been a while

I fixed yon Sea Monkey about a month and a half ago, and have been working at building up those calluses again. Slowly, though, because there's a lot these days to split my attention between and among, even after the kid is fast asleep.

But I'm getting back at it. I like "Wildwood Flowers" except for the jarring switch to the F chord halfway through. F chord, why must you sound so very pretty but be so hard on my inflexible fingers? Hooray for The Carter Family, though. Good stuff, there. If I can find tab for "Ring of Fire" I will be over the moon!

But my favorite song so far, out of all of them (even "Goodnight Ladies" LOL) is this very simple tune called "Dance" from an 1860's banjo instruction manual. It's so light and danceable, and I always see in my head somebody's grandpa with his banjo on his knee playing while the kids and grandkids dance in the parlor some spring evening. It's very short and uncomplicated, and is good practice for me for a number of skills (not using the same finger to play different notes on the same string back to back, building up my flimsy pinkie for further full-on F chord mayhem [this song only needs the little finger note of the F chord, lucky me!], and getting used to switching between quarter and eighth notes). Best of all, it has a pull-off, which is a little tricky to accomplish being as it is the wimpy pinkie that must do the pulling off, but is sounds divine.

For a while tonight, I just practiced some rolls with the F chord. Over and over until my fingers were ready to cramp. Sad thing is, I could do that all night it sounds so nice. Even just screwing around in a vague sort of alternating thumb roll sort of pattern, it's just pretty. Have I mentioned that I love the sound banjos make?

Big problem areas: my posture and my right hand. The one affects the other, and crappy posture is what makes my fancy new banjo strap dig into my shoulder so unpleasantly. Bonus points for figuring that out before I really hurt myself, but I'm not sure how I'll fix my posture without mechanical help. Corsets and banjos go well together, right? Speaking of, the problem with my right hand is the very sloppy way I attack the strings. I'm not hitting just the string I want when I want to, which sounds a bit like a Neil Young guitar solo. (I love you, Mr. Young, but I'm not trying to make those sounds, especially not with an instrument that isn't wired.)

And that, ladies and gents, is what life has been like lately.

No, definitely broken

After fiddling with that peg for a while, and consulting with someone more mechanically proficient than myself, the verdict is in: I need a new peg.

I'm waiting on a paycheck, meager as it is. But it is enough to replace the peg. Actually, it's enough to replace all the pegs, but I don't know how wise it is to blow $80-90 on parts for a $200 banjo. One of these days, it would be nice to upgrade to something nicer, and maybe with a resonator. Something in a Deering. . . I should stop.

I just want to play again. Sea Monkey, I miss your twangy little voice!

GAH

Last night I sat down to play a little Sea Monkey and had a wonderful time except that at least two of my strings weren't holding their tune very well. I've been procrastinating changing strings for a while because of the whole floating bridge thing. I was being a pansy. But when I got to the point where I couldn't even play for a half hour, I realized it was time to just get it over with.

The string changing went swimmingly, but there is nothing so swimy that I can't sink it. And so it was that I broke my 4th string while tuning. Because I am insane and not trusting my brain and my tuner (although to be fair, my tuner sometimes blurts out random notes that are nowhere near where the last reading was on the same string with only slight peg adjustment). But then, and this is really the best part of today's tale of woe, I think I somehow stripped the gears on the 3rd string peg, because it won't wind back up. So now it also looks like I'll be replacing a tuner in addition to the one string.

Strings 1, 2, and 5 sound great, though. And because I swapped out one string at a time, I managed to keep the bridge more or less where it always was. Partial success, partial fail. I'm off to see if i can find just one peg.

I repeat: GAH.

Good day

If you have been saying to yourself "wow, that banjo blog has been quiet for a while. I wonder what that's all about," then wonder no more!

The short answer is: I've been doing little other than unpacking. It's driving me up a wall that I (still) have no practice space. Or space to work on freelance projects. Or space to just go have some quiet time at the end of the day. Because the sunroom is still quite full of boxes. I've been focusing on that and other domestic chores lately, and banjo playing has been on the back burner for a while. I wish I could say those days are over, but there's still a lot of work to do to get the sunroom more hospitable. The work never ends. I did move dear Sea Monkey into the only room with a working humidifier, which I hope will be enough moisture to keep him happy this winter. When I have the money, I'll get a proper humidifier for him, but by that time it will probably be the middle of summer and humidity will be the least of our problems. Isn't that always the way?

Today I did break my banjo fast, and did pretty well considering I didn't bother to trim my nails before hand. It's a testament to my improving slide technique, I guess, that having a bit of nail didn't slow me down. I didn't sound that great, but I didn't sound terrible, either.

I wound my brain all the way back to the beginning with many reps of "Good Night Ladies," but this time I played standing up so I can see what my hands look like in the mirror. I mostly did this to snap me out of staring at my right hand (bad!) but also to get me thinking about how I anchor (or not) my non-picking fingers. I clearly need to think about this more, as they were all over the head most of the time.

Other tunes in rotation were "Wildwood Flowers" (I will defeat you, F chord! Later. . . ) and "Cripple Creek" and, in a fit of why-not, a version of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" that had been modified to play off an F chord. And no, I can't really explain what that means. But it was fun to try out a song with a lot of hammer-ons. I didn't get through more than a few measures before I decided I should move back to familiar territory, but I'm proud of myself for not just filing that page away for later. Lots of repetition. Some frustration over how choppy I am, but more than anything, it was fun just to play again. That's why I'm learning, because more than anything else, it's a damn good time. As I can make more time to practice, I'll even out and maybe even discover a sense of rhythm hiding somewhere in the depths of my DNA. (Please come out, little sense of rhythm! The social awkwardness has gone on long enough!)

Problems: my new strap is not comfortable for playing standing up for very long at all. I'm not sure if it's the narrowness or what that's aggravating me. I like the strap in general, now that it's installed, although I think i did it backwards, but I'm now wondering if I can take the pad I previously crocheted and somehow attractively attach that under the strap's existing pad. Gotta think on that more. I might have to crochet something new to best work with the pad's shape.

Speaking of crochet, my little pick bag is full to bursting. It's just too small for three five picks, a 5th string capo, regular capo, and the little wrench for adjusting head tension. I thought about putting the capos in with my mute, which came with it's own little bag, but there's no room there for the wrench, so the new plan is to just make another little bag. It's not like I don't have yarn or half an hour every now and again.

ah, Google! my friend!

Happiness is finding the tab for "Bile Dem Cabbage Down," as that's the tune for "Down In The Arkansas," which I fell in love with while listening to the re-issue of Jimmy Driftwood's Voice of the People. I strongly recommend that album to anyone who thinks that mountain folk are all backward and intolerant. And I just love Jimmy's voice. I'm not holding my breath for the tab for "Straighten Out My Laig," awesome as that would be.

I'm also pleased to find some fancy (read: complicated) tab for "Cripple Creek" since I still can't my own copy. Looks like a good time to learn how to execute a hammer-on, since I'm already familiar with the tune.

I think I've settled on buying a banjo Fiddlewidget. Kinda reminds me of those stickers you used to be able to get to put on the neck of your guitar. I remember seeing infomercials for stuff like that.

Back!

Today I finally got Sea Monkey out and tuned up. This is the first time since it got too cold to play at the old place. WOOO! I didn't get to play too long, because The Daughter came home and wanted to cause havoc with my tuner, but I remembered how to play "Cripple Creek" without too much mangling, with a dash of "Roving Gambler" and "Good Night Ladies" too. The rest of the time, I pulled up a nice comprehensive chord chart that also indicated the notes for each fret of each string, and goofed around with that for a while.

Banjo resolutions for 2009: practice and all that entails (including learning to cope with that damnable F chord, without which I can't play "The Great Speckled Bird," alas), learn enough music theory that I can write music on the banjo more efficiently, play at least once with other musicians (friends, teachers, random strangers--I'm not picky, I just need to challenge some of my performance anxieties).

I've been offline while we moved to a new apartment, which also meant no banjo for a good long time, what with the packing and heavy lifting. I have been a sad, sad girl. But happy days will be here soon, I hope. Provided that I can locate the box in which my banjo music lurks.

If not, I guess I'll be writing my own. I know three chords. Plus there that whole Internet full of stuff. I've been of a mind to try out some songs on the banjo, so maybe I'll have that sort of interlude.

My wrist reminds me that I need to take it a bit easy, though. Times are hard, times are hard.

a-HA!

It's cold here. Really, extra special cold. Especially in The Shed, which has but a wee electric space heater to take the edge off. It's usually somewhere in the 50s when there are no people or appliances to warm it up. It's no fun trying to make fingers go under such circumstances.

And that's when it's a good idea to kick back with your tab and your CD and figure out where your thinking is off in translating the little pictures into music. Which is exactly what I started to do with "Hard Ain't It Hard" and "Old Joe Clark." I listened to them both while starting at and occasionally making notes upon the tablature. The tune for "Old Joe Clark" is, after several dozen listens, much easier to pick out and easier to pick in general since it's all on the first string. It's weird but catchy. "Hard Ain't It Hard" is (surprise!) harder. I keep getting lost in the flurry of notes and can't anchor myself well enough to really connect with the basic tune. So I'll keep listening to that one until it clicks, but in the meantime I've got the other to play.

And play I have, but still I have a hard time letting go of the strange rhythm I started with so that I can play it like it sounds. I just realized that what I need to do is slow it way, way down and come at it like I've never played Old Joe Clark in my life. I'm having remarkably little trouble adapting to the gussied up version of "Cripple Creek" because a) I started with the very basic tune and then added more notes and b) I started off slow but accurate in terms of rhythm. All this is rather a no-brainer, but I haven't thought about how music and music learning works since I flubbed my way through flute lessons in the fourth grade. It should go without saying that that was not my finest hour.

Speaking of "Cripple Creek," I still need to calm down about slides. I play them so short that it just sounds like a giraffe that's dying in cute little sound bytes. They should sounds much nicer. I can play them nicer, I just need to calm. down. srsly.

So I continue slowly in remedial banjo. And intermediate knitting, since I would like something nice and woollen for my hands in these cold, cold times.

Tight-ish

I did sit down yesterday to tighten Sea Monkey's head, but I forgot to print out anything that had the diagram of which nuts to tighten in which order, or even any vague recommendations on such adjustments, so I just kinda tightened everything a little bit (about a half turn, I'd say) in something like the pattern I remembered (I hope) from The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjo.

I am a weenie, though, and while I did tighten some, it's not really obvious. The bridge is still rather sunken in. I think I'm still a good night of sleep away from working up the nerve to do it right. I didn't rupture anything, though, so that's worth something.

Practice was brief, but consisted of "Good Night Ladies" and "Cripple Creek" and some forward and backward roll exercises that I think sound pretty. Nothing fancy, just working those joints and fingertips to get 'em ready for some serious practice tomorrow. After the aforementioned good night of sleep.

Minor Update

Since I just got a shout-out from The Nikiverse, I thought I should mention that Sea Monkey and I are still weathering our Halloween costume-induced separation. That is just about over, though, and I am literally itching to get back to pickin' soon.

Over the past weekend I went up to Different Strummer and got a new thumb pick (size small, for those days when it's cold and my thumb *isn't* bloated--drawback of shopping for picks in mid-August), some fresh new strings, and one of those little wrenchy things so I can adjust Sea Monkey's head tension. I haven't actually done that yet, as I'm waiting for a night when I am not completely exhausted, but soon. That's what I've got to get done before any more practicing happens, because I must have a banjo that sounds right.

But the coolest thing about visiting the Old Town School was the vending machine just as you come into the building, which sells sugary confections as well as, you guessed it, strings for various instruments, including banjo! I love that place. I talk to a different employee every single time I go there, but they're all nice and knowledgable and they don't mind when I agonize over thumb picks.

The only other thing is that I trimmed my nails tonight. I've decided to take it easy on my right-hand nails, because it looks like I'll be needing those a bit longer for when I make my foray into frailing. Since there's some nice instructional material online, I may alternate that in with the bluegrass stuff to keep things lively and give me some new skills. Left hand work should be about the same, but I don't know about this clawhammer business.