Overheard @ Trop's

Banjo Instructor: "Well done. Good work. Just keep going with it, only faster.... Okay then, for this week I'm giving you something more challenging to see how you do."

Trop: ~groan~

[He starts writing down a new song I'm supposed to learn.]

BI: "This might be painful."

Trop: "Abuse me."

BI: ~cough~

So easy, even a squirrel can do it

I wish it was so easy a squirrel could do it.

Despite a very frustrating start, I'm beginning to get comfortable with my new-to-me banjo.

Banjo is SO different from acoustic guitar.

First, have you ever lifted a banjo? They're heavy! I'm finally not getting a sore shoulder every time I lug the thing around.

Though I've played guitar for years, I never took guitar lessons. I have a very limited range that includes some finger picking. Unfortunately for me, I locked on to one style of finger picking and never got beyond that.

Banjo, of course, is ALL about finger picking, and the picking patterns (rolls) change constantly. After forty years of picking one way and one way only, my fingers have had to break out and do things differently. It took me two weeks of frustration to break my fingers of their guitar picking ways. I'm still struggling with it.

Guitars have six strings, banjos have only five. When finger picking on a guitar, the thumb always plays bass notes (6th, 5th, or 4th string). On a banjo, however, the thumb often plays the high note (the 5th, short string). My ear-hand coordination, conditioned on all those years of guitar playing, is still transitioning to this difference. My brain still doesn't always register that the thumb plays a high note. Very frustrating.

I have to constantly remind myself that as a beginning guitar player, I started with simple songs like Home on the Range and Camptown Races and I played them over and over and over again for months. I'm just six weeks into banjo lessons and I have two simple songs in my repertoire. Unlike guitar though, the purpose of repetition is to not just to learn chords and forward and backward rolls, but to do them fast and with the proper syncopation. Now that my fingers are starting to get it, I'm enjoying that challenge. My teacher says I have great potential. I'm sure he says that to all his students.

So... so far, so good. I don't regret the purchase and I'm really enjoying the challenge. At my last lesson, I played through my first song while my teacher accompanied me on guitar. It was really beautiful.