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. ...

Last month I ended my 500-day streak of playing banjo and fiddle. I followed that with two and a half weeks of not playing banjo or fiddle. It seems during my break that my fingers have lost almost all of their calluses. They haven't been this tender in a long time.  During the past week, I've been getting myself back in the habit of playing music on a semi-daily basis. I've been focusing on playing for longer stretches, rather just a few minutes to keep a streak alive like I'd gotten used to doing.  It feels good to be out of that rut.  The biggest thing I want to get back to is learning new stuff. I'm continuing to work on Michael Ismerio's online fiddle course , and I've been revisiting Ken Perlman's Clawhammer Style Banjo , the book that helped get my started on old-time more than a decade ago. I'm also thinking of digging out Mike Seeger's Southern Banjo Styles videos.  I've been trying to approach my instruments with a beginner's ...

Thanks to the pandemic, my daily playing streak has reached an unbeatable (for me) 500 days in a row. With typical yearly travel obligations for work on hiatus since a year ago, I pushed my record to height that would have otherwise been impossible.  Quite frankly, over the last few months, my streak had started to almost feel like a weight on my shoulders. I've hardly played for longer that 5-10 minutes per day for a few weeks. I've been putting in the bare minimum to keep my streak alive.  In January, I decided I would make it to the nice round number of 500 and then take today off. Today, is that day off.  The idea of trying to play banjo and fiddle everyday, even if just for five minutes, came in 2018 . The merit of short bursts of practice was inspired by Tom Collins of Banjo Blitz fame (now Banjo Quest). I used to feel like if I couldn't fit in at least 30 minutes, then it wasn't worth it. When I reduced that threshold to five minutes, I suddenly found myself str...

On Nov. 8, 2019, I returned from a work trip and began a new playing streak. Until then, my longest streak was 100 days . Now, partly thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic canceling any travel I normally would have had this year, my new streak has surpassed the year mark.  Having played every day for 368 days and counting, I wish I could say my playing has advanced by leaps and bounds in that time. However, I'm not sure I can sure I can say that. There have been days where I only played a 5-10 minutes. A lot of times, my practice time comes at the very end of the day, and I just don't feel like logging a long session of banjo and fiddle playing.  The pandemic has made for a strange year in all aspects of life, and my attempts at musicking are no different. As I mentioned earlier this year , I felt stagnant and lost my motivation to practice. Despite those mental hurdles, I'm proud to have been able to keep playing every day, no matter how brief.  Since the end of July, I...

One upshot of the coronavirus quarantine is that I've been able to push my playing streak to new heights. Usually, I would have had to travel for work by now, forcing me to take a break for a day or two. Not so in these days of COVID-19. Yesterday, my string of consecutive days playing banjo and fiddle reached 200. That means I haven't taken a break since November 8, 2019. It seems incredible. Despite being able to play at least a little bit every day during this pandemic, however, I've actually been falling behind the pace of my playing goals the last two months. With all of us stuck in the house all the time, I'm having trouble finding time to play for extended periods. When I was going to the office for work, I would take my fiddle to play during my lunch break. It was easy to get at least 30 minutes per day. Now, I'm working from home while also trying to manage my son's time, with school work and other activities so he's not staring at a scree...

Last week I had to go out of town for work. I couldn't take my banjo and fiddle, which meant I had to interrupt my daily playing streak . As you may recall, I started tracking consecutive days playing last year as a way to stoke enthusiasm and boost my overall practice time. My longest streak was 86 days on banjo and 89 days on fiddle, and then I finished off 2018 with a 50-day streak . I've been able to keep that streak going into 2019. It just so happens that my final day of playing before jumping on a jet to Texas was the 50th day of the year. It's nice to have a nice, round number as a new milestone. I restarted my streak at the fourth annual Lake Erie Folk Festival . While I didn't participate in as much jamming as in past years, the event provided plenty of entertainment. The Old-Time Banjo Summit delivered many amusing anecdotes from banjo luminaries Richie Stearns, Lukas Pool, Doug Unger and Mark Olitsky. I wish I would have taken my nice camera to d...

Can you believe 2018 is drawing to a close? That means it's time for a heavy dose of navelgazing to see what's built up, what needs work and perhaps what needs to be cleaned out. Back in January, I dubbed this " A Second Year of Ward Jarvis ," building on the previous year's progress . My goals were to learn four Ward Jarvis tunes on fiddle, log 186 hours of practice and play my banjo more often. The tunes on this year's list were culled from my list of common Ohio tunes , as well as one carryover from 2017. Here are the tunes: Three Forks of Reedy Leather Britches Forked Deer Grey Eagle Fourth Quarter Highlights The Good:   "Grey Eagle," while still a work in progress, has come along nicely. I had the opportunity to play with some folks recently, and I gave my newest tune a try for the first time in a group setting. It didn't go half bad. There are still three and a half weeks to go this year, and I think by then it'll be do...

Yesterday marked 20 days of consecutive playing for me on both banjo and fiddle. That's about how long since I've been back from vacation. That first week was rough in terms of remembering the tunes I know. Little by little, playing has become easier as I've returned each day to try again. Before my monthlong hiatus, I had embarked on a daily streak that lasted almost three months. Now I'm wondering if I can do it again. Some researchers say it takes 21 days (that's today!) to form a new habit, while others argue it takes more like 66 days (that's not today at all). Of course, nothing I've read says anything about getting back into a habit. Regardless of how long it might take, having a lofty benchmark has provided some strong motivation as I seek to re-establish my daily habit. I have my sights set on 90 days and beyond. I'm also trying to catch up to my hourly goal for fiddle playing time this year. As you might expect, taking most of ...

Look who's back! It is I, your glory-beaming blogger, returned from my travels abroad. I hope you enjoyed the posts that I scheduled for you  during my absence. After almost a full month of vacationing in Rhodes, Greece, it's time to get back to business — and music! As I mentioned last month, I had to leave my fiddle and banjo at home while I was traveling. The closest I got to an instrument was listening to a traditional Greek dance band at a festival in the village of Psinthos, where I ate delicious chickpea and goat stew. The band was comprised of a lyra , bouzouki , guitar and what looked like a cajon that the vocalist played. It was a great time. I had hoped to find a record store so I could provide you with a Greek-flavored " Vinyl Hunter " post, but I struck out. The only time I saw any LPs was at a shop in Old Town that had huge selection of Greek music for sale on CD. Above the floor-to-ceiling shelves, I spied old album covers. But when I asked if t...

Last night I reached a new milestone in my attempt to play banjo and fiddle everyday. When I took my banjo out at a jam, I marked 70 days straight of playing it. I achieved the same feat on the fiddle a couple days ago. My daily habit dates back to May 7 on fiddle and May 10 for banjo. Most of my banjo playing over the past two months has been in short bursts, a few minutes here and a half hour there. All of that has been solo, either on the couch or on my porch. Yesterday bucked both trends. My extended playing session was the longest of the year, while also the first time I've played banjo in a group setting in I don't know how long. Probably a couple years at least. I've been so focused on learning the fiddle that anytime I went to a jam, my banjo stayed home. It was a measure to prevent myself from taking the easy road and playing what was more familiar. For whatever reason, I decided to bring the five-string along last night. I'm glad I did. It was a s...

Sometime in 2008, I read Outliers: The Story of Success , by Malcolm Gladwell. The main premise of the book is it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. This was the year I started playing banjo, and I was struggling to keep up with practice. My New Year's resolution for 2009 was to rededicate myself to the banjo by learning clawhammer. I also started tracking my playing time to stay accountable and measure my progress toward that 10,000-goal. When I started playing the fiddle , I began tracking that too. And before we go any further, yes, I know Gladwell's theory has been debunked , but it still seems like a pretty good goal to get me somewhere in the neighborhood of competent on the banjo and fiddle. Each year, I set a goal for the amount of hours of playing time I want to log. My spreadsheet helps me stay on track. This year, I'm aiming for 230 hours combined. At the end of January, I hit a snag. A mix of family and work obligations forced me to miss several d...