Panaeleous

The banjo looks innocent enough, infact it seems to resonate with some of our deeper primitive instincts, those being rhythm and humming. The open conventional Open G tuning of the banjo is deceptive as it is quite easy to pick up an easy 3 chord progression with little practice. the difficulty is that in order to gain the most sound from the banjo, a certain dexterity and subtleness must be present. Finding more unique chords, and ‘runs’ takes quite a bit of understanding of the banjo’s ‘modality’. All this being so intimitating, it is important to remember that at its foundation, the banjo is a percussive string insturment which collects sound in the ‘bell’ to create a ‘drone’ effect. Anybody who has had to tune a banjo outside now how cantankerous the banjo can be and how unforgiving the whole insturment is to changes in atmosphere. Knowing this, it actually allows you some freedom to explore as even with the most tempered of banjos consistent tone fluxuates, the key then becomes joing that ‘arbitrary’ sound into the sound of accompanying insturmentalists. If you are playing by yourself it won’t be so noticable as you are in key with yourself already.
Some basic principals to keep you going even when your banjo sounds like a Chinese New Years parade. Two fundamentals of music are rhythem and melody. Practice your fundamentals such as scales, chromatics, finger picking rolls and runs at a slow and precise rhythm. The best is to practice with a metronome. Pick music you like to hear, if you can slow it down and study the patterns of the rhythm and then the patterns of the insturments notes. It is a fact that if you play in meter with the song and stick the beats on the beat, you will automatically sound more ‘in tune’ and in sync. so it is ultimate that you practice keeping in time, and practice methodically and slowly SOME things you like to hear. If you practice slowly and get it right, the speed will come naturally.
A tip for runs: Pick out a G scale and translate this into chords. Its very easy for banjo as you start with G and you can bar the second fret at A, the fourth at B the fifth at C etc. If you use the whole whole half, whole whole whole half technique you will find your self moving up the neck until at the 12th fret you reach G again. Now find the “F” chords with the typical “F” hand position and use this method to count up the fret to F and back down. You ar now halfway there. Now you can see how two hand gestures can get you up and down the neck of the banjo in two scales being performed by chords. Between these two “F” and “G” chords, there are countless combinations of finger picking rolls and runs. Play around with these, experiment, don’t be afraid to make some ‘whale mating calls’ along the way, fall in love with each not and all the variations of sound you can pluck at each position. There is a whole world in there, and chances are even if you start to shred most will ask you to play “Dueling Banjos’ or “Rocky Top”, you’ll be translating Beethoven to five string tenor in no time.
I think this is one of the coolest insturments in the world and I have been playing about two hours a day for 14 years, there is ALWAYS something more to know, and even though there have been times I think the banjo has it out for me, there are even more times when out of nowhere all the practicing shows in the playing and transcendence occurs. Joy will accompany your hard work and passion so don’t give up.