Your banjo music moves people

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.

It’s truly amazing to be able to reach people with our music

Playing for a crowd of appreciative people is a rush like I’ve rarely felt, and when you connect with your audience, there is nothing like it. When you display your artistry for people, it really affects them in some positive ways. When you tap into this energy, these emotions, the pure joy emanating from the listener, it should bring about feelings of elation in you that are hard to match. Have you watched those who listen to your music? Have you noticed how your music affects them? Has it been impressed upon you that you are moving the people in obvious and not so obvious ways?

It’s never too early to focus on the artistic side of picking banjo

When we beging the journey of learning 5 string banjo, it’s all we can do to manipulate the instrument in some way that sounds even halfway musical. I’ve often noted that a beginning picker that has been at it for a period of a few weeks or months often sounds robotic in their playing. They are hanging on for dear life and just hoping to get something rolled off smoothly. There’s chords and rhythm and timing and rolls and singing and the beat and the distraction of the other instruments…and on and on it goes. Once some time passes and that sense of panic eases up, the beginner is able to be open to trying to introduce expression into their playing. Playing a song on the banjo is so much more than just memorizing the notes on the page and then repeating them back much like a parrot just repeats what it hears. Playing a song involves…no, requires…that artistry take place. Almost no listener responds to a lifeless version of Mountain Dew or Foggy Mt. Breakdown, but almost all listeners respond to an artist who is connecting using his/her tools (the banjo, the music, the feeling) and who is really working their canvas (the audience).

Your music is delivered to, and absorbed by, the listener in four key ways, some of which might not be obvious to you. You might say that there are four ways that a listener “hears” or “feels” your music. That is, if you are working on becoming an artist. An unfeeling, robotic rendition of something may appeal to the listener in some of the ways, but it won’t move them in other ways. Let’s talk about the first way:

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Part 1: your audience listens with their feet

Pay attention to almost any person listening to music. If that music is truly getting to them and they are enjoying it, you can’t help but notice that they are listening with their feet. It’s innate in us humans to tap our foot to the beat of any music that is moving us. Do a good enough job delivering that music to your listener and he/she will begin tapping along to it.

Peter Wernick said something profound to me when I was at his advanced banjo camp in January of 2010: when you play music, it’s important to be mindful of the beat. That might seem obvious, but to us Scruggs style 5 string banjo pickers, it isn’t always. Peter says:

As a picker, you need to exude the beat. Don’t just concur with the beat, but really deliver the beat in your playing and be all about the beat.

When a banjo picker isn’t doing that great a job in his playing, it can sometimes be less-than-pleasant to hear. But…deliver a good, polished right hand that is really mindful of the beat, and the listener absolutely can’t help but be drawn in. The universal way of displaying that they are caught up in the music is through the foot. During class time at banjo camp, Peter worked with a fellow camper on his right hand delivery during a song. Peter made some helpful suggestions on angle of attack and delivery of the notes, and it was amazing that once the camper became more dialed in and was delivering the music to us in a more artistic manner, our toes began tapping and we began to actually feel the beat through his music. It was a night and day difference.

5 string banjo pickers: are you exuding the beat?

Do you even know where the beat is within the body of rolls you are playing on that banjo? Are you shooting for good tone, timing, timbre, and rhythm? Are you letting the artist in you shine? These are all great things to think about in your journey towards being everything you can be on the banjo. I hope you’ll consider signing in below and leaving some comments to this article, especially if you have further questions on the subject. Thanks for reading my blog and as I always say: pick ‘me if ya got ‘em!

Part 2 of this series is now posted. To go to the next part, click here: series part 2

Banjo Paul
“Wunse, I coodn’t even spel bango pikker…now I are one!”
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