Learn the banjo

I STARTED THE BANJO AT THANKSGIVING GOT A FEWW SONGS DOWN BUT THEY ARE SLOW HELP

I was bought a banjo over a year ago and simply haven’t done enough practising. I reckon 35 minutes per day would be about possible, but on a working day I have about 2 hours ‘spare’ time – that is not preparing food, preparing for the next day, eating and putting the kids to bed between 8pm when I get home and 11.30 when I (should) be in bed

Okay, I’m no expert, and I’m just kinda so-so at tenor and uke-tuned tenor (basically the same as a guitar without the top two strings; E and A).

But yeah, if you’re an absolute beginner, you kind of need to pick a type of banjo you want to play. It’s going to be based more on what sort of playing you want to be doing. I’m gonna guess that most people are going to want to play 5-string banjo.

But there’s also tenor and plectrum. I still pretty much am clueless on the 5-string. I’d like to tackle that one day, but I’m more interested in learning plectrum. Trouble is, I don’t have one. Shewt!

So yeah, start there. Basically, what style of music or style of playing do you want to play? 5-string is generally what’s used most for country, folk and bluegrass.

Tenor is kinda useless, I think, but it still sounds like a banjo. Tenor is good for folky stuff, but you see it more in old-time jazz bands and stuff. Plectrum is better for that kind of thing, though.

If you’re looking to just play it to have that loud, plunky sound and just want to have fun with it, and you’re not super picky about what kind of style you want to play, I’d reccomend getting a ukulele banjo because it’s small, easy to learn, especially if you already play guitar, or just get a tenor banjo and tune it like a guitar, like I did.

I hope to learn the banjo or guitar someday, but right now with school taking up most of my non-Audrey free time, it’s just not happening. I’ll continue to fiddle with it when I can, and one of these days I’ll add it back to my list.

Last night I was practicing the three cords I’m working on when I noticed the C kept reminding me of one of my current favorite songs, “Margaret vs. Pauline” by Neko Case. Eric and I looked up the tab and lo and behold it’s all three of my chords (C, Em, and G) and just one more, B7. I’ve decided I’ll learn the B7 so I can practice trying to learn an actual song. It should be good motivation for me, and I’ll know if it sounds “right” or not.

So far, I’m feeling much better about this than my attempts at learning guitar. It seems easier somehow. I workd on G (it’s tuned to open G so that’s easy!), Em and C. My goal is to be able to write a song entirely on my own soon.