How my Sensei could take on a musical mess like me I still do not understand, but he was (is) SO patient and worked very hard at finding out what I wanted from music and what I wanted to learn and then worked up lessons that would build up to that point. He was the polar opposite of the first teacher I had 30 years ago that shut me off from any hope of learning to play. We would get together sporadically. He would set me up with some stuff to work on and I would practice every day. Some weekend days I might get in 4 or more hours a day, and I made it a point to do at least an hour a night during the week. I really really tried. Some stuff took, some didn't, but I never gave up because I was having fun. He made it fun by laying things out and working in a direction he asked me to choose. During our lessons he taught me a lot about how music is made and heard and why it is laid out the way it is. He didn't just talk about the banjo, he talked about music and he gave me so much information that I had to record it and listen back to it for weeks to get a good part of it. My '1 hour lessons' would often go two or more hours with all the little stories, anecdotes, and supporting information that made it so much more interesting and valuable than a simple lesson. I always left his house with a smile of wonderment and confusion, even when I didn't do as well as I had hoped which was, and continues to be a frequent condition.
Over a period of a year and a half I had perhaps 5 or 6 lessons. I maintained my practice regimen throughout. However, I had come to realize that this banjo thing was a bit too complicated for a simple newbie like me with no inherent skill. 3 picks on the right hand and four fingers on the left all trying to work together at the same time, controlled supposedly, by my little brain. I know what you're thinking, but no, I didn't quit. I was still enjoying the work or play of learning, just not making any real progress. So I began messing around with this mandolin I had bought as a diversion. I found that working with one pick instead of 3 was a lot easier and I began to think that perhaps if I worked on the mandolin some, I might be able to learn those concepts a bit faster and concentrate on my left hand work. let my fingers get better at fretting the strings, understand my way around the finger board a bit better, and THEN I could go back to the banjo with something useful to allow me to focus on that right hand. It seemed like a plan.
However, I knew I would be a disappointment to my Sensei, after all the work he had put into me. None the less, we had become friends and I am always honest with my friends. I told him what I was doing, and at first I believe he thought I was going to mess with the Mandolin in addition to the Banjo. He offered to give me a mando lesson, but he was shocked when I showed up in his yard with just the mando and no banjo. So I explained my plan to him and I could see his disappointment, but he pressed on and showed me the in's and out's of the mando and got me going, even loaned me some VHS tapes. I worked and worked and worked. The progress was MUCH faster, but I had made a critical mistake. With finger picks, you only pick in one direction, up with the finger picks and down with the thumb pick. Using a flat pick, I developed the habit of only UP-picking...everything. I had taught myself 2 or 3 tunes, and there was one in particular, which he had helped the composer write and had recorded on several albums that I wanted to try to play with him. (As is typical with the way I think I chose Opus 57 By David Grisman, which David plays at a blistering speed, NOT what you would call a beginner tune.) I worked my ass off on that tune for 8 months to get it up to something of a reasonable speed. I could, and will never be able to play it at full speed, but it was reasonable. So I sat in his kitchen and started to warm up on that tune. He took one look and said "whoa, hang on just a sec, now you've got a problem there that we have to fix before it becomes a real habit. You are holding yourself back and you have to learn how to cross-pick, alternating up and down." He then took up my other mando and demonstrated, then gave me some practice exercises to work on. There was more to the lesson, but at this point I can't really recall the details. I was pretty shot down. I had worked SO hard to get that speed up. Ironically, if I had done it correctly, It would have been a bit easier and my speed would have been even faster. I was crestfallen, but I did what he said and started the excruciating process of undoing what I had taught my brain and re-learning the correct way. It took 3 weeks before I could play that tune at a creeping, learning speed again, but then in the following weeks the speed came back and then some. I still, once in a while catch myself hitting a string twice from the same direction, but not often, and the progress continues. The speed is better than it ever was and now I am working on maintaining control, tone, tempo, and consistency at speed. It's just those few little details I need to nail down, that's all. Obviously I learn slow, but I learn. I could learn a lot faster if it wasn't for the damned learning curve!
Keep the Beat (and keep practicing),
Tom
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| Bill Keith, Eric Weisberg, and Marc Horowitz |
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