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| Moderated by: Tony Provencher, Richard Hefner | Page:   1 2 |
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| Got me a new banjo :) | Rate Topic |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 6th, 2006 02:37 pm |
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21st Post |
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Bill Approved
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I am sure that Patrick didn't mean to come of hard either. He is most likely very passionate about the subject and that is why it seems so. I agree with you Dean though, I love this site because of how "caring" or "gentle" it is. I know that isn't a good explanation of it....wait. "This is an understanding site that welcomes all in good spirits and respects each other with the common goal to enjoy yourself while enriching your life with others." Hey, not to shabby.  Okay, that's all I have to say. Hope all are doing well and be sure to post the clips to the challenge.
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| Posted: Mon Feb 6th, 2006 04:09 pm |
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22nd Post |
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banjo brad Super Moderator 
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Before this degenerates into a flame-fest, as happens so often on other sites when Patrick posts, let me say this. Patrick is very passionate about the music he loves and teaches (for free!). His idea is that anybody can learn to play the banjo, and that it does not require a great deal of technical or academic expertise. If you think back to the very first time you picked up a fretted instrument, you will see what he means by not thinking about what you are doing. That first chord you made took time and effort, you had to stop, look at the string, think about your first finger, place it, then think about the second finger and fret and string (while remembering not to move your first finger), etc. This took time and effort, and caused a lot of heartache and discouragement. Eventually you were able to make 1 chord. Then, on to the next. As time went by, things became easier as muscle memory kicked in. The basic stroke is the same thing without all the individual thinking. Sit down in front of the TV, mute the strings with your left hand, and just do bump-a-ditty while becoming engrossed in the fascinating events on "Survivor" (Hugh hint of irony here, I watch very little TV, and never the realitiy shows). Soon, the stoke is there, and you can easily start the rest of banjo playing. I, for one, am most grateful to Patrick for all he has done. I have not had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but if he ever heads towards AZ for a bit, I would make a point of doing so. I am using some of his material as collateral teaching aids with the learning I have agreed to help learn to play. (He now steps down from his high horse): Just had to add this, I would hate to have Patrick feel unwelcome on this board, which is so in need of his enthusiasm for the instrument and the music.  I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.(Dean, Tim, I know how you guys feel, but Patrick is on the track. Even the playing you do needed attention and practice to reach the stage it is. If you are unwilling to think you can learn something new, then you will not be able to learn something new.)
____________________ ezFolk Help Brad Prickly Pear Music Banjo Brad's ezFolk page TOTMC |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 6th, 2006 07:25 pm |
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23rd Post |
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Richard Hefner Administrator 
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What Bill said sums it up..."This is an understanding site that welcomes all in good spirits and respects each other with the common goal to enjoy yourself while enriching your life with others." I want people to feel welcome and not be intimidated to share their music, ask questions, or share their ideas without being verbally attacked. I'm happy to say there's been very little of that here. I think I've deleted two messages over the past year that were starting to get mean spirited. Really, there's enough of that elsewhere and it's easy enough to find if anybody's looking for it. 
____________________ Richard Hefner MP3 Page: http://www.ezfolk.com/audio/richardhefner Running Blog: http://old-runner.com |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 6th, 2006 08:07 pm |
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24th Post |
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Patrick_Woolery Approved
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Any style you play has limitations, folks. I'm a frailer. I don't know what the difference is supposed to be between frailing and clawhammer. The books I learned from treated the terms as interchangeable. I have tried to learn 3-finger picking and I love to hear it. I just have not put in the practice to get it right. I may eventually. However, frailing is limited. So what? My vocal range is limited. Any single instrument is going to be limited in the sense that you can only play so many notes at a time. As to home-grown fingerpicking, didn't Earl Scruggs sort of revolutionize the sound of bluegrass music with his homegrown fingerpicking? Keep room to be flexible, of course, be ready to learn new things, actively work at stretching your boundaries, but above all enjoy the music. Patrick Costello has a huge amount of good stuff in his book. I have only recently come to appreciate the way it is put together as I realize that I can play several melodies (some rather complex), but I can't follow a chord progression in a jam. I came at it from a direction that instilled confidence in me (Hey! I can play a tune!), but didn't teach me the basics of sharing music. I still have a lot of trouble with singing while I play, but I'm working on it. I am glad he posts here (even if only 5 times). I don't agree with everything he says and I don't really think he is a banjo guru. He wrote a darned good book, teaches for free, and had one of the best learning thoughts I have ever come across on his site recently. He said that with all the answers so readily available in books, recordings, instructional materials, and so on, we have forgotten to spend the time and effort working it out on our own. Boy is that true for me! So, I have promised myself I won't buy any instructional materials until I reach the point where those I have are below my skill level. If I don't know how to do something, I will work to figure it out. If I had more time for structured practice (I'm a full-time Daddy and that leaves no time for setting aside a predictable half hour to work on anything), I would put in a CD and play the same tune over and over while I followed a chord chart, just so I could learn to feel chord changes on one tune. Then, I would do a different tune the next day. I know what I want to do to learn, but it always seems like I have to wash dishes, tidy up, iron clothes, or (today) try to fix the busted dryer. A friend of mine said that "we are supposed to PLAY music, not to WORK it." Ain't that the truth, though. If you don't click with clawhammer, do it the way that works. If you find that your style is limited for what you want to do, change it. Study what other people do, try it out, give an honest effort to learn it. You will certainly learn from it, even if you can't make it happen for you. The way I finally got the bum-ditty stroke was to hold a credit card (actually one of the free fake cards that the credit card company keeps sending me) with one long edge against the second joint (closer to the palm, not at the fingertips) and the index finger slightly less curled than the rest. That held my hand in the right position. Then I didn't bother with bum-ditty, I just strummed and bounced the thumb off the 5th string when I came up for another strum. When I came somewhere close to holding a rhythm, I started hitting just the first string so it went 1-5-1-5-1-5 almost interminably. Then, I tried to get that 2nd string. Took me a long time to get to 2-5-2-5 and even longer to do 1-5-2-5. When I could do it, I worked on leaving out the 5 every so often. I still hit the string, but didn't "pop" it when I came up. By that point, I could do it without the card. I don't know exactly why I decided on frailing over bluegrass. Early on, I tried both. I think it was reading somewhere about how this was the less common style and better for solo playing than the rolls, which fit better with a band. Of course, that's not an entirely accurate statement, as I now understand, but it was part of getting me into one style rather than another. Wow. Long way to say Patrick Costello has some good points and the rest of y'all do too. Enjoy the noise, folks. My daughter has been as patient as I could expect so I told her she could make happy faces.          
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| Posted: Tue Feb 7th, 2006 12:10 am |
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25th Post |
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1four5 Approved 
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as happens so often on other sites I put a lot of thought into my reply, and tried to make it cool, for the very reason above. Patrick W's line about if something doesn't click, find something that does, says it all. I also don't think that Patrick C realizes that Brad and I and Tim have had the clawhammer talk going on, and didn't quite know where we were coming from. I read a lot on the other sites, and certianly don't want any negitivity here. Back to the clawhammer. Like I said before, in my attempts (and when I work on something believe me, I go for blood) I desperately search for an anchor or reference. It's not timing, because I can finger pick a respectfull bumditty, rather it's technique that just hasen't clicked. With my hand detached from the banjo, I might as well be blowing bubbles. The same goes for strumming a guitar, and like I said, I pretty much ruined a guitar trying. I've tried imaginitive ways of laying my palm over the bridge and playing far back, to locking my pinkey in the crotch between the neck and pot and playing up high, to flicking my thumb off the edge of the neck. I've also knocked my bridge out of place...so you get the idea of my coordination I've come up with some cool precussion strumming with my fingers dragging and banging all over the head, and have actually had some interesting success playing at the neck to pot joint, catching the high D string on the up stroke for the tty part of the strum instead of the thumb on the drone string. This has some very interesting possibilities, because it can be done with my pinky in any key with my finger picks in place...so it's not all going for naught, one of theses days something will click, and I'll have a new keeper. It really does slay me...because the second I anchor my pinky for a reference and start fingerpicking...I'm in a whole new world.
____________________ These are the good times! |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 7th, 2006 12:27 am |
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26th Post |
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beeconk Approved
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Bill wrote: I am sure that Patrick didn't mean to come of hard either. y'aint seen nuttin yet
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| Posted: Wed Feb 8th, 2006 02:31 pm |
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27th Post |
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Bill Approved
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beeconk wrote: Bill wrote:I am sure that Patrick didn't mean to come of hard either. You guys are crazy! 
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