Bluegrass Banjo Lessons - BanjoExpert.com

We all have some favorite banjo tunes. Comment below and let us know your top 5 favorite banjo picking songs whether you play them yet or not.

Ryan:

1. Earls Breakdown
2. Doug’s Tune
3. Peaches n’ Cream
4. White Water
5. Up on the Blue Ridge

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Question:

Ryan, for some reason I just don’t get it. I have been learning from books and tabs. I try, and a poor CRIPPLE CREEK is all I can play. I’m stuck, and about ready to give this up.

I want to learn, I enjoy playing, but I won’t even play unless my wife is asleep. Her whole family plays Bluegrass. I love the Banjo, I just want too much too soon I guess. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Michael

Answer:

Michael, it sounds like you’re putting a lot of undue pressure on yourself to play like a pro right now. When learning the banjo it just doesn’t work like that.

Here’s the part that you probably don’t want to hear. You’re going to have to be very bold and start playing in front of people, even if it’s just Cripple Creek. By the way it’s very possible and not too difficult to make Cripple Creek sound like a masterpiece!

This is what you need to do. Choose a few people that you’ll probably be playing along with when you get your picking up to speed. Sounds like this might be your wife’s family. If they are decent folks you’ll find that they will encourage you to play with them, because this is how they learned when they were beginners.

Next figure out about 5 songs that they most commonly play. Then sit down at home, when you’re wife’s awake and practice these songs until you’re fingers bleed. If you need help working up breaks to them let me know and I’ll help you. You have to have a solid “simple” banjo break to each of these five songs.

The secret little goal is for you to actually sound better than their banjo player when you play your break. This may entail very powerful (mind blowing) kick-offs, pull-offs, hammer ons, etc…

Dont fret! We’ll get you there. Just forget about sounding horrible and lets start sounding like a powerful banjo player. Figure out your five songs that you want to work on whether they are instrumentals or vocal tunes and let me know. I’ll help you put together dynamite breaks to them. Soon you’ll be the banjo star!

Recap:
1. Determine your group of peers that you’ll be playing with
2. Listen to one of their jam sessions and pick out 5 of their most commonly played tunes.
3. Go back home and work up killer breaks to these tunes.
4. Return with your banjo to the jam and jump in with both feet!

Thanks,
Ryan

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Tom just sent in Salt Creek completely tabbed out! Tom is a premium member on the site and has really put in some hard work tabbing out Salt Creek straight from the video lesson. This takes some true effort! Great job Tom!

I encourage you to take a shot at tabbing out one of the video banjo lessons. This task will put you far ahead of the pack.

If you really want to learn how to become an expert banjo player then you must learn how to write the music by ear. We use tabledit.com tab software to tab out banjo music.

You can right click here and click “save as” to download Tom’s .tef version of our Salt Creek lesson. Remember, you’ll need to download tabledit.com’s free tab player to view the tab.

Thumbs up to Tom for his great work! Keep them coming Tom. We’re quite impressed.

If you would like to join as a premium member click here to get started!

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Question and Answer with Mike. Check out the pic and then read the great banjo question below!

Question:

Ryan,

Can you check out the photo attached and see if these picks are formed correctly? I am a relative novice (less than a year) and can play the basic songs around 3/4 speed.

Every once in a while the picks get tangled up in the strings and I want to make sure I’m not trying to compensate for the picks. Of course, they may be fine and it will just take more practice.

I really enjoy the lessons. I have been struggling with the typical DVDs and books, but this has taken me further and it a lot less time!

Thanks,
Mike R.
Texas

Answer:

Mike,

Great question! First off, your picks look great. That’s exactly how I bend my fingerpicks. I purchase the propik angled picks from First Quality Music Store and I just bend them a bit more right out of the box.

I personally feel like this angled bend (like you have) produces more speed when it comes to really picking up the pace with your banjo picking.

The “tangled up” problem is fairly common with beginners and it will occasionally happen to you all throughout your playing. You’re right practice will cure a lot and jamming or playing with others will even improve your playing multiple times more.

The most important thing is that your picks fit snug on your fingers and that they are not thin and flimsly. They need to be very strong and somewhat tough to bend with your fingers.

A strong heavy gauge pick will produce a higher quality tone. It doesn’t allow the vibrations of the string to be transferred to your finger and thus muted. You want all of the vibration to remain in the string and you want to transfer all of the power from your finger to the string that your finger has to offer. This allows you to get the most out of your picking and muscle movement.

The short answer is your pick shape looks very good. I can’t tell how tightly the pick fits on your finger just make sure it’s snug and be sure that you’re using a stout pick that will not flex when picking. Looks like you’re on the right track.

Keep up the good work. Send me some samples of your picking if you get a chance.

Thanks,
Ryan

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Melissa I just want to thank you for your boldness and courage in allowing me to share this with our fellow banjo students. I hope that you will gain much from this video banjo lesson, and that others will too.

You are doing great! Keep up the good work.

Thanks again,
Ryan

To download this video right click here, then click “save as” or “dowload linked file” and this will save the video to your computer.

Sign Up for Ryan’s high powered banjo lessons!

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People often ask who’s your favorite banjo player? Well since you’ve asked I’ll tell you. I actually have three. My very favorite of all has always been Sammy Shelor but Ron Stewart stands right beside him in my mind.

There are so many good players that I could go on and on about the things that I like about each of them but if I had to sit all day and listen to one picker it would probably be Ron Stewart. He’s just so creative. Here’s a little bit of him playing at his best! Keep on picking Ron you inspire us all!

Learn everything you can from this video.

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Is anyone using an iPad to watch our video banjo lessons. I recently spike to a member who stated that he could watch them fine on a Mac desktop but couldn’t get them to load on an iPad.

I use a MacBook and an iPhone which dont have any issues but I’m not familiar with iPad capabilities. I just thought some of you could give us some feedback.

Thanks,
Ryan

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Hello, as many of you know who are signed up for our e-zine, you can send in a video of you playing a song or two and I will respond with a video critique. I have briefly mentioned this in our ezine and just wanted to make another official invitation to you as of now.

Melissa, one of our Lifetime members has sent in two videos for review. I will upload the video this week of Melissa’s banjo playing along with a video critique from me!

I know it will be very beneficial to us all. It can only make me a better teacher and I’m convinced that it will make you a better banjo player as well. Thanks to Melissa for being so transparent and willing to share.

I just wanted to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who has signed up already this year. We have had quite a few new members just in the past 48 hours and I’m glad to have you on board.

Here are a few of our newest members:
John M.
Sherree W.
William T.
Douglas T.
Carroll P.
Gregorio
Bennie W.
Clarence P.

We all welcome you to the site,
Ryan

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Question

Ryan,

What would be a good time frame to master the rolls on the Banjo. Keep in mind that I am 76 years old. My fingers and mind is much slower than a younger person.

Thank you
Don H.

Answer

Don, thanks for the great question. I would say that we all should be continually working to perfect our banjo rolls. I’m hesitant to say that it’s possible to completely master them; however, it does seem that some have come very close.

I would say that within a few months of practicing you can get a very good handle on the rolls and should be able to play them at a fast pace without giving them much thought. This could come in as little as a few weeks if you practice daily. I recall, what would have been about a two week period when I was first learning, a time when I made leaps and bounds of progress on my rolls.

For me, I broke through the difficult stumbling around part of my rolls when I started to push myself to a much faster pace. I started playing my rolls faster than I could actually play them. When I started to do this little exercise I found that my banjo rolls smoothed out really quickly and I was able to play them much faster without thinking of each note throughout the roll.

My recommendation would be to play your rolls along with a cd or a metronome and then push yourself with faster and faster songs. Doing this will feel awkward at first but it will amaze you how smooth your picking hand becomes as it developes the required muscle memory.

Keep us posted on your progress!

Thanks,
Ryan

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Question

Hi Ryan,

Thank you for this really nice video. I mostly appreciate the cam on your right hand, the one with the finger picks. It was really instructive to see your fingers moving at the right moment on the right strings.

If I mostly noticed this it’s because I feel like my right hand fingers are not strong enough. When I use my thumb I also move my index toward my thumb.

It’s becoming complicated to play up to speed, (maybe 180 bpm). My thumb and index finger are almost constantly stuck together as if I were holding a plectra (I begun in music playing the guitar, can it be some links)?

Would you have some exercises or indications on how to reinforce the right hand’s muscles, or just on how to avoid the problem?

Thank you for your answer.

Josselin

Answer

Josselin, I truly think we all battle with muscle memory at some point in our playing. It seems like some parts of our hands like to work together and other times they simply refuse.

My middle and ring finger always move together for some reason; therefore, I had to learn to play with only my pinky resting on the head of the banjo. My ring finger just simply would not stay down. It always wanted to pick a string Guess I should have been a four finger picker

I do think that your thumb and index finger moving somewhat together is not too big of a problem when you’re playing rolls; however, they will need to move in opposite directions when performing a pinch of the strings.

There is a picking exercise that I developed called the machine gun exercise. I think this might really help you. The cool thing is that you don’t even need your banjo to do it all you need is your picks and a hard surface.

You just put on your picks and tap on a table top (hard surface) as if you were playing a forward roll. The purpose for this exercise is for you to simply listen to the tapping sound which should sound very similar on all fingers opposed to different tones with strings tuned to different notes.

You listen for a machine gun style rhythm. You want there to be a perfect even consistency between every tap. Start out slow and then speed it up. I would try this each day or off day of practice for a couple of weeks. Experiment with it a bit. I think you’ll find that it really helps. If you need further explanation I could make a video of it for you.

Thanks for the excellent question!

Ryan

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Question:

Hi Ryan – Thanks so much for putting together such an awesome site!  Found you doing a Google search for proper right hand position
 
Wondered if you would weigh in on something for me…I grew up as a violinist/fiddle player since I was 5…, been around music and bluegrass all my life and learned to play and sing by ear. I’m now in my mid-30s and just literally picked up a banjo two weeks ago for the first time.
 
I’m all about learning the “right way”…by that I mean to practice the right mechanics until I get really really good at them…to that end, what i’ve noticed about the people that seem to be able to pick REALLY fast (like Earl or Jens Kreuger) is that they have very, very little right hand finger movement “up and down” (raising and lowering)…it all seems to be very relaxed, fluid and just tiny, tiny movements.
 
1)  Would you agree with that?
2)  If I were to practice 4 or 5 days a week, 30-60 min per day, about how long do you think before I could get realistic learn to play at close to the speed of (of course) the Dueling Banjos tempo in Deliverance?
3)  What do you find is the best way to get really, really good at rolls?
 
Thanks again!!
Burk  

Answer:

Burk, thanks for the great questions! First I’ll answer your questions and then I’m going to give you a “pep talk”

1. Finger Movement is Important!

I agree that finger movement (travel distance of the fingers) is important. It’s much more work and takes much longer to move your fingers twice as far as someone else just to pick the same note. You need to always work towards limiting the movement of your picking hand. The secret to this is to relax. You must relax! Your picking fingers have to relax and your hand has to lose it’s tense-ness. You get the picture.

2. Work out a Good Routine for You

Practicing in a regular routine is a great idea! What you stated above will work perfectly. How long it takes you to reach your picking speed goal will depend on your determination and most importantly your ability to push your limits.

3. You Must Master the Rolls!

Becoming smooth and dominating your rolls is crucial. The goal will be for you to have complete control over the timing of your right hand as it’s rolling.

Ok, here’s the pep talk.

It sounds like you are ready to learn the banjo and are well on your way to success. In order for you to reach your goals you’re going to have to push yourself on the banjo.

You’ll reach the picking speed that you want with the dueling banjos tune but it will come with a great deal of persistence. If we were to have a face to face banjo lesson the one thing that you would be surprised at is how much I would push the limits of your picking hand throughout the banjo lesson.

You would see the majority of the results a few days after the lesson is over and when you go home to practice on your own.

Thanks for the good questions. Email me anytime!

Ryan

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What’s your best banjo tip, picking trick, maintenance secret, etc… What little secret has helped you the most. I’m going to put together a post that will feature all of our favorite banjo tips. These are the things that make you a better picker.

Take a moment and write out what it is that helps you the most or what tip that you can share with others that will inspire or encourage them. Email your tip to ryan@banjoexpert.com or just write it in the comment section below and I’ll put together a collage of them all for the benefit of all of us and post it on the site.

This is your chance to help someone else who might not be as advanced as you in their banjo picking. Let’s all take a moment to be gracious and share our knowledge.

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Here are the titles to our next two lessons:

1. “Shady Grove (the advanced version)”
2. “Back-up Basics for Banjo Players”

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. We had an enjoyable time with family. From time to time I take a little break from recording to keep a fresh edge on my teaching style. I just thought I would let you know this in case you’re new to the site and saw a short lull in the lessons over the past few weeks. I try not to make a big deal about it.

If you’re starting out on the banjo you’re going to find out that tablature is a big thing. Well, it’s a big thing to a lot of teachers and a lot of books. Here at banjoexpert.com, however I’m not a big fan of tabs. I personally feel like there is an abundance of it available to all of us and that my place is to show you how to play the banjo via video and beyond that teach you how to learn from others without the tab crutch.

I do this on purpose to get you to focus on watching and listening to a banjo player (me), instead of studying tabs. This will boost your learning curve in the long run simply because you’ll be able to learn quickly from other banjo players in a jam or band atmosphere. It’s frustrating at first, but you have to trust me that it’s going to put you far above all of the other banjo students who are so proud of there tab collections.

Whey you’ve spent a little time here on the site and have watched many of our member’s vids you’ll start to get a knack for picking up licks and tunes without tab. It’s a wonderful skill to have. You’ll then be able to learn from an awesome banjo picker in one of your favorite jams or shows.

I’m considering some new changes for the site in 2011, so if you have any suggestions please comment below. I want this to be the best banjo lesson site on the web!

Thanks,
Ryan

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