Hello all. Ben here for my final blog post. I am right now in South Carolina for spring break but that hasn't stopped me from continuing this banjo journey. Even though I was not able to bring my banjo with me on this vacation I have been able to do lots of readings on the banjo and I have watched many many video tutorials on various banjo techniques and songs. At the beginning of this week I was able to practice some banjo and continue perfecting Dueling Banjos which is by far the hardest song I have learned so far. I also recorded it with my guitar that went well. It only me about 20 takes to perfect in my eyes and a few hours of mixing but I was very pleased to record a song with banjo for the first time, especially a song like Dueling Banjos.
As I mentioned above I did lots of readings and was able to able to learn about the banjo. As I was doing this I was away from my banjo but it made me itch to do some bluegrass picking and playing some folk songs. I will include a link for any of you that may be interested in reading up about the banjo. I also got from this experience that reading up on an instrument or any topic for that matter, is that it makes you want to get hands on with that certain topic and almost forces you into playing some more. Even though I did not make a ton of progress in learning the banjo I was super happy to discover the importance of reading up on a topic and its ability to make you want to learn more about it.
http://bluegrassbanjo.org/banhist.html
See you and thanks for reading!
-Banjo Ben
It's good to see that you are really enjoying your banjo-ing. As far as reading goes, while it may not be as fun, it is definitely important, but will only work to its fullest potential if you are able to reinforce your newly learned knowledge with practice. Keep having fun, and I hope you have a good time in South Carolina.
ReplyDeleteIt is good to see that you have made a lot of progress learning about the banjo, and it is really important that you are challenging yourself by learning a difficult song. You mentioned that you recorded yourself playing a song, but that it took you about twenty times. I think that in order to see the full effect of everything that you have learned, it would be interesting to hear the first take that you did and then the last. This way, it will be easy to discern between the increase in quality, as you gradually got more familiar with the song.
ReplyDeleteAwesome job with keeping up in your learning even without your instrument! Over break, I was able to bring my ukulele to practice, and without being able to bring it my project would end up... terrible. So kudos to you, not going insane without your project! Besides that, I am kind of disappointed that I cannot make it to your presentation, because it sounds like it will be great!
ReplyDeleteAwesome dedication Ben! I really look foward to hearing what you have learned at your TED Talk and also hearing some banjo-playing too. Wow, 20 takes sounds like a lot, but I'm sure the last take was much much better than the first one. I'm going to go and search what Dueling Banjos sounds like now....
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