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.

oh, and maintenance notes, so I don't forget

Last night as I checked Sea Monkey's tuning, I was a bit alarmed that the fourth string suddenly got a lot deeper after I hit it. It went from in perfect tune to . . . well, farther and farther from perfect tune. I tightened the screw on the tuning peg, which had worked itself loose, and string four was back in action. And I tightened up the other screws on the other pegs just to be sure they're all happy. Planetary tuners FTW. :)

But that reminded me that Sea Monkey's head tension is a little off, so I need to get me a banjo bracket wrench. And while I'm at it, I may as well get some new strings. I can probably wait on changing them out (and that will be a special day, since changing banjo strings is more complicated than changing guitar strings), but it would be good to have them handy for when I work up the nerve. We've had new strings for the ukulele since July and I still haven't overcome my fear of epic fail enough to change those out. Of course, the uke is mostly a toy for Gaz, who doesn't care all that much if she's missing a string. In fact, she insists on keeping the uke so out of tune that the strings are quite slack.

cold hands are not anyone's playthings

For three days, I played no banjo. My fingers got all soft and flabby. There was moping. But the (un)motivating factor was extreme exhaustion, so if I had pushed myself to practice, it likely would not have gone anywhere satisfying.

Then I broke my fast and played. I played the songs that I know the tunes to well enough that I can actually tell how close I am to how I want to sound ("Good Night Ladies" and "Cripple Creek"), which are also my slide songs. Even if I haven't mastered other songs that came before these, it's not like I don't need to practice my slides. So that was where I spent most of my time. I also decided to treat myself to a little skipping ahead to read about and try out the next two techniques: pull-offs and hammer-ons. And they are, in fact, just as you would imagine from the name. It's still a strange new coordination to learn, though, when to apply the left-hand finger with respect to when the right hand hits the string. But that was a lovely and nutritious little jelly donut for my brain. Wow. Weird metaphor. Sorry.

The big new thing, as we move into fall, I must rely on technology to keep my hands warm enough for me to play at all. Right now I'm using a combination of some drugstore stretchy gloves that my dad cut the fingers off of, and a pair of nice wooly wristbands that my mother-in-law brought back from Scandinavia. It's great for my right hand, but the glove part sometimes dampens the first string, which is not all that helpful. I'm trying to figure out if there is some way to make something that is both palmless and mostly fingerless but still skin-covering enough that my fingers will be able to move at a reasonably swift pace. This calls for some knitting/crochet experimentation. If only that wouldn't cut into my pickin' time.

Break's over!

Actually, it's been over for a while. I took a couple of days off to let my hand rest, and then promptly injured my middle finger in the same way from which my index finger had just recovered. This time I decided to play through it (though more gently than usual) and it got better soon enough. Last weekend's travel played havoc with the banjo, but now that we're all home, I am back in my groove.

Actually, we celebrated the family unit all being home by grooving to Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Is it possible to hear that song and not be instantly filled with glee and inspired to dance around the room with one's spouse and child? I don't believe so.

But with a little time off, and then with a healthy dose of listening to the CD that came with my method book, I am quite unsatisfied with my progress. Yeah, "Good Night Ladies," even the crazy new version with slides and a forward roll, sounds like what it is, but everything else . . . I couldn't recognize what I have been playing as the "Old Joe Clark" on the CD. Not even close. Of course, part of that is because I was reading the notation wrong (it's been probably 20ish years since I last had to think seriously about notation), but that is only a very small part of the problem. Even playing it through properly, it sounds like something from space. Which would be lovely if I was Struck by Moog. My plan for that song, is to listen to it much, much more, mark the notes I really need to play the hell out of, and then re-learn it.

But in the meantime, I also find myself frustrated with yet another plateau. I just have to keep plugging away, but it's hard to be motivated to play as long as I need to move along. My tactic is to keep it simple. I'm focusing on the two songs I know that feature slides ("Good Night Ladies" of course and the somewhat more complicated version of "Cripple Creek" that's got slides and pinches *and* sounds very pretty, even when I play it), and then filling in with all the baby songs. I return to "Hard, Ain't It Hard" sometimes, but that's another one like "Old Joe Clark" that needs way more thought on my part before it will sound right.

Another thing that inspires mixed feelings in me is that I found the tab for Tom Waits's "Gun Street Girl." The trick is that it's arranged for clawhammer (which is not the style I'm learning) and fretless banjo. I have no doubt that I'll dig frailing when the time comes, but I don't think I've got another banjo in my future for quite a while. From what I understand, the fretless arrangement lent a more strange, somewhat dissonant edge to the song, which I suppose means that playing it on a fretless banjo will make it sound more on-key and crisp? I have no idea. I still plan on trying it out soon, just to play around, but it's another song that won't sound right for a while. At least I know that tune by heart. That's a big plus.

Still, I love my banjo. I love playing, I love learning, I love building my callouses back up. It's all good. So I sound like I started playing two months ago. No big deal, as long as next month I sound like I started playing three months ago.

break time

I finally got a cortisone shot this morning for the tenosynovitis in my right hand/wrist. I still have to take a couple of days off of banjo playing, between that and my left index finger, which I hurt somehow while playing an F chord. So far the key of C (which I only just started on yesterday) = suck. I don't think I have any songs that would work around my painful digits.

Stay tuned for resumed banjo rambling, maybe tomorrow night. For now, it's back in the splint for my picking hand.

slowly going forward

I turned the page! And slides are killing me! And they're an essential component of bluegrass music! So I have to learn them! But pinches are hella easy and they sound pretty too. I'm working on an arrangement of "Cripple Creek" that's got slides and pinches. Knowing the tune and the tune being a particularly beautiful one are my motivators. I'm really glad I got the banjo I did, since the neck is more narrow than the Gold Tone's was. I'm having a hard enough time sliding and keeping my fingers off the other strings at the same time, if there was more neck in the way I would probably still be on the floor crying.

This morning I practiced in my old bedroom with the windows open. Since I was off in the far corner of the house, I decided to leave the mute off so I could have a better idea of how my slide attempts sound. I love practicing with the mute off, and the wildlife seemed to love it too: a bee showed up and buzzed around the screen every time I played. So today, practice was hard, but in a good way. I'm sounding more and more bluegrassy every day, and that makes me quite happy.

Pickin' at the old homestead

I'm in Indiana visiting my folks these days. Banjo practice hasn't been too badly affected by the change of location. Last night I played "Old Joe Clark" ten times, with a smattering of other songs and exercises. This song's at least twice as long as anything else I know how to play. And everyone thought I was in the other room playing computer games because my mute is powerful enough to keep the racket contained by a flimsy little plywood door.

The other cool thing is that after a fair amount of poking around online, I found the tab for the three-finger arrangement of "Journey of the Sorceror," which unfortunately I can't completely read yet. It must have some hammer-on or hammer-off stuff going on, which I haven't gotten to yet. Soon, though.

I think now I've gone through all the basic rolls, so the next step should be slides and then more complicated things. I just have to get up the nerve to flip to the next chapter.

Bonus!

I got to practice for a whole hour today, while The Husband took The Gaz to the zoo. Bliss! Any day I get my hour's work out of the way before bedtime (and therefore without the encumbrance of the mute) is a good, good day.

little update

Banjo is going well, and I celebrated installing the printer on my laptop (which is running Ubuntu now, instead of Windows) by printing out that alternate thumb roll exercise I've been meaning to employ. Just how many ways to play "Roving Gambler" are there, anyway?* At least it makes playing the same song over and over less like playing the same song over and over.


* The answer is "at least one more" as I haven't gotten to backward rolls yet, although that's coming soon. And then there are nigh-infinite combinations of rolls from there on out. . .

I know you're all pining to know how the banjo is going, here's the report. I'm getting better. I did well enough on "Roving Gambler" the other night that I moved on to "Loch Lomond" for a little while, so now I've got three songs that I rotate between when I practice, which makes practice more fun and also makes it easier for me to make it a whole hour in spite of exhaustion and tired and achey hands.

I've also received and put to use my banjo mute. It turns out that there's a bit of a learning curve there. The first thing I did when installing it is knock my bridge over, which is really no good. I'm better now, and hopefully have learned enough that I won't damage the bridge. They're not too expensive to replace, but man, I really don't want to get into that level of banjo maintenance right now. On that subject, my third string is not holding tune as well as the others, and I've realized everything I play relies heavily on that string. Next on the agenda is to try to pick up some other songs that will at least wear my strings out more evenly.

I'm in the induction phase of The Banjo Diet, so I've been listening to as much bluegrass as I can get my hands on (the better to be able to tell when I sound good and when I sound like crap). I am digging Flatt & Scruggs, but I was surprised that nothing that I'm learning comes close to Scruggs's sound, not even a seriously slowed down version. Then I remembered that Scruggs has his own unique method of playing, a method which I was told by the banjo maven at Different Strummer is too complicated for an absolute beginner, so I should really be listening to other things. Gonna roll around in some Osborne Brothers and Ralph Stanley tunes and see if that helps. At least I'll get to know some other banjo players.

It turns out that my tendinitis does affect my playing more than I had optimistically estimated, but it's like crochet in that it kinda balances out other tendon-straining activities. I can still definitely overdo it, but as long as I don't start off the night with an hour of banjo (and now that I've got my mute, I'm not limited to early evening practicing) I can use it to take the edge off the strain of, say, painting or handwriting or coloring with Gaz. In other tendinitis news, I'm planning on a cortisone shot and contemplating acupuncture as a way of fixing things without surgery and trips to the hand surgeon. There's a place in the old 'hood that treats everyone in one big "lounge" instead of individual treatment rooms, so that keeps the costs down. I'm thinking of checking that out.