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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Playing music is supposed to be fun.

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Learning new skills as an adult>25, especially social skills, carries a disproportionate cost.

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Originally posted by pinenut

quote:

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Playing music is supposed to be fun.

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Learning new skills as an adult>25, especially social skills, carries a disproportionate cost.

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That's a little pedantic. My point was, don't knock yourself out doing something you don't enjoy. 

quote:

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

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Originally posted by pinenut

quote:

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Playing music is supposed to be fun.

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Learning new skills as an adult>25, especially social skills, carries a disproportionate cost.

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That's a little pedantic. Ease up brother.

My point was, don't knock yourself out doing something you don't enjoy. 

The Charlie Brown method is often the only option; kick that football.  Ganbaru.

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Banjo playing IS fun. It’s the most relaxing thing I can do in the evenings besides rowing. But it is truly a frustrating experience for a newcomer. And that’s different from almost anything I have done. The frustration comes from the outcomes seeming to be a “just feel it and you will know it” sort of pedagogy. Listen more and try to play and somehow it will eventually click. The frustration stems from the fact that the vertical jump to go from just holding the instrument to joining in jams is immediate and there really isn’t an on ramp other than just keep trying wrong notes and listening more. At least that seems to be the path most people share on this forum. With 95 notes over 23 frets and assuming a 4 measure with only quarter notes the odds of guessing every note wit a guess every time are a staggering 10 to the power of minus 32 and that’s how I feel each note of a song I hear. I suppose you can take out some of the really high plinking ones but the rest of it is me guessing. I don’t understand how people just feel the right notes in a jam song they have never heard before. I don’t mean to be obtuse about this. This is literally what I’m thinking and I eventually give up and just move my hands around randomly to look like I’m playing

1. Get a list of regular tunes played at the jam you are attending, everyone wants you to have fun. You can use tab at jams if it helps.
2. Learn the tunes on your banjo
3. You will have more fun
I play banjo and Irish and Scottish fiddle, session etiquette and jam etiquette are the same, attend, listen, listen and the names of tunes played, then learn them and go play.

Rather than making it "look like" you're playing, why not just sit / listen / enjoy?

While I think there's lots of room for improvement in the conventional methods of teaching jamming I think contributors to threads like this are offering somewhat more than "...just keep trying and listening more."  Now, to be sure almost all of what's prescribed is light years beyond me*  but I see it as more-or-less c'est la vie*.  Having said that, I nonetheless find it mildly annoying that I keep hearing "we all learn differently" and then get  v-e-r-y  conventional advice.   

So long as you're having fun, keep on keepin' on.

* fwiw, I don't "feel" the right notes, or most chord changes; in fact as often as not I don't hear them either...... but there's been improvement, even though I see it as a decade long process instead of years/months/weeks. 

I'd offer a list of simple country songs with words to cue one to the changes, but it seems like y'all are determined to play jangly, syncopated, stuff like Brown's Dream and Spider Bit the Car-door. Why not start simpler?
I just watched Doc Bogs try to figure out and play along with Tommy playing Brown's Dream. No wonder the confusion, if Tommy doesn't really know where he's going.

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Originally posted by jsinjin

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.

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Given that you have an experienced OT teacher I think you should direct your concerns and questions to her. She will know you as a student player and is best placed to help you.

I'm guessing these are online lessons. That eliminates the possibility of even baby-steps real-space duet playing. That's the drawback of online that I mentioned previously. 

Learning to play clawhammer proficiently is not one and the same as being nurtured to play in sessions proficiently.

The OP’s fledgling use of the word ‘Kablam’ on meeting session playing, is probably the most succinct description of that fact you’ll ever hear.

Start slowly with a guitar player to tell you the keys and chords.
You need to build a foundation that you can try out at jams.
One step at a time until you've built a basic finger/brain/strings connection that you can then strengthen/expand upon at jams.
Also not all jams are the same.A jam is whoever shows up on a given night.Lots of answers and lots of questions.

Find a "slow jam"to attend.
Our Bluegrass Music Association of Maine offers separate slow jams at their regular jams.

Maybe this has been said already, but one option is that there are some slow jams on Youtube. You could play along with those and be in the comfort of your own home while learning the tunes/chords and not be so worried about what others would think. It would help you to get some new tunes under your fingers with less pressure. I myself need to do this as well. If you go to Berkeley Old Time Music Convention on Youtube there is the Slow Jam Fizz Sessions. Adam Hurt and Beth Hartness have jams on Youtube and so does Rachel Eddy. There is also a slow jam based out of the UK that is on Youtube if you search for "Su & Jules Old Time Slow Jam" on that one make sure you go under the "live" tab to find all of them.

I will admit and this is obviously part of the problem, I haven’t done much looking for old time slow jams in dfw with inexperienced people and maybe it’s time to start one myself. What I have attended have wound up being 1) jazz with experience musicians, 2) Gypsy jazz and Western swing with professional musicians 3) traditional bluegrass with experienced musicians and a sort of “if you get the vibe and can handle it you’re welcome but don’t ask any questions” and then a jam where everyone was an electric guitar or electric bass player doing old ZZ Top and Stevie ray vaughan songs at high decibels. I didn’t expect to play at the last one.

I was once invited to play basketball at the local rec with a group who meet at 5 am. I figured, “I played indoor and sand volleyball through high school and college and stayed in shape and I can shoot hoops and I’m over 6 feet tall so why not”. The term the guy who invited me to describe the play was “we are not that good”. Not that good meant, “we are all from Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois and not good means we couldn’t make division 1 college basketball”. It was full court press, high speed, constant picks and play after play with block outs and crashes on defense for every shot and serious ball handling skills with crossovers and behind the back passes as standards.

And I would say to a basketball enthusiast that level of play is “mediocre”.

But that level of play takes 10 years or more on teams to develop the capability of knowing what is going on. It’s not church league, it’s physical and if you don’t block out a person who has an open 3 point shot then they will drain it. An inexperience player is not only gong to not have fun, they are a hindrance on a team who want to get together their one morning a week and play seamless basketball. There is also very very little someone at my level of basketball can get by watching to reach that level of team playing and I’m able to jump and grab the rim and big enough and physical enough to hustle and play. But I doubt that I could ever really play with these guys.

But enough anecdotes:

What I always hear is “play with better people”. But I don’t hear what the better people think of someone who can’t recognize a melody or change key and tuning without looking up both the strings and having a tuner and going the wrong way over and over trying to get to a different tuning. I also feel like there is a trajectory in banjo of “beginner with very little experience” and “expert” then “stratospheric”. Unlike other activities where there is a gradual learning curve. One can shoot baskets and obviously if your arms are not strong enough to get the ball to the rim you have difficulty but once that hurdle is over you are playing. And a group of any people with basic dribbling and shooting skills can play.

I guess perhaps the key might be to just organize beginner no clue what’s going on, pick one song and play it with strum machine at 40-45 bpm. I found that when I stated playing, the guys in my 5 am workout group were more than willing to dust off old guitars from closets and try to play with me on the porch over coffee.

I think it’s really the whole beginner thing. In the basketball example, years on other courts told me where the skill level was and what I lacked and there would have to be a serious level of dedication to get there. If I took up golf all of a sudden (closest I have ever been is putt putt) and tried to play with a foursome at a local country club where they played the same 18 holes over an over as a group and I’m unsure what club to even use, the gap would be too great.

I don’t disagree that finding the melody is imprtant. Listening is ikportant. But if you dont have those skills and can’t even recognize the chord changes I just don’t believe the jams are helpful. They’re really just an outer circle of plastic chairs frustration.

Don't be discouraged if you can't hear chord changes. It took me a lot of time to hear and understand chord changes, why they happened and in what order. If I hadn't gone to jams, I don't think I'd ever have trained my ear to hear the changes and know what they are. Jamming is what it took for me to learn. I sat there, watched the rhythm guitar picker's fingers change chords and eventually I could hear a difference when chords changed, although I wasn't sure what chord was being played or changed to. Slowly, I began to hear and understand the changes. It took me a long time, wasn't just a few weeks or months, but I learned, trained my ear to hear what it needed to hear.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: if you don't work hard and listen carefully and put in the time equity it takes, then you'll never understand and/or learn.

One factor that people don't like to talk about is that there's a broad range of musical talent that people are equipped with.

One one end of the spectrum are people who can't tap along with a beat. On the other end are people for whom discrete pitches are identifiable like colors.

If you've been playing a while and are still struggling to pick out a melody or hear chord changes, you may have less innate ability than some of your jam peers. This doesn't mean that you have to stop playing or aren't welcome at jams, it just might mean that a) it isn't as fun for you, b) it takes longer to get to where you can participate, or c) you might not reach the level you would like to.

I don't say any of this to discourage you. I believe our limitations shape the trajectory of our lives as much as our abilities do. Keep going in whatever direction inspires you, and don't be afraid to leave something behind that isn't fulfilling. Keep it up!

I’m learning it’s more experience and exposure. I just didn’t listen to music. My family often took me and my sisters to classical concerts in Houston and I would say that is the only music I listened to but it was exposure only at concerts of the Houston symphony and the family was into the heavy stuff. And then going to college I just didn’t care and then started a career and here I am. My kids (all college age) listen to a ton of pop, rock, rap and country and most of it sounds like jarring noise but I have had some exposure to it.

As I have heard more and more old time and bluegrass and then tried listening to some other types of music I would say the my favorite so far has been blues and slide and delta blues which doesn’t seem banjo-ish although a few YouTubers play it.

In college and grad school I couldn’t study to music and I can’t code to it, I tend to make things completely silent and I am realizing that there isn’t a way to get better at music without lots of listening. One thing that Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize winner and father of the Pauli Exclusion Principle and the discoverer of spin in electrons as a quantum number, said is that”it is unwise to seek prominence in a field whose routine chores you do not enjoy.” Which I admit makes total sense in some way. I know that old time music is beautiful, historic, elegant, complex and simple at the same time and challenging and I realize anytime I listen to it that I just don’t enjoy it.

My mistake was assuming that music was just notes, interpretation into fingers and the instrument plays those notes. I also assumed there was a natural and defined pedagogy like learning math or history in which you build careful layers one after another of concepts that reinforce each other in a rigor. Most of music appears to be dive in, listen and try and keep doing that as much as possible soaking up everything. I spent 12 years in a fairly rigorous environment of teachers, books, writing and practicing to understand chemistry and applied math and not until the very end at the last couple of years was I allowed to try things on my own without rigorous checks and reviews. That’s sort of how I expected music to be with years spent in scales and transitions and music theory and notes and understanding chord changes before ever getting to a song and I’ve learned it’s not. That’s totally ok, I just sort of imagined it being another rigorous academic discipline.

I think if I loved it, I would pick up the music and hear chord changes and hear songs but I’ll be honest that the moment a song starts all I can think of is “how long before this song is over so I can do something important” and that’s a gap, it’s a routine chore I don’t enjoy doing.

That's an interesting insight. With your ability to code and the way a methodical, pedagogical process appeals to you, I bet your brain works differently than a lot of folk musicians. There are probably a lot of things that come easily to you that many here would struggle with.

As far as music goes, classical/concert band music is way more of a rigorous, academic process - everything you need to know is given to you on a page. Folk music is somewhat defined by its lack of instruction.

Based on what you describe, you might prefer a different hobby altogether. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so devoted to music so I could have time to learn to work on cars or start group cycling again.

I don’t think it’s that different. I just liked those areas of study early on. I’ve always been jealous and mystified at people who just pick up instruments and play. I was given a hiking stick as a scout leader that’s a piece of bamboo about 5 feet long with a compass on top. But someone carved the side with the holes for a flute. I tried to learn a bit but didn’t get far. While hiking, a kid in the troop noticed it and just began playing it. Not that he had been a flautist, I think his high school band was trumpet or somehtjnf like that but once he had one or two of the holes figured as notes he knew it all and could play. No sheet music, no practice and I asked and he had not played flute although he was some sort of brass instrument. And I’ve seen guitar people pick up my banjo and with just learning what strings are tuned to immediately know every chord shape up and down the neck snd can play most 1-4-5 songs on the thjng. That familiarity is mystifying to me because I literally check each and every note with the tuner and have to memorize the half step whole step and go through it with mnemonics to figure out where I am and forget about finding chords without some map. I still haven’t figured out the pattern even after a couple of years. It simply doesn’t come easy to me

I've been following your story a while, and keep coming back to the opening scene of Bruce Lee's movie, Return of the Dragon, where he's working with a student.  The line is, "Don't think, feel."  "Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all the heavenly glory."  Here's a clip; the line is near the end of the segment.  I don't know if it's helpful, but sure seems apropos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm0uSVvjsOA&t=87s

Mickey  

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Originally posted by Nopix

OP,
You do understand that if you knew the songs/tunes ahead of time, then got to practice those tunes. . . . . .this is called a Band.

Lots of folks in bands can be lost in jams, because of the unpredictable part. I myself, am atracked to this. That's why it's so exillerating. Skiing down a black diamond run is dang scary. Some go around. Hey, that's fine. Enjoy. And just a reminder: Nobody gets hurt by someone playing a bad note. It's just music.

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I'm an old hand at the jam. I jam with friends and acquintences most every Sunday afternoon, sometimes more. I play in a jam band, we get a gig, don't know for sure who is going to show up for it until a couple days ahead, no set list, and play non stop for two hours. We sponsor an open jam once a month where people who want to get that group experience can bring their songs and no matter what it is, we will play it with them. 

First of all, Nopix has the right jam attitude. I'm not trying to be mean here, but making excuses is not going to help. You gotta go into it with a positive attitude. Nothing comes fast or easy. Determination is the key. Don't be afraid, play something even if it is wrong.  

I watch hands a lot. I play guitar as well. I try to find a banjo player or guitar player and watch their hands. I'm even getting better at reading mandolin player's hands. Something I've been working hard at for a while. But reading hands is a very good jam skill to develop.

Know the key. Most songs are going to be a I, IV, V.  Then maybe a relative minor. That narrow things down. If it isn't a I, IV, V, or the relative minor, then you know what it's not. Go from there. 

Play lots of songs. Songs share chord progressions and melodies. The more songs you play, the more of those progressions you learn and recogize when you hear them again. You don't need to memorize them, just play them. You will get familiar with the chord progressions. They are so common that they have names. Sometimes on Wednesdays when my wife is at choir practice, I find some Austin City Limits, River Walk, or MTV Unplugged and sit there on the couch playing along. I mean, if you can play a three chord twelve bar blues progression, you can play along with Clapton on MTV Unplugged for an hour. Great practice. Just a suggestion. I find it a lot of fun. 

When all else fails, play scales. I've found lots of songs where I can get through the whole thing and never get out of the root. A lot of fiddle tunes in D. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it does. But you would be suprised. Then, eventually you will hear an G or and A, and you can expand your horizons. 

I hope this is helpful. I'm not a teacher, these are just some of my experiences over the years. At least you have a fighting chance with them. I wish you the best.  

John,
You did accomplish something. You got out of your house and went to the real world. The more you do it, the more patterns you will see repeated and you will feel more comfortable. i am not saying you will feel great right away..but eventually.
IN THE MEANTIME...have you ever used Amazing Slowdowner? You can slow songs down and it does not change pitch. you can get used to playing with someone else. And do it over and over till you feel more comfotable. It is just a new skill that you will learn.
Also here are some great folks that teach this stuff in a good way. (From AI)
The gold standard DVD specifically designed for this skill is Learning to Hear Chord Changes by Murphy Henry (The Murphy Method). It teaches you to identify I-IV-V chord progressions entirely by ear without relying on visual cues from other musicians' hands.

Other notable instructional materials and methods include:Learning to Hear Chord Changes (Banjo): An instructional DVD by Steve Kaufman/Mel Bay that specifically targets 5-string banjo players.

Flatpicking Essentials Series: DVDs by Tim May and Dan Miller that dive deep into finding chord progressions and melodies by ear for guitarists.

Bluegrass Slow Jam for the Total Beginner: A DVD by Pete Wernick that features 17 classic slow-tempo songs, allowing you to practice identifying chord changes in a guided, no-pressure band setting.

I have only had experience with Dr Banjo Pete Wernick and Ms Henry and can vouch for both of them.

Good luck.

Ken

PS, Jack Hatfield in some of his books talks about ordered expectations in chord usage and and ordered in some of his books that is very useful. 

It’s all ok. It’s not an excuse. I believe I really could spend the time, work hard and hear the chord changes and the music and participate in jams but i realized it’s not that much fun for me. I was in a class by one of the instructors on chord inversions and playing up the neck in double C tuning and it was like a whole new world for me to see the different patterns.

But the playing and laughing and trying to figure out the songs with other people just isn’t fun. I know myself and I’ll always prefer to read a book about music over playing it with a group or listening. And that’s a matter of deciding what is fulfilling rather than what isn’t fulfilling. Doing hard things or difficult things isn’t the problem; doing hard things that bring little joy or fulfillment to me personally is the choice. I also would not choose bonsai trimming or yoga despite the benefits of either. I won’t abandon music as it is fascinating to me and I think I’ll take some advice and pick up piano. We have a baby grand in the house and I walk past it every day. I believe I can learn to play it and learn music theory and to read sheet music playing it as an instrument. It’s just not nearly as portable as the banjo.

IF playing with others is not an objective, is portability a significant factor?

Step right up folks, get yer silicone roll-up keyboards here: https://www.amazon.ca/MARVTOWN-Key-Roll-Keyboard-Piano/dp/B0F8MS7W4H/ref=asc_df_B0F8MS7W4H?mcid=a871cdd3689f3d3fa02c940850b29399&tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=706828401488&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9853187396110665062&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1001985&hvtargid=pla-2442778898770&hvocijid=9853187396110665062-B0F8MS7W4H-&hvexpln=0&gad_source=1&th=1   

The second reason I wanted to learn music is that I go camping with my wife a lot. We have an airstream and a cabin in New Mexico and we love to camp at national parks. I do enjoy practicing by the fire a great deal. The banjo is very portable.

that keyboard is a creepy looking thing!  Some things should not have been invented!

I kept a stable of cheap mandolins, I'd lone out. There'd be a sheet of two and three chord tunes, and a sheet of two-fingered chords. Some would take years to return. I think one is still at large. I found a fellow that didn't recognize a single tune or song. In fact between church and a.m. radio, he couldn't give me a single song title. I never knew anyone that couldn't sing a dirty song from the back of a schoolbus.