Let’s learn a bunch of songs!

The Banjo Paul empire has been steadily growing since early 2009, and I’ve been having a lot of fun as a banjo performer, a banjo teacher, and a banjo blogger. Along with having a higher profile and being relied on by more and more beginning banjo students comes the responsibility of making sure that I hone my skills and progress as a semi-professional banjo player. Many of you would be complimentary of what I do as a banjo player if you sat down to pick with me, yet I have an internal understanding that I have miles to go. One area that I’ve been lacking in over the last…oh, five years or more…is the area of learning songs. It’s time to remedy that. Join me for the challenge!

I challenge you to learn more instrumental songs than me in 2010

Let's learn some songs!

I love getting the opportunity to perform in bluegrass bands, but for me, one of the weaknesses of doing so is that I tend to only have time to focus on the material that the band is doing. It takes a lot of effort to make something stage-ready. Even with a wide repertoire, the material that any band does is still a fairly narrow set of music as compared to the sheer volume of songs that exist in the bluegrass world. I can remember the dozen or so years that I spent learning and just plinking in my living room, going to an occasional jam, and boy did I know some neat stuff. I don’t know how good I was at the songs, but I knew some classics. I lament the loss of several fiddle tunes that I used to know; I just didn’t practice them and retain them. Arkansas Traveller, Eight Of January, Blackberry Blossom, Devil’s Dream, etc. None of these were in any of my band’s repertoire, and in some cases rightly so because they aren’t necessarily audience favorites. They are, however, great jam standards and worth knowing.

I’ve decided that 2010 is going to be my year for increasing my repertoire of instrumental songs. I may include some vocal pieces in my list, but mostly I want to pick up several more instrumentals. I’d like you to join me!

Make ‘em jam session ready or stage ready

I‘m guessing that it wouldn’t be real hard to breeze through getting the tablature to something “mostly memorized”, then stumble through it some to show that you can “basically” play it, then move on to the next song in your list, cranking them out factory-style. However, this challenge involves actually learning the song and getting it playable.

I’ve got a good head start on two songs for this year: Yackety Sax (not exactly a bluegrass standard, I know) and Banjo Signal. Now in an effort to offer full disclosure, I will say that I began hitting Yackety Sax hard in December of last year (last month) but I’m still going to count it for this year, because it’s not quite ready yet. And with Banjo Signal, I just began learning it about 4 days ago. The catch with that song is that I previously knew a version that I more or less made up and it wasn’t that good. The version I’m learning now is tough and involved, and it’s just like starting over. So, it’s on the list.

Did you see my previous blog post on the process of learning a new song?

I posted a four part series on learning a new song last year, which details my process and the tools that I use and how I overcame any struggles, things like that. If you are a banjo student, it’s worth a read for sure. To view the series, click over to part 1 here:

http://banjosrule.com/blog/learning-a-new-song-part-1-preparing/

A prize (undetermined) will be awarded if you can beat me!

If you are up to the challenge, go ahead and begin learning some songs. Here’s the trick though: they have to be played, and played well, from memory, up to speed. This means you aren’t going to learn 30 songs or anything like that because you need to focus on quality. This is a chance for all of us to increase our worth in a jam session or band setting by building our repertoire up. You must learn the songs this year (no fair dragging in material you already know) and we need some way to hear you picking the songs.

Click me! Click me!

I have the luxury of being a webmaster with a digital sound recorder and a cam-corder, so I can load material onto my website for public display. It’s easy for me to deliver my material to you. You may not have that luxury. I will suggest that you go ahead and begin shopping for a digital recorder of some kind. These don’t have to be expensive, althought I paid $225 for mine. You can find them at office supply stores for under $50. I think it’s worth it for all pickers to carry a digital recorder with them to music events because you can record great stuff for your learning purposes later, so buying a digital recorder is a good investment.

Once you have the digital recorder, I recommend that you sign up at www.banjohangout.org and create a profile. Once you do this, you have the ability to upload sound files to your profile. This is perhaps the easiest way to put your stuff up for public consumption. You can go over to my profile at the Banjo Hangout and hear a couple of sound files I loaded last year by clicking this link: http://www.banjohangout.org/my/banjopaul67 (click “music” above my profile picture).

I’ll tally everything up in December and award a nice prize to the person who beats me. If more than one of you do (very likely) then the person who is in the lead gets the prize.

In this contest we’re looking for performance ready songs. Can you jam to it with other pickers? That’s the goal. We want to come away with more songs and more ability at the end of the year than we would have if we hadn’t been competing with each other.

I’ll be featuring this contest over at Banjos Rule!

For all that indicate they are joining in on the contest, I’ll be sure and feature you over on my main website at www.banjosrule.com. I plan to list names and song titles, and even links over to your sound file so that people can hear your picking. You’ll see and hear my progress as well.

Are you up to the challenge banjo pickers?

I certainly hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew here because I am very very busy. I do tend to let the “busy”-ness get in the way of developing my banjo abilities, so putting this very public face to this goal I have is going to shame me to “stay in the game”. So in a way, I owe you all thanks in advance for pushing me and making me try to stay ahead of you all year. Some of you may beat me by a country mile, but in the end we’ve all won by increasing our repertoire. Along with a bigger list of songs under our belt comes much more ability, just by default. It’s like a pilot needing to log in hours of flight time.

Requirement: please log in at the bottom of this blog post

I‘d like to keep a running tally of all who show interest in this contest by having you comment at the bottom of this blog post. Even just something simple with your name, showing that you are “in”. If it’s your first time you’ll have to click the log-in link and create a username and password, and then you can leave a comment. Further, if you click on the “subscribe to comments” link, you can be alerted via email whenever someone else decides to join us and leaves a comment. As a suggestion, perhaps you can list some of the songs you’d like to learn?

Thanks and here’s to a great year filled with wonderful banjo songs!! Take care everyone and as I always say: 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)
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