Learning to play the banjo in May

We were all still in lockdown in May so, after watching this TED talk by Josh Kaufman which claims that you can learn anything in 20 hours, I thought I'd set myself the challenge of learning the banjo. In his talk Josh breaks down the "it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert in something" theory to something a bit more manageable. Namely that it only really takes 20 hours for your learning curve to start flattening out. What is it with curves being flattened or not at the moment?! He doesn't claim that you will be an expert in brain surgery or fluent in Japanese after only 20 hours, it's more that you will have "broken the back of it". I have my doubts whether this counts as "learning" something because I suppose with that argument even doing an hour of something means you are learning it but at what point can you say "yep I've learned that. Consider it learnt."?

I've had a banjo for nearly ten years. My memory is that it was a forced early inheritance from my dad when he forgot to buy me a present for a birthday and after I'd been hassling him to let me have it anyway I think he just wanted to kill two birds with one banjo. I need to double check my facts but I think it's almost as old as me and was bought on a whim in Boston (something about seeing it in a shop deciding not to buy it and then returning the next day after dreaming about it). Anyway I don't really have any memories of my Dad ever playing it although there is a photo in existence of him looking like he's at least holding it. So he gave it to me and I thought right that's it, I won't do the same thing as him and let it gather dust in a corner. I'm going to learn to play this bastard.

(EDIT : See below this entry for my Dad's account of the banjo's story)

Fast forward to almost ten years later and of course there it is in the corner gathering dust. I've picked it up a few times in between, it's been part of a couple of failed New Years resolutions and it's even featured in some PJ Not Duncan tracks (You can actually hear Jonny laugh on one song after I try a banjo solo) but that was never me knowing how to play it. It was more like me playing it like it was just an odd shaped guitar. 

So I started yet another notebook, wrote banjo on the front, and set about trying to find someone on youtube that could show me the bluegrass ropes. I found this guy and followed his early lessons up to the first couple of songs he started teaching. This is where I learned "Worried Man Blues" which was probably the song I played / ruined the most over the month. However after a while there were a couple of songs that he played at full speed (before his normal slow down for the learners speed) that didn't sound like the songs they were meant to be at all so I got distracted and started looking at tunes I wanted to play and even making up my own. This coincided with a bit of a lack of momentum in the mid month doldrums but when I started playing again I felt like I was a lot better than I had been before the break. I got a bit carried away and bought a metronome and a book of "pub banjo songs". I used the metronome once and discovered that the pub banjo was still a bit too difficult for now - although only after a couple of days complaining that the book had got the songs wrong and it couldn't possibly be me. In the meantime I'd found a "Banjo for dummies" book that I still had from the library and went back to that for inspiration. 

In the last week or so I got into more of a rhythm - both in terms of playing the banjo and in terms of learning. I would practice all the easy bits that I'd learned earlier in the month to get my fingers warmed up then push myself to learn newer, harder tunes and licks towards the end of the "lesson". 

Obviously there was a graph. This was looking at time spent towards the 20 hours rather than any kind of skill progression because I wasn't sure how I could do that. 

So did it work? To be honest I'm not sure. I think I can definitely "play a banjo" better now than I could at the beginning of the month but I'm not sure I can "play the banjo". If you gave me a relatively easy song to learn I could probably learn it in a week or so but I would struggle to play by sight if you handed me some sheet music or by ear if we were jamming in a pub (remember them?). BUT there have been moments where I've felt the banjo flowing through me. When I learned Worried Man Blues to the point that I didn't have to follow the tab and could have a bit of a wander around the house I did dare to start thinking "yeah that's right I play the banjo now". Anyway I'll leave it up to you, here's a (quite heavily edited) video of some of what I learned, or at least could do, after 20 hours... 

Email from my Dad 04/06/2020 :

You were in Boston twice. First in April 1981 when YM had you and a giant camera provided by the editor of the Cayman Compass to carry around with her. It was pretty cold, I had silly Union Jack shorts and we all got the bus out to Hopkinton and then ran back into the city. Worth it for the occasion, 2h 47' 42'' and 1510th out of 6845 in my sixth marathon.

Then six years later, in April 1987, when we were up there with the four of us, Jerry and Noël. Met Jerry's mum, Noël had no money so kipped in with the four of us and I bought the banjo, Noël and I finding that banjo shop, going back and forth for it and being asked to play it by more than one fellow passenger on the Boston subway.

Never played the thing publicly but did get it out, (the banjo),  for Jerry's Mum in Boston and for Paul in Yarmouth. Also used it as a prop at the show for the Kiwanis in Cayman when I was MC with this other guy and did a routine with newspaper headlines, (Eighth Army push bottles up Germans, that sort of thing). Refused point blank to play the accursed thing, despite entreaties. (Even the Chief Justice who was in the audience)

Unlike yourself who plays it very well, if I may say so.

Ah well.

YD

[Other bits and credit youtube people, books, etc... ]