The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This has been a challenging year for my musical goals. While on the one hand I've learned several new tunes this year and was able to attend a couple festivals, but I've fallen well short of my playing time goals and have gone long stretches without playing any music at all. After a hiatus of almost six weeks between October and November, I've made the effort to recommit myself to banjo and fiddle.  Throughout my musical journey, I've had many instances where I felt like I was restarting. As we all know, unless you're a professional musician, life has a way of interrupting hobbies.  Like I mentioned in a previous post , I decided to train for a long-distance trail race at the end of July, something I hadn't done in over a decade. That took up a lot of my free time earlier in the year, and I've just had a hard time finding consistency in my practice time for banjo and fiddle.  In some ways, I feel a sense of guilt for not playing as much as I think I should. ...

The acquisition of a new family car has allowed me the luxury of being able to connect my iPod to my car stereo. Instead of cycling through my CDs to quench my old-time thirst, I now have my entire music catalog to satiate my ears. A couple weeks ago I decided to start at one end and see how long it took to get to the other, going alphabetically by song title. Like I said, I started this little journey a couple weeks ago and have only made it to "Camp Chase." The funny thing is I'm encountering a lot of music I forgot I had. With digital downloads and the availability of loads of out-of-print music in the "public domain," I have downloaded a lot of old-time material without really listening to all of it. Each time a new tune comes on, I play a game with myself of trying to identify the artist and title. I'm losing that contest. I often find myself thinking, "I didn't know I had this." As is one of my favorite aspects of old-time music, I...

Now that the weather is nice, my lunches have gotten much more old-timey. Instead of eating at my desk like I did through most of winter, I am now bringing my fiddle along and exiting to a nearby park to play tunes. There's a quiet picnic area with a set of secluded tables that are usually empty when I arrive, providing a comfortable place to play away from the sensitive ears of others. But usually empty is not always empty . Take today, for example, nobody was at the tables when I arrived, but about halfway through my practice session my solitary area filled with other lunchtimers and forced me to suck it up and play for a crowd. Confession time: My demeanor is not the most extroverted, especially when it comes to playing music and even moreso when it comes to playing the fiddle. However, my midday forays to the park have helped me overcome the impulse to clam up or stop playing in the company of an unexpected audience. Twice I've been complimented for my novice fidd...

Fatherhood has had a profound impact on my life, as it should, and playing music has come to occupy a different space than it did before my son's arrival last fall. It used to be that I'd carve out an hour almost every night to play banjo or fiddle. I would mark the calendar each month with the local old-time jams I planned to attend, and then attend them I would. Ever since my son was born last September, these luxuries seem beyond my reckoning. Now, I play my music in whatever time I can manage between work and family duties. My wife has been OK with my instruments residing in our dining room, close at hand for when I have the time to play. When the weather is nice, I drag my fiddle to the office and play in a nearby park at lunchtime. When my son gets fussy eating his dinner, I yank my banjo off the stand and play until he's ready for the next bite. When his eyes are fluttering as he settles down for a nap, I serenade his dreams. And when he's finally...

The holidays brought a bounty of gifts to help me improve my fiddling. As you can see from the photo above, it was a Brad Leftwich Christmas. You can also see my new Snark clip-on tuner. These resources should help me level up my bowing. After working from Wayne Erbsen's Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus for the past year, it was time to seek new challenges. Awhile back I had borrowed Leftwich's Old-Time Fiddle: Round Peak Style from the library and deemed it a good resource, but nearly incomprehensible in terms of trying to read the tabs. However, it came with a CD with more than 80 tunes that I hope to learn by ear once I figure out the bowing "licks," which is where the Homespun DVDs come in. (By the way, you can download those 80-plus CD tracks via the eBook page at the Mel Bay site. Look for the "Downloads" tab and click on "Download Extras.") So far, the DVD lessons are proving to be just the challenge I was seeking....

It's not like he claps along, but there's something magical about playing the fiddle (or banjo) in front of my son and not having him scream out in holy terror. My morning routine has changed slightly, after my wife asked if I could watch the baby a little longer in the mornings when I feed him so she could catch some uninterrupted shuteye. She didn't think my playing music in the attic would disturb her sleep, and we have a bassinet up there for our son to sleep in while I saw away. To my surprise, he quickly dozes and let's me have my half hour of practice time. Hopefully, there won't be any irreparable harm to his ears or psyche when all is said and done. This week I picked up Brad Leftwich's Old-Time Fiddle Round Peak Style from the library to see if it was worth owning. There's a lot of information to parse. You can download the CD tracks for free, and having read most of the non-tune parts of the book already, I'm not sure it's a must-h...

Family life is starting to settle into a routine. Last week, my wife and I swapped feeding shifts, allowing me some extra time in the morning before work. It's not much, but the half hour I get to play fiddle in the basement has been rejuvenating. The attic is my preferred practice space. The finished room has a corner dedicated to my music, including a stereo, LPs and CDs, bookshelves, a music stand, extra chairs in case of musical visitors, and a table for appropriate beverages. The basement, however, puts an extra floor between my making noise and my sleeping family. Not as cozy as the attic. In the last four days, I've managed to practice three times. Those sessions have mostly been focused on knocking off the rust accumulated over the past month since our son was born. My main goal for now is to just focus on bowing and maintaining the few tunes I've learned so far. If I can get a few steps closer to mastering the bow, I'll call this year's progress a ...