Listening is an intellectual thing

When I work with banjo students, fairly early on in the journey I begin introducing the idea of realizing that when you pick your banjo, your job isn’t to just pick your banjo. It’s never too soon to start embracing the fact that you are an artist. As an artist, you want to let your artistry come alive and to emanate from your banjo picking. Much like a painter or sculptor, we work with a palette of colors and we appeal to the senses of the recipient of our art. Getting a full understanding of exactly what this means takes a very long time, and likely you’ll spend a lifetime trying to be a better artist. It may be a worthwhile endeavor to take a look at exactly how your 5 string banjo music is received by the listener and just how it affects the listener. This is part 3 of 4 parts. To start at part 1, click here

You don’t just hear with your ears

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I looked at the fact that when a listener enjoys your music, he/she isn’t just listening with the ears. Our audience is actually listening with other parts of their body as well. The hands and the feet certainly come into play when we’re presented with music that adheres to good artistic value and moves us. It’s our responsibility to present the music as best we can so as to provide our listeners with something worth tapping their feet to.

You’d think that the most obvious thing to point to when it comes to speaking of how a listener takes in your music would be the ears. And yes, it all starts with the sound passing through the ear canal, but you might consider the ear canals to be just funnels; funnels that bring the sound to other parts of our bodies: the feet, the hands, and…

Click me! Click me!

Part 3: your audience listens with their intellect

You might substitute brain for intellect, but I think intellect encompasses more of what’s really going on. An artistically rendered piece of music that is coming out of your banjo evokes reactions in your listener, both physical and emotional/mental. The foot taps; the fingers snap or the hands clap. And, of course, the brain or the intellect kicks in.

As we listen to the music, we often conjur up images stored in our brain. We’re reminded of people, places, events, times of our life, happenings, etc. If the music is not coming out right or not being played with any kind of love or artistry, our brains instantly pick up on that as well. We spot problem areas in the music, we recognize the look of panic as we watch someone flail away at the banjo. When the music is being played well, our brain tells us “this person is making it look so easy! How is that possible?!” We pick up on the technical aspects of what we see being done and often we’re in awe of a good picker. Perhaps our brain tells us “I would love to take up playing the banjo!” If you exude the rhythm, the style, the artistry and the beauty of the music in such a way that someone else is incented to want to learn how to do what you do, then you’ve done a powerful thing indeed!

Head, hands and feet…

Music is an all-over, body-wide experience. It’s a powerful, magical moment when someone is captivated by what you do on the banjo. When you display your artistry and someone else taps their foot, snaps their fingers, and takes an intellectual interest in what you are doing, that’s a spiritual connection for sure. Are you working on your musicianship so as to be a good steward of this gift that we’re all given?

Part 4 of this series is now posted. To go to the next part, click here: series part 4

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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Tagged as: Banjo, Beginners, Bluegrass, Instructional series, Learning, Miscellaneous