I am glad to see 9 members now. As this is never going to be a huge group, we are not going to have the benefit of a small core of active members to keep everything moving. We are all going to have to get involved. it might be interesting for us all to introduce ourselves.
For me this is going to be easy as I am simply going to link some blog entries.
In the past month and a half I have moved on. I took all the drop thumb tunes 'off tab'. Then I moved on and sorted out my fingering for all the 'kitchen sink tunes'. What I mean by that is I worked my way to the stage where I can perfectly play all the tunes at a really slow speed whilst still reading the tab. Sounds simple but I found rests, galax licks, m skips fa7rly awkward and it took a good effort. Especially 'Angeline' so take Dan's advice inthe book and don't start with it.
I have just spent the last three days memorising 'Year of Jubilo', and can now play it slowly without the tablature. No tricky syncopation or pinkie work on that one though. Next up for me is memorising 'West Fork Gals' which I think will be a bit more difficult.
8 Comments |
 | Frail-Safe says:
11/18/2017 6:54:25 PM
I was very happy to run across this group the other day. It looks like there's room for one more, so here I am. I've played clawhammer on and off for a number of years. At my peak I was a low intermediate player and a mediocre one at that. I recently decided that I needed to go back to the beginning and learn to do things properly and keep working on something until I get it right before moving to the next step. Like a lot of people, I'm sure, I have a tendency to try to move ahead before I really mastered something. My new banjo philosophy is that if it takes me a few years to get through Dan's book because I'm actually learning to do things the right way, that's a good thing. I'm really just getting started; I've been working on the chorded version of Spotted Pony for the last couple of days.
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 | AndyW says:
11/18/2017 10:26:42 PM
Hi, and welcome to the group. Glad to see you are adopting a 'get it right' approach, something I am trying myself after years of mediocre guitar playing.
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 | The_Banjo_Ninja says:
11/30/2017 3:43:22 PM
Hi All!
I'm new to the Banjo Hangout and relatively new to the banjo. Been "playing" for about a year and am completely self taught. I started learning with YouTube videos then moved on to the book Clawhammer for the Complete Ignoramus. Learned some random tunes from the internet and finally bought Dan's book because I wanted to learn fiddle tunes but found other books and tabs too hard because my foundation was lacking. I'm hoping through studying this book I can improve my playing in general and advance my skills.
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| AndyW says:
11/30/2017 3:47:34 PM
Dan's book I find fantastic. The tablature is set out fantastically. There are minor bits where it is 'squeezed' but all in all I think you'll find using it a pleasant experience.
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 | Junior_co says:
2/14/2018 6:14:16 AM
Well, it seems you're now up to 28 members. My name is Jason, but please call me Junior. The banjo is my first ever instrument.
How did I came to own a Banjo? Found one in the basement of my gal's parent's house while helping with a small leak... Had no clue that anyone in her family played anything musical. Her dad never took to the Banjo (lefty learning on a righty) so I told em' I was taking it. He didn't seem to mind. So now I have a Banjo!
This of course led me down the rabbit hole... Found that there was more styles of Banjo playing than just the three finger picking! Of course I had already been practicing my rolls for a few weeks. During that practice I found the banjo needed some adjusting, and found my way to a local folk music store...
The fellow there, adjusted my banjo pretty quick, and let me chat him up the whole time. While chatting with him, I asked him which style he recommended to learn first. His advice was to listen to both styles (Youtube!) and see what strikes my fancy... Long story all ready way to long, I chose the Claw Hammer style. Aside from random youtube lessons, I've just ordered the Claw Hammer Banjo from Scratch.
All that being said, I'm part of the Practice group, but am looking for any helpful advice to learning my first instrument ever; the Banjo...
Good on y'all,
Junior
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 | thewalkingdeaf says:
4/15/2018 1:25:10 PM
Hi, gang. Just saying hello to my fellow 'Scratchers. :-)
Got kind of beckoned away from learning bluegrass banjo recently by the clawhammer sound and discovered Dan and his methods. Been learning from the book (DVD's on the way) for the last week and have just run through the first incarnation of Spotted Pony in C (page 51) at 80bpm without any hiccups. Stoked! :-)
Onwards and upwards into double D world and the rest of the tunes in basic form.
Look forward to hearing from you. :-)
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| AndyW says:
4/15/2018 1:42:53 PM
Have fun....Treat the 'double thumb' and 'drop thumb' versions of the tunes more as tuneful exercises than tunes in themselves. What I mean by that is firstly don't waste time committing anything to memory pre 'kitchen sink', and don't be frightened of changing notes if they don't sound right.
The double thumb/drop thumbs will (if you're like me) take a fair bit of time to get through but give a really good grounding.
Clawhammer learning is a bit of a cumulative thing so don't get despondent if the learning seems slow at the beginning, it gets better.
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| thewalkingdeaf says:
4/16/2018 6:24:12 AM
Cheers, Andy. :-)
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