Haha, this thread was Hijacked! But it does not bother me…I’d rather share what limited knowledge I have verses worry about a thread!
Will add some more thoughts/ideas later when I get a chance.
New Songs All The Time
Blame it on the banjo payer! hehe
Are you our token terrorist hijacker?
No doubt that a banjer is a weapon of mass destruction in my book!
And I am glad TNTaylor is a guitar player…pretty soon he will learn that in “practical musical theory” or the “school of hard knocks” why guitar players and banjo guys don’t get along and he won’t listen to a word you say and will be done with you.
Keep your eye on fiddlewood, he’ll try and convert you to the dark side of bluegrass music, the side with the tainted history, hoodoo voodoo ways and black magic…stay in the light!
haha, any instrument is in the hand of someone who is not a musician creates destruction.
Having played banjo, Bass, mando, guitar and fiddle all in bands before I have learned sort of how they fit together and where they belong over the years.The biggest part of playing is respect for the other musicians, and not stepping on their parts. When ya push someone out of their spot by trampling them then they end up usually either getting mad or stomping on another part while trying to get out of the way.
TNTaylor:
Now maybe that light bulb is coming on just through these posts about theory. You don’t have to understand it “all” but once you get the basic premises of it you can “talk shop” with others or when others are “talking shop” you can understand and it makes sense.
Now don’t think for one moment you can learn a single scale and stay in it the entire time…bout the only players that do that and get by with it are the so-called “blues players”, but instead be prepared to jump in and out of different scales and realize when you are doing so.
Scale practice is nice as it works on your alternate picking technique and helps you learn to change strings when doing so. So not only are you learning a scale but you are honing your picking technique while doing so. When learning these scales learn about “sequences” these are used all the time in Bluegrass! In layman’s terms sequences are just repetition in the tones of the scale going both forward and backward. So do some 3 note repetitions where you major in G, play your 1st note of the scale (G), then the 2nd note of the scale (A) then the 3rd note of the scale (B)…Now go back to the Second note (A) and start there, (stay in the G major scale) and play the next two notes above A (would be A, B, C) then go back to the B and play three notes there (again staying in your G major) which would have you playing B,C,D) do this through the major of G through 2 octaves which basically would have you starting on your 6th string 3rd fret and going all the way up to your 1st string 3rd fret (the 3rd G in the scale)…now start on that G (3rd fret 1st string and go back down the scale in three note sequences)
The idea behind scales:
Not only are the teaching you theory but if you practice them then you will be able to move around the fret board better…is the saem thing when you first started and learned to chord and you had to look at the guitar when you were moving chords…well over time and repetition you no longer had to look to make your chord changes…same thing with scales practice them up the neck and you will be able to move there without looking. Me, I can comfortably say I can move up and down the neck without having to look much up to the 9th fret just as easily as I can make damn near any chord within the first nine frets without having to look. With enough practice this is like learning a lead break where you don’t have to think about it and you just play it…it becomes “natural” after X amount of times doing it over and over.
You will also start hearing “music” being made in your scale practice because those tones you are playing match the major.
Oldhat
I like to use them for a warm-up exercise. I won’t spend a whole practice session on them, just enough to warm up, working on playing cleanly. Then I work on something I’m more interested in.
Good stuff, Oldhat.
I have memorized the G major scale and am messing with it some. That is a great idea playing it in different sequences. I plan on learning a few more scales and hopefully I can start applying them pretty quick. That’s the key for me, if I don’t see how to apply it, I’m afraid I’ll loose interest. I’m going to stick with it though.
Oh yeah, I’m already a closet hubcap…I mean…banjo player, too. I’m on the hunt for one now! Haha!
Learn this music theory and you will find that when switching to or starting on another instrument like a banjo or mando that you can almost instantly start playing them…I mean by learning music theory on one instrument it all automatically switches over to another instrument…so you should be able to look at it and make your chords since you know what notes make a g chord up or any chord…you can be playing almost automatically.
Oh, I have a banjo in the house also, 3 fiddles, a piano and about 8 guitars…you will find, at least I did that the guitar and the way the tuning works is the toughest to learn scales and stuff on…I grab another instrument and the scales just kind of fall in place…I can grab a mando or banjo and pick out melody lines much easier than I can with a guitar and i am by no means affluent on them but seem to me able to play lead on easier as the scales tend to be better organized/easier to access.
I think the guitar and piano are the most versatile instruments and more common with each other…then of course the mando and fiddle are laid out exactly the same, then there is the banjo with its open tuning that is diff than all of them, that is unless you take the other instruments and open tune them. only thing a banjo and a guitar have in common is liking to major out of G where as the mando and fiddle would rather play out of A…that is why you see so many songs out of “A” and guitar players capo’n up…because it’s better/easier for the fiddler to play there.
Actually, G, D, and A are all identical open pairs on the fiddle/mando, so one isn’t really harder than the other. Both can be played in other tunings as well as standard. many old fiddlers tuned a, e, a, e.
Guitars can be open tuned also, or a string can be moved to match a key (drop 6th to D when in that key) And there are a whole slew of tunings for Banjo.