I found a practice technique I really like: Take your music player or phone, put some earbuds in, and stick it in your pocket. Start the music and play along (I like to do so while standing). The goal is to stay locked in with the band, and experiment with fills and such. It’s even better if you have a microphone or similarly shaped object to practice working the mic.
What are some of your favorite practice exercises, etc?
What I like to do is listen to a song or solo so many times that I know every part of it, and I start to expect what comes next. I find that makes it much easier to learn to play it.
I do that all the time, like all the time my family is probably wondering why I have an entire mic setup for a whole band setup all the time.
I’ve recently started breaking licks down to practice one at a time in different songs. I’ve been struggling for years being able to add licks outside of the mundane G run and Foggy Mountain lick-type stuff on the fly.
While talking to Katy recently, she said something that changed the way I think about this problem. She said “Just because you can play a song full of licks doesn’t mean those licks are part of your lick vocabulary.” That was a 
moment for me! It seems so obvious now, but it took her saying that to flip the switch.
She compared it to learning a new language. Just because you can sing an entire song in Spanish doesn’t mean you can use the words in that song in everyday language. You have to break the words out and use them in other scenarios.
Licks are the same way. What I’m thinking about doing is creating a single recording that rolls through multiple songs so I can practice a lick across tempos and different chord changes without having to load up news songs.
I’ve already added a couple of simple licks to the vocabulary. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about banjo!
I like practicing with strum machine. A fairly new app with tons of songs and you can make you own as well which is nice. It makes you feel like you are jamming more than playing with a metronome while you are still on beat
Hi @Mark_Rocka what I have done in the past is to create tab tef exercises. where I’ll copy & paste roll patterns or licks into a new tab, add either a click or rhythm guitar to help with timing and loop it for a given number of repeats usually between 3-6 before jumping to the next exercise. Typically the exercises are about four measures long with a two click intro so I can fit multiple exercises in the same tef file neatly.
This is particularly helpful if you have multiple complicated Scruggs licks that you want to link together and you want to just practice them away from the rest of the tune in order to get the flow right That way your not being distracted with the rest on the tune and you can focus in on the trouble spots.
Once your head gets stuck on a train wreck it’s hard to keep the loco on the track. Isolating the problem and identifying the cause will help you move forward. Sometimes the solution is as picking a string with a different finger. Remember Ben’s Pick it with the Thumb - What a game changer that was for me.
Check out this group of sample exercises
Banjo Rolls Practice 4.tef (4.0 KB)
It’s definitely good to isolate the licks. What I’m trying to get proficient at is hearing licks ahead of time so my brain will know not only where to work them in, but also my fingers will just prepare themselves for the upcoming lick without even thinking about it. I have a small basket of licks I can do this with now. Most of them are 1 measure licks. I’d like to get into multi-measure licks, too.
My ultimate goal is for my mind to hear both the melody of the song and the appropriate lick to work into / around that melody in real time, and do so with dozens, or even hundreds of licks. Also, while keeping with the melody is fine, I eventually want to hear cool variations in my head that will add appropriate spice to the song. For example, I just watched Ben’s Pushin’ Banjo Licks lesson (https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/pushin-banjo-licks-banjo-advanced) last night. What he did was pretty simple, but it sounded really cool and was completely unexpected (to me, anyway.) I’d like to give my listeners that kind of experience.
Been listening to Scruggs most of my life and I can to a degree predict when he is about to play one of his classic signature licks. However when it come to applying that to my practice session it never seems to work for me.
Normally for banjo my practice goes like this I’ll turn on my metronome at a slower tempo and do rolls and then throw in some licks(Ron Blocking) trying to do the same kind of thing like @Mark_Rocka was talking about just isolating and working on lick vocabulary really focusing on every little thing. Then once I’m warmed up a little I speed it up and up just doing the same thing. After that I’ll work on what ever specific thing I’m currently working on. Then at the end I’ll play with recordings for a while just going and working on back up and solos on the fly for songs you don’t know plus its super fun.
For guitar I’ll start basically doing the same thing I’ll do some rhythm go into some licks and back to rhythm starting slow then getting faster. Then work on whatever I’m working on and then play along with some stuff.
Then basically the same thing on mando but for warming up I just do scale exercises, some chopping and then some licks i break it up a little instead of sort of doing all at the same time like on guitar and banjo, After that i do the same thing. Normally I’ll put a timer on for each part and just go through it on each instrument.
Also arranging and writing stuff out is essential.