Hi @tye705 I am a proud student of the Murphy Method. Murphy was the person who inspired me to take up the banjo. Like you I am first and foremost a visual audio learner. My first five years I worked my way through Murphy’s entire catalogue and I learned a lot from it.
However the Murphy Method like ALL the other teaching methods I have worked with has its limitations. In my second year as a Murphy student I knew that if I wanted to get past the basic banjo lessons I had to study with other teachers and teaching methods and that meant I had to learn to read TAB. Like you I am a distance learner with no easy access to good teachers so I have to rely on books, video and online instruction.
I struggled with TAB in the beginning simply because I was working from books and none of it made any sense. I was however lucky enough to find and befriend Geoff Hohwald at the time I needed him the most and he opened the door and taught me how to read TAB. Which allowed me to explore much more challenging instructional material.
But as I got past the basics progress was really slow and all but ground to a halt as most of the so called “Instructional DVDs” were really just slowed down demos, no explanation of what was going on and many of the TABs were inaccurate.
Around this time @BanjoBen had started posting video’s on YouTube and he caught my attention, I was drawn to his cheery cheeky character, his gift of communication and his talent for playing banjo. At first I didn’t rate him highly as a teacher but the more I watched him the more I knew he had a gift for teaching and signed up as a life member…
Ben brings together both styles of teaching the audio/visual and TAB and with his excellent communication skills he makes the process of learning so much easier.
Some teaching methods that rely heavily on TAB are so boring I have fallen asleep 5 minutes into the lesson. But never have I fallen asleep on one of Bens lessons. His TABs are 100% accurate and when used in the tef format with TefView or TablEdit you can listen and play along with the TABs as your learning the tune, lick or musical phrase making the task of learning so much easier and a joy to learn.
You ask " So, my ? is, how do YOU learn and what is YOUR practice method."
My answer is this. In the same way Murphy, Geoff and Ben teaches it. I take it one measure at a time.
I practice each musical phrase over and over until I commit it to memory before moving on to the next. Much in the same way a child learns to walk or ride a bike. The child falls picks his/her self up and tries again until it no longer falls over. Patience, Practice and Perseverance and lot’s of it is required learning to play the banjo.
What you may not realise when your learning to play a tune is, your not just learning to play that tune your are actually learning the mechanics of playing lots of tunes, your learning where to find certain sounds and how to change those sounds with slides, bends etc, You are also learning to make music and the key to learning music is to LISTEN. If your learning from TAB the key to learning TAB is to LISTEN and READ the TAB as you watch it appear on the screen as each note plays. Learning to play banjo from TAB just involves learning additional skills. It doesn’t come easy you have to work at it.
Gifted people can pick up an instrument and play. I am not a gifted musician I have to work hard to learn a tune.
I hope this helps answer your query and goes some way to busting the myth that we all find learning to play banjo easy.
P.S I just wanted to add that in the beginning the learning process can seem overwhelming. If you approach the learning process knowing that learning to play the banjo is a life long learning experience. The more you study and practice the easier the task becomes. Few people get to the level of Earl Scruggs. Earl was gifted the vast majority of us are not. Be the best you can be. Study hard and practice long but above all have fun.