The Glory-Beaming Banjo

First of all, all apologies for the monthlong gap between this post and the last one . Things got a bit heavy with my professional workload and general seasonal affectation demotivation. But I'm back, and I have some ideas for my next couple posts. But first, let's get this one out of the way.  As I'm wont to do , here's my review of my old-time music activities for the First Quarter 2019. My navalgazing blogger version of a corporate earnings report shows that I logged 47.5 hours on fiddle and 12.5 hours on banjo, attended two jams and one festival. My fiddle tune for this quarter was "Arkansas Traveler." I learned a very basic version that I figured I could eventually work into something more interesting later on. The main thing was to use the tune as a means to improve my basic rhythm, and I think I've achieved that.  On the banjo, I successfully learned to sing (that's a relative term) and play "Mole in the Ground." That went ...

Happy New Year! Welcome back to Glory-Beaming Banjo. Last year ended on a positive note, and 2019 brings the promise of hope for another strong year of playing music and writing these here blog posts. With a bit of a hurdle yet to clear before 2018 ran out, I managed to surpass both of my playing time goals and end the year with a 50-day playing streak. I feel reasonably good about the tunes I learned last year, but I do still need to work on refining them. This year, I'm hoping to increase my playing time goals for banjo and fiddle and learn some more tunes, but I'm taking a break from the Ward Jarvis catalog . Instead, I'll be tackling some overlooked chestnuts as a means to improve my rhythm and expand my jam-friendly repertoire. When I started on the fiddle , I had little interest in learning the common tunes I already played on banjo. I jumped from Wayne Erbsen's Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus to Brad Leftwich's more complex bowing pattern...