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-- Back to Table of Contents - Strategies for Mastering the Art of Old Time Banjo
Playing the Five String Banjo

Introduction

When somebody asks me where I learned to improvise on the banjo the first thought that pops into my head is my mother. Mom doesn't play the banjo. She does play the dulcimer and she sings. Her voice is so pretty that I've seen road-weary country guitar pickers break into tears listening to her sing an old hymn, but she never was interested in the banjo.

I know, right about now you're wondering how somebody who never touched a banjo taught me how to play. Well, Mom never taught me anything technical about the banjo, but she did show me how to see the world around me.

When I was growing up she could take absolutely nothing and find a way to turn it into something. A pack of construction paper might turn the living room floor into a giant board game. Some Queen Anne's lace pressed between the pages of an old phone book would become amazing Christmas tree ornaments that, to my eyes, put the fancy displays at Longwood Gardens to shame. A reading of Robert Frost's "The Witch Of Coos" on a stormy night could turn our home into a haunted mansion more exciting than anything Disney could dream up.

I used to watch her piece together intricate quilts from fabric scraps. She would also spin raw wool into yarn and then send me into the woods to gather the plants used for making colorful natural dyes. She encouraged me to paint, draw and explore every creative idea that came into my head as long as I didn't blow up the kitchen. It was an environment where improvising was an everyday fact of life.

When I started studying karate the habit of thinking outside the box that I had picked up from Mom wound up being a pretty big asset.

One of the concepts Ed Parker built into his Kenpo Karate system was that it made more sense to learn one movement and then look at twenty-four ways to use that movement than to learn twenty-four individual movements.

I took to that idea like a duck to water. One of my instructors would show me a block or a strike and I would spend days or even weeks looking for ways to blend it into what I already knew. I looked for opportunities to utilize and incorporate the technique.

It was Ed Parker himself who pointed out to me that these ideas could be applied to learning a musical instrument. It's too long a story to tell here, but to sum it up I was sitting on the curb waiting for my ride after a martial arts seminar. It turned out that the guy I was sitting next to was none other than Ed Parker. We wound up chatting for a little while and he asked me what I wanted to "do" with my life. I wasn't even thirteen at the time. All I could do was shrug and say that maybe I would stay with karate, but I wasn't sure.

He just laughed and said that what I had learned up to this point and the way I had been taught could be applied to anything I wanted. Even music.

I perked up at that for a second, but it sounded too crazy. I couldn't see how that made any sense. How is learning to fight the same as learning to play music, or anything else?

When I asked him that he just gave me a big smile and patted me on the shoulder as if I already knew the answer. By then other people started coming around seeking his attention and that was that

When I started playing the banjo I realized pretty quickly that the big picture boiled down to learning how to play the basic "bump dit-ty" strum while changing chords. Everything else involved was nothing more than the application and expansion of that basic skill set. This meant I could take the training concepts I had picked up in the karate dojo and apply them to the banjo.

The old timers I met agreed with me about the frailing stroke being the core technique of the style, but they also stressed the importance of rhythm. "It's the rhythm, kid. That's got to stay the same no matter what happens"

They also pointed out something that I like to jokingly refer to as the number one rule of folk music: "If you are in the rhythm of the song and following the chord progression it's hard to hit a wrong note."

Armed with this information I was able to get to work and start building up my chops. I wasn't mimicking the playing of another banjo player by trying to memorize the individual finger movements of a repertoire list. I was applying the basic skills and discovering my own voice as I went along. I wound up blending the discipline of my martial arts training with the sense of creative freedom my mother had instilled in me when I was growing up.

In this book we are going to take a look at these concepts and talk about how you can develop a personalized practice routine and skill set that you can use to "free up" your banjo playing in jam sessions and solo performances.

Come on, grab your banjo and let's get to work.

 
 
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