This is another update for me. I have a lesson today and I’m excited as always.

I have refined my learning so that I can now rapidly convert a tune into sheet music with conventional sheet music notation which I have taught myself to sight read very fast and be able to play.

This has been my favorite part because I have been able to learn so much about music theory and the fretboard and keys and the tuning and transposition up and down the neck.

I am now spending about two hours a day in my practice with one on sight reading and converting songs ranging from Neil Diamond America to part of a Bach brandenburg concerto into sheet music that works for me on the banjo. I also work the other way taking the tunes my teacher teaches me and converting them into the sheet music. This isn’t tab and to be honest I really have trouble converting tab into playing. This is sight reading like one would learn in piano.

The other hour I spend practicing my tunes and songs I already know. I make liberal usage of the tool called strum machine that lets me play with timing and with the tune. I have rigged it to pick up at different random points and I work to play with my eyes closed and start at any point in any tune based on the tune I’ve memorized. This is also where I rigorously practice my timing and volume and techniques, recording and dissecting how things like alternate string pull offs and my drop thumbs sound and can be changed.

I still hate playing with groups and trying to do “guess the random song” games where people nod and just start playing and since that’s not fun I’m not going to attend those activities any more. I do have a couple of friends who play guitar and mandolin and are both at my level and we all sort of started the same olace and we are all three working to play the same tunes together using strum machine so I guess in some instances I do like to play with others but mostly in a way that we are actively practicing and resetting and trying to pick up the tunes themselves. I’ve got them all working on America which is pretty interesting with changes in key twice in the song from F to G to A which has been interesting to transpose.

I play everything in clawhammer style and I’m learning so much about music theory and notation which was my main goal. If anyone else is interested in this non standard method of learning I can share everything.

I have also made a lot of use lately of BanjoNomicon system by Tom Collins which breaks down the fretboard in literally any key for any tuning up and down the neck across any of the series of major and minor and all other chords. It’s been a fabulous thing to subscribe to for me.