Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

2 steps forward 3 steps back help please

Hi,

So, I try to make banjo goals every 2 weeks and put them on my phone. Basically what I’ve done is to try to learn solos to songs and add them to try to be able to do a lead and back up to several songs. I’ve got a youtube playlist where I have them all and try to play lead and backup to them. When I go to a jam and there’s a song that is often played, I’ve added it to the list (but no more than one song and after I’ve learned the previous one so I’m not learning 2 at once). Anyway, was working well for a while, but now I’ve found I can no longer play some of the earlier ones that I’ve learned and spend as much or more time reviewing old songs as learning new ones. Also, when I took a vacation recently it really threw me back a while. I think I’ve hit a point where this isn’t going to be an effective learning strategy. Anyway, any tips on how to progress?

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A good goal is to try to get to the point where you aren’t having to play a specific break to a song note for note from something you learned from tab. Try to get to the point to where if you know the chord structure of the song and you know how the melody goes, you can play rolls and licks over the appropriate chords that sufficiently capture the melody.

(And let me know when you get there…I’m trying, and getting much better at it, but I ain’t there just yet…)

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@rspillers has some great advice here! It’s impossible to try and remember a bunch of solos note for note. There are times when you want to, like in more complicated melodic arrangements, but otherwise you need to internalize the songs and do your best to play the melody and piece together licks in realtime.

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How can you do that?!!! I’ve tried, but I somehow end up stuck in forward rolls and I don’t know where I am in the song!

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@cboling have you watched the Make-a-Break lesson yet? It’s the best lesson on the site on this topic, IMO:
https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/banjo-make-a-break-featuring-tex-critter-banjo-intermediate

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yes, i’ve worked through lots of them. However, when I sit down at a jam, I don’t have the 5 hours or so it would take me to get through this process.

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I’ve done the beginner build-a-break lessons. I just need to sit down and apply these concepts!

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Joking aside. How do I use them to get better at jamming situations? I mean I’ve made up my own solos to songs but they’re just one offs. Like learning a song by rote.

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Hey @ambergkeith, this response isn’t as organized as it should be (sorry about that!), but just a few thoughts:

I realize that everyone learns differently, but it sounds like you’re in a place where it would actually be beneficial not to worry about keeping the list of songs that you know, don’t know, kind of know, need to learn, etc. When you look at a list like that and think about all the knowledge you don’t yet have, it’s very intimidating. And a lot of times, you get sucked into putting songs on your “checklist” that you’re not actually inspired to work on, because you feel like you have to get through them without crashing before you can be worth your weight in a jam.

Instead of this, it might be easier on you to simply go to the jam, see how things go, and then afterwards think about your favorite song from the jam that you don’t know yet. Then, work on that one till you get bored, and pick your next favorite song. Don’t aim to learn it perfectly. Instead, learn it best you can, be OK with the imperfection, then go to the jam and play it again, however bad it still may be. You’ll notice things about the song you didn’t notice the first time you played it. You’ll feel that you know your way around the song better than the first time you played it. Not perfectly, but deeper.

Think about how you make friends and get to know people. When you meet someone, you learn their name, and where they’re from. You don’t immediately learn everything about their past (well, usually. Sometimes you run into some characters who make sure to tell you their whole life story :joy:). You learn what they do for a living, but you don’t get a rundown of their entire 9-5 workflow. You might notice that they’re tall or short, but you don’t learn their height.

Then suppose you see them another time, and you say, “hey! I remember you. What’s your name again? Where are you from again?” You took a step back, but you relearn those pieces of information, and likely don’t forget it this time (unless you’re like me). In talking to them some more, you learn more about their job, their hobbies, and their family. You might notice certain mannerisms and things about their personality.

Then you meet them a third time, and a fourth time, and each time you re-learn things about them that you forgot, and learn new things about them for you to forget and re-learn. But eventually, you stop feeling like you’re getting to know things about them; you feel like you’re getting to know them. It’s much easier and less awkward to talk. You remember things and springboard off them in conversation.

And the surprising part? You can be getting to know five, ten, fifteen people that way over the course of a year, some of them simultaneously, and it doesn’t feel like your brain is under a constant load. But by the end of the year, you know fifteen more people pretty well.

Now think about how we often try to learn songs. We go to a jam, and something unfamiliar gets called, and we go “Ut oh! Yet another song that I do not know!” So we go home and we drill it and drill it and drill it. We try to commit every note, every chord change, to rote memory, in hopes that by the next jam, we will finally know this thing. Then the process repeats itself when another song comes up, and we have to add it to the list. Soon, our list is 15 songs long and we dread the grueling practice it will take to get them all up to speed.

What if instead you went to a jam, and “met” the new song, just learning and taking note of a few things about it? Then if you liked that song, pull it out in your practice and listen to it, and take as much time as you need to make a basic solo, just something you feel is OK to play over it. Take 5 hours if you need to—don’t expect that you will be able to make up a solo on the fly if you haven’t made up a solo very slowly yet. The more you do this, the faster you will get, because you’ll start to recognize patterns—for instance, “Hey, I could put the 2-3 slide there; I could put the G lick there; I could put the Foggy Mountain lick there; I could put the square roll there”. It really is like building blocks.

Don’t aim for perfection. Just pick around on your solo and learn the chords as a starter.

Then, next jam session, call the song, even if you don’t know it (just say it’s something you’re working on). This will force you to play through it again without stopping, and when this happens, you’ll notice more things about the song, like a particular weird chord change or rhythmic quirk. Crash and burn as much as you like. Then, if you still are digging the song, go home and pick some more on it, armed with any new things you might have noticed that you need to work on. The next time you play it with other people, it will probably feel a little more natural. It’ll still be hard, but won’t be quite as unfamiliar. That chord change you struggled with last time won’t come as such a surprise.

After a few rounds of this, you might get bored with the song. That’s totally normal—pick a new one! By the time you get bored with the next one, you’ll want to work on the first one again.

I am biased towards my personal learning experience, of course. But what I have discovered is that I don’t learn song #1, get it perfect, learn song #2, get it perfect, learn song #3, get it perfect, and then have 3 new songs to check off by the end of the month. Some people can do that, but I never have. Instead, it’s more like I encounter 50 new songs over the course of a year, and by the end of the year, I know them decently enough to not die inside when they’re called, and I learn a new little concept with each one.

By the end of the year, will you have 50 new songs to write down on your checklist as “perfect, and I remember how to play all of them just right”? No. But will you be a slightly better musician at the end of the year? For sure!

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I guess it’s a bit like learning to drive a car and then taking the car on a long journey. Your gonna make lots of mistakes as you learn the controls, once you master a few, you set off on your journey only to discover you are lost and can’t find your way home. Eventually the training kicks in and nothing holds you back. My advice is not to fret so much.

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Thank you very much. I will try to implement this as best I can.

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Maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like Michael took the long, long road to explain a John Hartford comment about playing music: “I’m doing the best I can with what little I got.”
That’s all we can do.
I also sense that you are just now grasping the idea that music is not a lovely little mountain stream, but more of an overwhelming tsunami of information. Hard to swim in a flood!
To paraphrase Jerry Garcia:”Practice is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live is like being on a rowboat in the ocean.”
Relax. Have fun. Use your head & play with your heart.

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There is a discussion going on over on the BHO worthy of a good read.

Do too many beginner/intermediate players try to play difficult tunes?

Two of the most recent posts sums things up for me.
Stephen Davis
It’s no big deal to fail at something and move on.

Laurence Diehl
Right. Then you come back to it 3 months later and find it’s way easier than you thought the first time.

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