I have been playing banjo off and on for several years, but never been in a band. I play with a friend on a regular basis who plays rhythm guitar. As long as I am playing with a guitar picker, or as long as I am playing along with Tabledit on the computer I have no problem staying in time. Listening to it makes is easier to play. Sometimes I will record my solo playing and when I play it back and try to play along with it with my guitar, I find that I have screwed up the timing with the banjo. My question is what can I do to fix this problem? Is this a common problem? I sometimes try to play with a metronome, but the click is annoying and sometimes hard to do, isn’t playing with the Tabledit file just as useful as a metronome? Any help would be appreciated.
Rhythm / Timing
I never use a metronome these day’s. I always practice with TablEdit and a rhythm guitar TAB, Sometimes I’ll add Acoustic Bass TAB just to emphasise the downbeat. But I still loose the timing from time to time. I think a lot of the reasoning for this is I stop listening or loose concentration
I too would be interested to hear how others maintain good timing
Ive found that once you get to grips with the tune and you can pick it slow, smooth and precise timing naturally occurs and speeding up becomes easier because the fundamentals are all in place
my old man used to say to me when we went our for a drink… its not a sprint lad its a marathon.
Happy Christmas one and all… peace and love…
Well, you’re off to a good start of fixing it already. The best thing to do is listen back and identify specifically the first mistake you hear. Find out exactly what happened. Did you skip a beat, add a beat, speed up, slow down, pause? Then when you discover it, play it again and don’t do that to the best of your ability. If you can’t not do it, then come back and I’ll help you trick your brain to not do it.
This I gotta see 
I certainly want to know how to trick my brain into not doing it. Please explain.
I really hope this doesn’t involve an electric dog collar and a music critic. I still have scars…
I have to know how you’re messing up, first. But essentially we take the problem area and divide it into 3 parts then force the brain to put them back together.