I’m a techy geek

Being a “techy geek” means that I naturally seek out chances to mix banjos with all things “high tech”. Or at least the things that are tolerant of being mixed with banjos! Of course you may have heard some of the jokes: what’s one thing you’ll never hear the banjo player say? “You can find it on the C:\ drive…” Ha! I can remember my first email address: I told people to address their paper envelopes to “Email c/o Paul Pope, 123 Main St….” O.k., not so funny, but it does fall into the stereotype that some people seem to have of the banjo player being an in-bred, un-intelligent, toothless moron.

So I am wondering about your experiences when it comes to banjo picking and technology. And, well, o.k., let’s go ahead and open the discussion up to include all acoustic pickers, not just banjo players. String pickers in general will likely have some of the same experiences and we’ll probably all find a benefit from the discoveries of those who pick different instruments than ourselves.

Here’s a little conversation starter: electronic tuners! What do you use? What do you like? Do any of you consider yourselves "gadget guys" or "gadget gals" who seek out the latest and greatest electronic doo-hickey? Or have most of you kept things bare bones and spent smaller dollars? I personally use one of the Intelli-Touch tuners, the PT10. This is a wildly popular tuner, at least in the Michigan area. You Michigan pickers  know the one I’m talking about: it’s the clip-on tuner, square body style that’s nicely backlit. Beginner’s take note: this (and others like it) is a great tuner because it senses the string pitch by feeling the vibration of your instrument instead of relying on an external microphone. This means you can tune in a noisy environment! There are many different vibration-sensing tuners out there, and in my experience on the gig circuit and jamming circuit, this is an important feature. So what do the rest of you use? How about the Strobe tuner? Anyone have that, and is it worth the big bucks? If I understand right, there’s the old Strobe tuner that was made before the miniaturization of modern day electronics with their printed circuit boards and hyper-fast processors, and there’s the newer modern day version. Can anyone speak on this tuner?

Be sure and watch the home page of my main website (www.banjosrule.com) because I intend to launch a "banjos and the iPhone" feature to carry this discussion even further.

One last item to throw at you regarding technology and the banjo: www.tabledit.com. This is a very full-featured music notation software package that is wonderful, and I highly recommend it. Now I’m sure there are lots of others (Tabrite and GuitarPro, just to name two) but since I have only used TablEdit, I can only speak of TableEdit. TablEdit lets you write tablature out and play it back on your computer. It’s got way more features than you’ll ever use, especially if you aren’t a classically trained musician, but even so it’s invaluable if you are processing (either learning or writing out) lots of tablature. I write my lesson plans for my students using TablEdit, and I have also LOVED being able to download tablature from sources like www.banjohangout.org and then play it using TablEdit so that I can hear how the song is supposed to go. It’s a great resource and you should check it out. There’s a free version which is just a tablature reader, with very limited functionality, then there’s the full package. I paid around $55 several years ago; don’t know what it may have jumped to by now, but it’s worth finding out.

I encourage you to sign-in as a subscriber to this blog and then post anything you can on this topic! Until next time, pick ‘em if ya got ‘em!

Banjo Paul
“Wunse, I coodn’t even spel bango pikker…now I are one!”
www.banjosrule.com (main site)
www.mybanjolife.com (blog)