Bearing down and rushing through a hot banjo break won’t help you play faster. It tightens up the muscles in your hands and keeps you from picking with fluid powerful speed.
Open up your hand.
Relaxing your right hand will do wonders for your picking. If you’ve been jamming for quite a while and notice that your playing is starting to digress then you probably need to take a short break. It’s time to loosen up your right hand.
Open up your hand flat as if it were lying on the kitchen table. It needs to get out of that cramped tennis ball position for a bit. You might also try some stretching exercises to get the blood flowing again and stretch out those cramped up tendons.
Breath or die!
Breathing is essential when picking the banjo, as if I really needed to tell you this. Quirky as it may sound you need to remember to breathe. When you tear through a high speed banjo break it can be tempting to hold your breath. Don’t do it! Remember to breathe normally and enjoy the entire break.
Banjo massage.
A little secret to loosening up the hands is to give yourself a little hand massage between songs. It can be as simple as ringing out your hands as though you were washing them. The goal is to get the blood flowing again.
If you follow these three steps you’ll notice that you will begin to play faster with much less effort. It really works! Click here to get Ryan’s weekly video lessons!
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