I have been playing banjo now for about 9 years and I still struggle when I go to jams when it comes to the verses and chorus. I tend to go back to the pointer finger on one of the middle strings followed by a thumb and middle pinch on 5 and 1. I hear other players roll while they sing, why cant I do it yet? Any helpful hints or anything you can think of? Seems like I get flustered. I don’t know what it is. Any help!
Playing and singing?
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Hi @S-Max Steven Your not alone. I can’t sing and play banjo at the same time. I leave to others to play whilst I sing. Katy Lou is a master at it and I wish @BanjoBen would let her loose to give us a few lessons on this topic.
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Hey Steven, welcome back to the forum!
Rolling while singing is known to be pretty difficult, and a lot of traditional banjo players will actually just stop rolling while they sing, choosing instead to vamp and/or play fills in the gaps between vocal lines. Rolling while singing definitely can be done, however, and I always enjoy hearing people roll while singing. I’m not good at it, but it follows a similar concept to other two-part musical tasks. These are some things I’ve observed and advice I’ve heard from those who do tasks like that (e.g. singing while playing fingerstyle guitar or playing multiple voices with two hands on piano).
I like to think that we have a limited amount of “brain power” while playing. Different musical tasks require different amounts of your thought resources, and if you overload yourself, your system will fail. It’s the same reason you can’t text and drive—if you’re distracted from driving, you’re much more likely to crash the car.
This is what makes habit-building tough—for instance, to learn alternate picking on guitar, you must actively think about what your right hand is doing, which takes away from the amount of attention you can allocate to your left hand, causing something in the system to fail. Same with trying to sing a song while adding rolling backup—you’re overloading your mind.
The solution? Well, here’s the trick: your muscles can store information too (muscle memory). So to add to your multitasking capabilities, you can “teach” your body to remember what to do, and therefore take the load off your thoughts when you’re actually playing. The very start of building this muscle memory, however, is the most difficult part of the process—because you need to think about every single part of the task in order to get it into your muscle memory. This almost always requires slowing down… way down.
So as a first step to building this skill, I would recommend picking a song and planning out simple, formulaic rolling backup over the entire form (the Utility Rolls lessons are great introductions to practical rolling backup applications, btw). Get really comfortable playing this—the more repeatable and predictable, the easier it will be to do while singing. You want these rolls to require as little strain on your mind as possible.
Then, slow your song down to the point where you can play this roll pattern while singing the song. You may even find yourself memorizing what notes on the banjo intersect with what notes in your voice, going note by note. Now, you’re building the muscle memory of playing the rolls and singing together, which is your ultimate goal. It’s still super slow, but if you can do this at really slow tempos, good news: that means you can do it! From that point, you’ll gradually start thinking about the two parts of this specific task—rolling and singing—as one thing. Then, take that one thing and run with it, gradually increasing the speed.
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Makes sense, I typically resort back to the vamping, but i watch youtube videos and some of the professionals and they roll and sing. Just asking if there is a trick to getting it. Thankyou!
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I’ve come across the same issue that you’re experiencing. A lot of practice is what has helped me to overcome this. I play piano, and I’ve applied my method of playing piano songs to playing and singing on other instruments. First, I learn each part individually, making sure that I know it well enough that I could play it in my sleep. Then, as @Michael_Mark was talking about, I put the two parts together at a much slowed tempo. Over time, I’ve been able to accomplish this process with greater speed. I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, but it’s helped me to do better. I make sure I know the vocal part and the banjo part very well individually, then I slow it down, looking for cues in either the vocal or the banjo part to help with the timing of the other. Eventually, it becomes natural. (Then I start the process over again on a new song!) Hope this helps, @S-Max!
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I’ve never found it to be that hard, but I used to sing over travis picking guitar, which probably primed my brain and fingers to naturally take to it.
I usually will just use one roll pattern, either a utility roll or a square roll, and then play that on autopilot while I sing.
I have more difficulty playing tastful licks between vocal phrases
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