The Learning Plan

Well now with banjo in hand it's time to decide on the approach I'm going to take to learning Clawhammer playing. 

Certainly one option was to take lessons from my mandolin & guitar teacher. If you've' visited his website through the link on a previous post, you know that he is an accomplished banjo player. I considered that approach but rejected it for a couple of reasons. The main one is because I will be away for most of the summer. I will be volunteering at Sequoia National Park as a Campground Host, so I needed to formulate a plan that would allow me to keep on working on clawhammering in a remote environment and with only occassional (and slow) access to the Internet. 

These restrictions meant that realistically there were two possible approaches over and above simple trial and error. They are:

• Using printed guides
• Computer based courseware that could be installed on my laptop, iPad or both. 

When I purchased the banjo at Deering, I did also buy a book. It's a Mel Bay Publication, First lessons in Clawhammer Banjo, by Dan Levenson. Unfortunately it's short, only 40 pages, and much of the early content such as how to tune the banjo was too basic. 

I investigated a number of online offerings and found lots of good stuff. However in many cases the material was only available when connected to the Net. In the long run these wouldn't work for me because of reasons sited earlier. 

Finally through Banjo Hangout (www.banjohangout.org I became aware of Cathy Fink. There are some free lessons that show her style and it really appealed to my way of learning. Furthermore it's offered through truefire.com, all the material can be downloaded to a laptop and the material is extensive. So that's the approach I'll be following. I'm practicing the right hand exercises now, and can ALMOST hit the strings I intend to hit without looking. Once I get a bit better I'll add a sound file to this blog. 

Buying the Banjo

To satisfy my curiosity about the banjo I took advantage of an introductory class at the Museum of Making Music. It was sponsored by Deering Banjo, and at that event I found out that Deering was sceduling a "Friends and Family" sale on Sunday, March 29. They would be offering their products at deeply discounted prices, so I decided to go. I was able to purchase a Goodtime model for a really good price and I was off and running.

As a matter of fact I actually purchased TWO banjos: a 5 string which will be the subject of this BLOG and a 19 fret tenor. The tenor is tuned like and plays like a mandolin, so the learning curve is not as great to at least play simple melodies on it.

First some background

i have been married to a woman who has sung and played the guitar for about 50 years, but my previous musical experience was playing the accordion through high school. I have always enjoyed listening to acoustic music and finally decided to try to learn an instrument a few years ago.

The mandolin attracted me, and I purchased a beginner instrument from a dealer at a Bluegrass Festival together with an instruction book about 5 years ago.

I didn't progress much further than learning to tune the thing on my own and after about two years my wife decided to kick start my journey by buying me a few lessons as a Christmas present. She gave me a certificate to take lessons from Walt Richards, an acoustic musician in our area who we both like. His website is Trails and Rails. That did it. I became hooked on learning the mandolin, and I still consider it as my "main" instrument.

A year or two later after becoming more curious about the guitar I purchased one, again at a festival, and started having Walt teach me how to play it, first to just chord along and then to fingerpick.

Well now my curiosity has been aroused by the banjo. Furthermore I have decided to pursue learning it differently. I'll have more to say about that in future Blog entries.