Is anyone (like me) in the process of learning Nashville Skyline rag? I have been playing it for about 6 months and would like to know when the melody is going to appear!! LOL. My speed is picking up but I am not even close to playing it as fast as Ben! I would just like to get an Idea how long it took others on here to learn it and play it before you started hearing a definite melody come through! PS: I have been playing banjo for 3 years. Thanks !!!
Nashville Skyline Rag
I’ve been playing for a little over three years now (3 yrs from Jan 2013).
We all learn at different rates. And it also depends on previous musical experience. For instance, I played guitar (and piano) for many years before I started to learn the banjo so that most of my learning is focused on the right hand.
And it also depends on your practice routine. Again me, I have a lot of free time so I practice at least a few hours a day.
For me, learning the banjo has been all about repetition. So you play a song with a G lick. Then you play another song with the same G lick and another and another. So you repeat this G lick maybe 25 or 50 times a day by playing these songs over and over again. And eventually you’ve played that lick so ofter that your hands automatically remember it. So playing a G lick becomes easy at that point.
Now for me, there was a minimum number of licks and phrases and hand positions I needed to learn like that to get to a tipping point. Now, most songs are pretty easy for me to at least get to sound halfway like they should.
So I think you just need to keep plugging away there. Be confident that every day you practice you will show a little improvement and that one day you’ll get to that tipping point.
I will say though that I learned Nashville Skyline about 10 months in. It took me quite a while to getting it sound halfway decent (and it probably still sounds only halfway decent when I play it now!). Maybe a year (I don’t really remember) from when I started (I still play that song every day). It doesn’t really have a melody so it’s more about riffing which may make it harder to make sound like it should.
Hey there! You mentioned Ben had a video teaching Nashville Skyline rag? I can’t find it when I browse his banjo lessons… I would love to get my hands on that tab can someone point me to it? Thanks a million!
Hi John @streetly That post is four years old. @BanjoBen doesn’t have a lesson on Nashville Skyline Rag. I don’t recall it being on the old site either.
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Welcome to the forum, @streetly! I don’t know if there ever was a lesson for Nashville Skyline Rag, but if there was, it was most likely removed for copyright reasons.
Here’s the tab, y’all!
Ban-NashvilleSkylineRag.pdf (134.2 KB) Ban-NashvilleSkylineRag.tef (4.3 KB)
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