Week 1 Experiences on the Banjo
For the past week I have started on the endeavor to learn how to play the banjo. The banjo is a stringed instrument mainly used in Folk and Bluegrass music with a unique twangy sound. After receiving a beautiful Banjo for Christmas and this project has provided the perfect motivation for learning how to play the banjo. My favorite genre of music is folk music and Banjo plays a critical role in many folk songs. To continue to write and play folk music, learning banjo is a necessity. Even after the project is through, I still plan to practice and work on the banjo. I even hope to incorporate banjo on one of the songs on my upcoming album “Suburban Folk.”
After learning how to play four different instruments, I feel I have a pretty good idea on how to go about learning the banjo. To successfully perform in front of the class in six weeks I need to learn many concepts and songs quite quickly. Each week I plan to learn at least two new concepts and one new song. So far I have done my “homework” and read up on basic strumming techniques and how the banjo is tuned. I have also began to learn basic chords to play on the banjo. This week, I am well above my set weekly goal and hopefully I can continue on this trend. Along with learning concepts, I am requiring my self to learn at least one song a week. This week I arranged the chords and riffs on guitar for banjo on the song “Roll Away Your Stone” by Mumford & Sons. It is a fairly basic song that I already knew on guitar and piano so it was easy to transfer that knowledge over to. Next week I plan to learn another more challenging Mumford & Sons song like “Dust bowl Dance” or “The Cave.”
In this process, my biggest learning curve was to learn how to properly put the banjo fingerpicks on each finger and how to play with them. It was a huge adjustment from using a standard guitar pick to finger picks. It felt extremely awkward no matter how I tried to use them until I finally found a good tutorial on the internet on how to correctly hold the picks and how to play with the picks. Once I figured the pick situation out, I was able to start learning banjo “rolls” or riffs. Every time I successfully play one roll I feel like a true bluegrass hillbilly coming fresh out of the Deep South. So far I am quite pleased with my progress on the banjo and I am looking forward to learning new techniques and songs to aid me on my banjo journey! See you next week!
This project seems like a great fit for you because of your past experience in learning instruments as well as just in the field of music. I think you will be able to enjoy learning to play the banjo a lot and this will benefit you greatly because of the amount of time you will be spending. You did say that you would be learning two new concepts each week, and I was wondering if you had planned out which ones, and why you had chosen them. I think you will need to work hard to be able to achieve your goal of performing in front of the class, but with your prior experience and the dedication it sounds like you will give the performance will be great. Keep strumming.
ReplyDelete