We have had numerous people join the site over the years wanting to learn to play the classic banjo... I wonder what ever happened to them??

Some, it appears, expected to learn in a couple of weeks. ...Hahahahahhahhaha !!

 

I found this interesting, and tongue in cheek, article on how much practice you need and how long it will take to succeed!

... I have only got 150 years to go and then I will be Fred Van Eps.

 

 

The following charts are for 7 days per week, 3 days per week, and 1 day per week.

 

Average Hours it takes to learn to play the Banjo ……………..2,000

 

How Many Minutes is that?......................................................120,000

 

 

7 Days per week

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …5

Per Week Minutes Invested…35

Years to Goal…65.9

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …30

Per Week Minutes Invested…210

Years to Goal…11.0

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …45

Per Week Minutes Invested…315

Years to Goal…7.3

 

3 Days per week

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …5

Per Week Minutes Invested…15

Years to Goal…153.8

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …30

Per Week Minutes Invested…90

Years to Goal…25.6

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …45

Per Week Minutes Invested…135

Years to Goal…17.1

 

1 Day per week

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …5

Per Week Minutes Invested…5

Years to Goal…461.5

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …30

Per Week Minutes Invested…30

Years to Goal…76.9

 

Average Daily Minutes of Practice …45

Per Week Minutes Invested…45

Years to Goal…51.3

 

 

Thanks to Richie Dotson  http://www.banjoresource.com/

 

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I figure practicing is generally one of those mathematic functions where one starts out using massive amounts of time and then slowly tapers off without ever completely stopping (or reaching zero or "perfection"). Mr. VE constantly practiced over his entire life.

I doubt another 150 yrs would do me much good!

Blimey, 1 day per week is a long road to travel!

I read an interesting book recently about a man attempting to learn the guitar from scratch. It quotes some interesting research about learning - apparently, it's not so much the amount you practice but 'how' you practice; you could clock up hours just repeating what your comfortable playing and reach a plateau; instead it's better to focus on remedying weakness ('deliberate practice') and to practice something just beyond your current reach.  Here is a link if anyone is interested:http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jun/05/guitar-zero-adult-le...

Also, I like these words from Danny Barnes: "Don't worry about sometimes sounding really bad. It's okay.  As an example, if I'm working on something at home, I don't think you could stay in the same room as me, I sound terrible. Playing is not the same thing as practicing...I remember one time I was helping a lady get through a piece and she was struggling and hitting lots of bad notes and she stops and asks, 'how can you stand to sit here while I hack through this?' and I thought about it and said, 'Hey, welcome to learning to play an instrument."

I found that quite comforting, as I wince my through bum notes and strange twanging....

As a long-time teacher and student of string music I can say with confidence that both your paragraphs are absolutely correct.

(The long winded article however is so wrong-headed I wouldn't know where or how to begin to unravel the ball of twisted up ideas the author has gathered around his brain all to prevent himself from playing music).

But, yeah, practice and playing are two different things. Practice is spending time doing things one is bad at. Practice involves analysis and intellect. These things, which are so valuable for practice,  are useless for playing.

I should add to my previous response that my own practice contains sounds as palatable as  "bum notes and strange twanging" only on a good day. Most of the time it includes sounds and rhythms that could charitably be called "Not Music". Our western scale goes from A to G along with some sharps and flats. On a typical practice day, doing the kind of practice where I am learning a new piece of music, or a practicing a new technique, my banjo is able, with no special effort on my part, to play some R, W, and Q notes, to say nothing of the N flats, O sharps, and Z naturals. I am also capable, again with no effort on my part, of producing the most astonishingly complex rhythms. I can play a measure of 5.3/4 followed by one in 9.5/8 time all the while the printed music notation indicates 4/4 throughout. 

What I will never do is quicken or slow down the pulse (unless that is the composer's indicated intention, at the end of a intro passage for instance).  I practice all music in 1/1 time. If I'm working out what fingering I want to use I don't play any pulse. It's just discombobulated, unmoored notes and chords. If I'm looking at an old score where the ink is blurred or it's vaguely handwritten and/or  a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, I'll test each possibility without a rhythmic pulse. But once I'm ready to practice the piece itself I find out at what speed I can play the most difficult passage and I practice the whole piece at that speed. This is after playing each section or each subsection at one speed. Once I can do that coherently I'll up the speed in small increments, keeping everything in proportion. 

More than half my students come to me for the first time with the habit of rushing through the parts they can play well and slowing down for the parts that are harder to play. This same "demographic" inevitably gives priority to the left hand, to the fingering hand. Their priority is to get the right notes. They are frustrated and aggravated because they sound unmusical and they know it but don't know why. I tell them to reverse their priority and give more attention to pulse and timing and to the right hand.  Most of them give it a try and they improve rapidly and permanently. They discover that the left hand is to some extent self -correcting but that the right hand is not. In other words the notes will follow the rhythm but rhythm will not follow ("obey") the notes.  If the right hand leads the left hand will follow. If the left hand leads the right hand will not follow, will not correct itself.

I have met very few people who are truly incapable of tapping out a steady beat. If you can walk at one pace without continually speeding up and slowing down you can play steady music. It's entirely a matter of the student surrendering their misplaced priority to what the music needs. With very rare exceptions it only the student who insists on practicing in ways that do not produce results who cannot make progress or play coherent music. And some students, like the the author of that article, are very stubborn. They think that if they learn more chord theory they will be able to play at a steady pace.  And nothing will change their minds. Nothing can be done for them. But it's because they are stubborn and like to imagine that they are In Control, not because they are congenitally arhythmic or inherently unmusical. Unlike them, I will change my mind about this, if I discover evidence to the contrary.

Hmmm.. it's not just me then??

... but I am the sort of person that you describe, who is confident that the composer got it wrong and my "embellishments and fingering" are far superior to theirs.. and who is usually right.    ;-)

ps. Metronomes often get it wrong too !

On the contrary, I encourage students (and everyone else) to find their own fingering. Many published banjo arrangements are *not* what the composer wrote or the supposedly transcribed player actually played. You are right on the money about metronomes however. They all slow down!! I better be careful about jokes like that though. I said as much to a student last week and he believed me!!

thereallyniceman said:

Hmmm.. it's not just me then??

... but I am the sort of person that you describe, who is confident that the composer got it wrong and my "embellishments and fingering" are far superior to theirs.. and who is usually right.    ;-)

ps. Metronomes often get it wrong too !

You must have a very special metronome. Mine slow down at the easy bits and speed up at the tricky bits... it's spooky how they know !!! 

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