The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Things have really gone downhill this quarter. My progress over the first three months was strong. In the last three months, however, my playing time has slowly dwindled to the point that after June was over, I was 10 hours behind on my goal progress on fiddle and one hour behind on banjo. I'm still playing every day, but only the bare minimum to keep my streak going. Although, I am excited to have reached 200 days in a row . Otherwise, my motivation and enthusiasm is lacking, and I'm just not excited about the music. With jams and festivals cancelled, there's nothing to pull me out of this malaise. As I reported back in May, I attended a couple of workshops and a virtual jam, but otherwise I'm feeling very disconnected from my old-time community. My to-learn list hasn't inspired much joy, and I'm just not sure what to do about my current state of affairs. I've thought about taking some lessons, but I find it difficult to follow along through video ...

F or a while it seems my fiddling has been stuck. The plateau has become a rut. The last time I talked about this I was trying to learn some "Ohio repertoire" tunes by ear. That has been a hard road to travel as the distance between what I hear and what I play still seems too expansive. Instead I've been playing the same handful of tunes over and over and over in the attempt to master them. But my limited playlist started to feel like a jail cell. There's no way out but to play through it. And that's what I'm doing.

There ever comes a time when the journey of learning a musical instrument reaches a plateau. These long improvement-less stretches start to feel like stagnation if linger they do too long. Upon one of these vast leveling off stages is where I find my fiddling today.

March 24 marks my seventh year playing the banjo. In the past, this date would be spent tallying my lifetime practice hours to see how close I've come to that magical 10,000-hour mark . Ever since taking up the fiddle, however, those hours have become sparser and sparser. My banjo now spends most of its time hanging on the wall. I'll let my son strum the strings as we pass by its place. He's much gentler now. A year ago , I would hold my breath fearing that he'd snap off the strings. The extent of my playing these days resides in noodling once or twice a week or the even rarer occasion of playing with friends at a party or festival. I'd much rather spend my free time tackling the beast that is the fiddle. The fiddle should be on top now.