rhythm? This is exactly how I feel at most jams. Kablam song with rapid fire jumps up and down the neck, complex interchanges with fiddle and mandolin and everyone nodding and smiling as they roll through the song while I try and guess the I IV V. And I’m not expecting to be able to play like this. It’s just that this is exactly what every jam I’ve attended feels like and I’m not sure what I’m learning by just sitting and trying to guess what comes next.

quote:

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Originally posted by jsinjin

All of that work does me no good when a fiddle plays, and heaven help with the mandolins playing so many notes I'm not even sure the timing signature has a term for the 64th notes they play.   I can barely even recognize a tune. A lot of the classes start with a song that is being taught and someone plays the fissile tune saying “isn’t that an incredible version by Tommy Jarrell" and it literally sounds nothing like the plunky song I’ve learned.

I sit on the outside of every jam (beginner mostly) and just sort of guess what might some next. And pretend to strum. I don’t want to actually physically strum because my guesses are probably wrong.  This is a trap for adults that children are allowed and less concerned with when learning new things.  Doing is critical; mute it and cluck/stroke away like a human-banjo metronome.

And yes I completely know 1-4-5. In every tuning. Have them memorized up and down the neck and can find them in seconds 

but guessing which one comes next makes no sense. One-one-five-five-one-one-five gets sung and that’s fine but the next part is different and I’m guessing again.  Simplify the activity using just the first five frets, don't commit strongly any one chord, play softly and bounce between I and IV or V, etc. 

If the tune sounds high pitched, use mostly the first two strings;

if it sounds low or you want to follow the bass, use mostly the fourth string. 

Put your ear down to the head and Listen for resonance or sweetness (these are good) with the other instruments while you rotate chords.  It is very important to keep with the beat and emphasis of the group.  If played softly, the group will mostly mask whatever you are doing and off-notes are much less noticable than out-of-sync.  

I took a class by Lucas Pool and he and the group were hearing the melody and humming and all I could think was (how thebhell did they do that so fast).  There are people who say find the melody but I’m guessing which notes are the melody. And if I listen to a song 25 times I’m guessing the melody 25 times.  It doesn’t make any sense to me how these tunes are put together and I get it, it’s music but I have no formulae or road map and it all just sounds like a bunch of notes and always does.   It's a class for you, there is no pass/fail, the groups relative abilities are not pertanent.  (watch out for the adult-traps)

Believe me I want to do what yall are saying and just hear the melody but what I hear is loud fiddle and loud mandolin and many many notes  This is sorta-common and sometimes it's what they are doing or is the stage that they are at.  It's not necessarily you.

and all my practice just falls flat because the songs sound nothing like what I've practiced 10,000 times.  This is normal due to tune variants and the drift that happens when people forget the lyrics.  Change what is being practiced to match with the group, shift the group by (re)introducing the vocals/lyrics (good luck with that) or accept it and wait for it to work itself out.

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Re. 1,4,5 .... I expect it's been mentioned before, but it sounds reasonable to me that learning 2-chord songs before 3-chord songs should facilitate the process [depending on what the ultimate goal is, I suppose].    In any event it should make "guessing" more accurate.

Playing music is supposed to be fun.

True Laurence.  However, IIRC, playing hockey was fun* ... stops-and-starts, not so much.  

* the season we lost every game [most by a w-i-d-e margin] notwithstanding.