Featured Article: How To Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice

Yesterday I came across an article from 2016 by Benedict Marsh titled "How to Learn Any Instrument Using Your Voice". It may be one of the best music learning posts I've ever come across. You can read the full write up here: https://www.lessonface.com/content/how-learn-any-instrument-using-your-voice

Here are some highlights:

Many people fail to realize that they have already learned how to play an instrument using mimicry once in their lives: their voice.

You learned to make all of those incredible sounds called words in your mother tongue by listening to the sounds around you and copying them through a lot of trial and error. The people around you didn’t show you a picture of the inside of your mouth and say, “put your tongue here”. It wasn’t taught visually. You just mimicked. 

The difference between the students who sing what they are trying to learn and those that don’t is blatant. When someone finally starts singing the part they are trying to play, they figure it out a lot faster. Singing the part connects you to your body, and to your aural abilities in a conscious physical way. It engages you in active listening - so that you are really paying attention to what the part is. You can’t sing a part unless you have really listened to it. This helps you to internalize it. If you have internalized it, it is much easier to bring that out of your body again into the instrument you are trying to learn.

Once I have mimicked my voice, by matching the notes on the guitar, I will notice that the way I am playing it on the guitar, assuming I am a beginner, doesn’t sound quite as fluid as the original. So, then I can start to practice it by singing small chunks of (an) 8 bar phrase and trying to get my guitar to sound the way I think it should sound to most accurately represent the (musical) phrase.

Take some time and connect to your voice. Go slow. Everyone can sing. Pick single notes on a piano or a guitar and try to find them with your voice. Let yourself “suck” and just try to match what you are hearing.

Trying to mimic the sound will change and grow your techniques! If you are playing something and it doesn’t sound like what you are trying to mimic - which you have now learned to sing - then change what you are doing until it does! Stay curious. You will discover new techniques this way; your own techniques.

Try to pick something that will challenge you but is doable for your skill level. It may be hard to navigate these waters at first, but you’ll get there.

Your ears telling you it doesn’t sound right is a good thing! It means you can hear the difference, and soon enough, with tenacity and determination, you will get it sounding the way you want it.

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Is Tenor Banjo More Like Guitar, Mandolin or Banjo?

This post asks the question, is tenor banjo more like acoustic guitar, mandolin, or banjo? 

Mandolin

Some would say that tenor banjo is more like mandolin, primarily because of the tuning. If you already play tenor banjo tuned in 5ths, then it's easy to switch to either mandolin (or mandola) and vice versa. The similarity kind of stops there though. Mandolin has double course strings and a much shorter scale.

Guitar

The guitar is the instrument that replaced the banjo in jazz in the 1930's due improvements in design and amplification. The act of using a pick and flat-picking the way bluegrass guitar players do is quite similar to how Irish banjo players use a guitar pick to pluck melodies. Unless you tune your tenor banjo in Chicago style DGBE, then guitar is going to have a different tuning than tenor banjo. However, the scale length of a tenor banjo, especially a 19-fret/23-inch scale tenor banjo, is closer to that of a guitar than a mandolin. You're only a couple inches shy of a guitar scale length, whereas mandolin is about 9 inches shorter.

Banjo

From a playing perspective, tenor banjo actually shares very little in common with bluegrass style 5-string banjo playing or the old-time clawhammer banjo. There are similarities in construction. Both are banjos by design - a round frame with a skin or synthetic membrane stretched across it, with a neck and strings attached. And both share that lack of sustain. But the playing styles are very different.

In Summary

For decades I postponed getting an instrument and learning how to play it. One of the reasons is because I thought my options were only acoustic guitar, mandolin, or banjo, and I had excuses for why I didn't want to play each of those. Guitar felt too "boxy" and big. It had too many strings and was not comfortable to hold. Mandolin was cramped, too hard to get into tune, and I didn't like the feel of double course strings. Banjo, whether it bluegrass or clawhammer style (which were the only styles I knew of), just seemed like it would be too hard to play.

When I learned there was a banjo that you played with a guitar pick rather than your fingers or finger picks, tuned like a mandolin but with single strings an octave lower, and plucked single note melodies like a guitar flat-picker, I was sold. You take aspects of each...that unmistakable banjo sound, paired with the logic of an all 5ths tuning, and the tactile experience of plucking fiddle tunes so that you can pretend like you are Tony Rice or Norman Blake, all while playing a banjo. Not to mention that it's actually played in Irish music! Who knew?!

Trying to Sound Irish and Authentic

Fiddlers who play Irish tunes are oftentimes intentionally trying to sound Irish. Maybe you were a classically trained violinist or are coming from a bluegrass background, and now you're trying to get that other sound out of your playing and more of an Irish accent into your fiddling. 

I sometimes wonder if the same applies to Irish tenor banjo or if tenor banjo melody pluckers have more leeway? 

If you play basic versions of Irish tunes on tenor banjo, enough to get by in sessions, but you're not really adding typical banjo ornamentation like triplets, are you still playing Irish tenor banjo? 

Or let's say you do all the right things and have a 19-fret resonator tenor banjo tuned GDAE, play with a pick and make generous use of the characteristic triplets of Irish tenor banjo playing, but your repertoire focuses on American old-time, Québécois, and contra dance tunes instead of Irish trad. Are you still playing Irish tenor banjo? 

I also wonder where the line is between trying to sound authentic - as in trying to play with the ornamentation and other tropes that define "Irish" music, and trying to sound authentic - as in trying to sound like yourself even if that self happens to be an American who didn't grow up listening to Irish trad. 

Ultimately, the answer is probably to do whatever you want, as long as it sounds good to you. 

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Creating Your Own Backing Tracks for Irish Trad Tunes

I've been looking for ways to create your own backing tracks with chords. I would be using these for the Irish tunes I'm learning. I like being able to play along with a chord-based backing track rather than just a drum beat. I found three options: Strum Machine, Musicca Chord Player, and TheMajor7. 

My criteria is:

-Must be quick and easy to use.

-Should have cool sounds like jazz, reggae, Latin, et cetera.

-Should have 6/8 and 9/8 time signatures that could work for Irish tunes.

-Should have a count-in option.

Of the three sites I found, Strum Machine checks the most of these boxes. It is the easiest to use, it has 6/8 and 9/8 Celtic time signatures, and a count-in option. The designer of it definitely has fiddle tunes in mind. Strum Machine also has cool features such as auto speedup (allows you to set it so that it increases by a certain BPM each time through the tune), auto finish (allows you to set the backing track to automatically stop after a certain number of times through the tune), and medley (allows to string multiple tunes together into an Irish session style set). Strum Machine is the one I'll be using the most. 

The only bad thing about Strum Machine is the sound options are limited and are primarily from a bluegrass perspective. This is probably fine for most users who play bluegrass, old-time or Irish trad, but I like pairing an Irish melody with a style that is outside the norm.

I wanted to test out Strum Machine's 9/8 Celtic slip-jig rhythm and its medley setting, so I created a medley of 2x through Redican's Mother and 2x through Hardiman the Fiddler. Here's how it turned out.

Musicca Chord Player is my second favorite so far. It's definitely coming from a pop music angle though. What Chord Player has going for it is it's fairly easy to use and it has a decent variety of style options. Plus I really like how when it changes to a different section it changes up the pattern. That adds a level of fun and excitement to the music. I'm probably in the minority when it comes to this, but I've been enjoying playing Irish reels to the Chord Player's reggae style(s).

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to turn on a count-in beat, which is strange. It starts right away when you click play so you either have to start in progress or wait for it to come around again. Chord Player will also just loop forever until you stop it. I didn't see a way for you to set it to only loop three times, for example. And you can't put together medleys like you can in Strum Machine. Chord Player also doesn't have 6/8 time, but you can mimic 6/8 time by doing 3 beats per measure and then doubling the overall number of measures.

Lastly there's TheMajor7.com. Although it takes a little longer to create the backing track than the other two (unless there are shortcuts I haven't learned), TheMajor7.com is probably the best for creating jazz style backing tracks. I didn't like TheMajor7's 6/8 time whatsoever, so I won't be using it for any jigs, but I will likely use it for playing tunes in 4/4 time. 

Here's an example of the Irish reel The Old Bush first played with a reggae backing band using Musicca Chord Player, followed by a jazz backing band from TheMajor7.com.

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Twenty Years Playing Tenor Banjo

Next month, May 2026, will mark twenty years of playing tenor banjo. I went from having never played a musical instrument a day in my life to making it something I do every day. At first I was obsessed with the question of "how soon until I get good?". If I could have seen then where I am now I'm sure I would be unimpressed. I never got good. More like one-dimensionally adequate.

Fiddle tunes as well as Celtic jigs, reels, and hornpipes were pretty much there from the start because I had a couple teachers who helped steer me in that direction. For several years I also thought I should be playing songs by artists that I had spent most of my youth listening to including Ween, Phish, John Prine, Gillian Welch, The Grateful Dead, The Flaming Lips, Steve Earle, The Meat Puppets, Camper Van Beethoven, The Sadies, Neil Young, and more. 

It's funny how the idea of what music playing is going to be when you first start as an adult beginner changes over time. In my case I guess I grew out of the songs that I knew and loved when I was just a music fan and listener and grew into the instrumental tunes that more suited my chosen instrument - the tenor banjo flatpicked as a melody plucker.

One of the best things I ever did was I jumped right in. I didn't know of any jams or sessions where it was OK to mix tunes like Arkansas Traveler with tunes like Road to Lisdoonvarna, so I started my own! Within the first year or two, when I was still trying to figure out things like picking patterns and reading mandolin tab, I was hosting or co-hosting Fiddler's Fakebook type jams at local coffee shops including Java Jodi's in Goochland, VA and The Station Cafe and Ashland Coffee and Tea in Ashland, VA. Something I instantly liked about the tune playing community, whether it was old-time or more Irish trad based, is how welcoming the players could be to a beginner. I also caught a whiff of the snootiness that can be wrapped up in it through some attitudes and personality types. 

Ironically, the other best thing I ever did was to completely retreat from going to any jams or sessions whatsoever. From 2017 through 2023 I stopped playing anything that I had ever played before. During this time I stayed at home and pursued a solo practice where I would listen to musicians such as Tommy Guerrero, Sun Ra, Mulatu Astatke, Dorothy Ashby, Ernest Ranglin, Orchestra Baobab, The Skatalites, Blinky and the Roadmasters, Bacao Rhythm and Steel Band, Spokes Mashiyane, Lennie Hibbert, and Augustus Pablo (things that were far, far removed from being "fiddle tunes"), and then try and make up my own little AA/BB style tunes based on the melodies I was hearing in this music. Coincidentally this is almost exactly the same type of music that my now favorite radio station - KMHD in Portland, OR - plays 24/7 but I wouldn't discover KMHD until late 2025!

This approach did wonders for my ears and it also freed me from any concerns over right vs. wrong. Since I never once had access to the sheet music for the pieces I was using as inspiration, I never knew what the right notes were, or what the key signature was, or what the time signature was, or what the chords were, or where the measure lines went, or what BPM it should be played at, or even what type of tune it was. I wasn't thinking in terms of jig, reel, slide, rag, polka, slip-jig, march, hornpipe, mazurka, et cetera. I was meeting each melody head on in a case by case basis. 

Another thing I did during this time was I experimented with playing other instruments, including glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba, and guitar tuned in all-4ths. I still played all-melody all-the-time on these other instruments but it got me out of the finger patterns associated with GDAE all-5ths mandolin style tuning like I was using on the tenor banjo. Playing the keyboard layout of tuned mallet percussion was something completely different!

When I got to Oregon in 2024 and returned to the Irish trad repertoire with the goal of memorizing tunes and playing in sessions with others, I realized that I was now over whatever mental and physical humps had set me back in the past. Through a lot of hard work, I'm able to participate and be part of a community. I now learn Irish session tunes with the same method I was using with those other musical sources that I relied on from 2017 to 2023. My motto now is "learn the way it sounds and then make it sound the way you want". I no longer dwell over "how soon until I get good?". As an amateur, hobbyist, musician I get to play my instrument(s) every day and that's good enough for me.

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A Two Octave Chromatic Marimba

In 2019 I got a 3 octave DeMorrow marimba. It was a great instrument at a fair price and I highly recommend it. These are considered student instruments because they have only 3 octaves instead of 4 or 5 and lack resonators, while offering a much better sound than a typical student level bells kit.

During this time period in my life I had retreated from going to Irish sessions or old-time jams and was staying at home making up my own little melodies. Marimba was great for this because it made me think about music in a different way. The chromatic keyboard layout with its black keys and white keys is so different from left-handed tenor banjo or mandolin tuned in 5ths or left-handed guitar tuned in 4ths.

Three octaves is considered small in size for marimba, however, it was still pretty huge when compared to a tenor banjo or mandolin. It was over four and a half feet wide! I played it for about a year and a half before selling it. I don't recall exactly why I opted to get rid of it but I'm impulsively fickle like that. It was probably because of space considerations.

I'm now considering getting a marimba again, but this time I only want it to be two octaves - 25 chromatic notes from C to C in the soprano range so that the lowest note is middle C. That should make it about three feet wide. Much easier to transport and find space for. The layout would be similar to the image below. I like the symmetry of the two / three / two / three black keys pattern.

Two octave chromatic marimba

When I moved to Oregon in 2024 I went back to learning and playing Irish tunes. My current repertoire consists almost entirely of tunes that are likely to be played at an Irish session, or what they call a Pan Celtic session. The payoff is that others are likely to know most anything I learn how to play. Since I am near Portland, there is a lot of crossover between the traditional Irish trad repertoire and the contra dance melodies as found in the Portland Collection books, which I love. 

By my estimate, at least 80% of the tunes played at an Irish session do not have a melody note lower than D. Maybe 90%. In other words, most of these tunes don't require the low G string of a violin to play them. And on the high end, only like 1% of the commonly played tunes have a note higher than B. This means that most of these tunes would fit in a two octave range from C4 to C6. 

I have a theory about why the Irish session repertoire is limited to this range. I think it's because these aren't "fiddle tunes", per se. Other instruments such as flute, D-whistle and uillean pipes have equal footing in the community, and on those instruments the lowest note is D. And on fiddle the highest note you can hit without leaving first position is the E-string B note that fiddlers play with their pinky. These tunes have evolved over the years to fit within that span.

On the rare occasion that a traditional Irish melody ventures down to a violin's G string, flute and whistle players use a technique called "folding" where they rearrange the portion that is too low for their instrument by playing in a higher octave. From what I understand, how much of it you fold up is determined on a case by case, player by player, basis. Sometimes it might just a note or two and other times entire phrases are moved to the higher octave. On occasion they may also use a harmony note like a third interval if that sounds OK. Failing that, perhaps you just sit that one out or play it on a banjo or mandolin.

A marimba would usually be 4.3 to 5 octaves. This allows marimbists such as Jenny Klukken to play low end notes and enjoy the full spectrum of sound that the marimba is designed for. In my case, I don't play with any sense of chords or harmony and I'm not playing music meant for marimba. I only play melodies. The fact that this folding technique exists for certain instruments in the Irish trad world gives me confidence that the same strategy could be applied to a two octave marimba.

I've tried some other instruments but none of them have worked. I got a melodica in October and quickly developed a lingering cough from inhaling some type of dust or bacteria from the tube that you use to blow air to make sound. F-that. I very briefly tried an English Concertina but I felt like that was going to give me wrist problems. None of these offered the same satisfaction of hitting a tuned percussion note with a mallet!

I probably won't be learning many reels on marimba. But jigs, slides, polkas, barn dances, and mazurkas are fair game, as well as slower airs and harp tunes.

To sum up, like I alluded to before, a marimba or xylophone can be a great second instrument for a string player because it takes you out of your comfort zone. Perfect for ear training and music theory - seeing and hearing things in a different way!

Incorporating Suzuki and Orff Into Your Own Music Practice

I wanted to write an article titled “Incorporating Suzuki and Orff Into Your Own Music Practice”, and hey look I did! The problem is I didn’t know anything about the Suzuki method or the Orff approach to music when I began formulating this post. So I had to do some research before I could complete the task. It might not have been worth the effort, but here it is.

Suzuki and Orff are both designed for children, with an emphasis on playing by ear. So for adult learners who might be starting their first instrument in their thirties, forties, fifties or sixties, extrapolating aspects of each is going to take some adaptation.

The Suzuki method is modeled after a child’s innate ability to learn their native language, the “mother-tongue”. Believing that the easiest way to learn is by ear and that talent is not born - that musical ability can be developed in anyone.

Suzuki relies on lots of listening, repetition and imitation of a structured common repertoire. Students learn by ear at first. Sheet music is not brought in until later, similar to how as a child you learned to speak before you learned to read.

Pieces are introduced in a logically progressive order, chosen because each new piece introduces a specific skill while reinforcing an old one. Suzuki is taught with specific instrument proficiency in mind. Commonly used instruments are violin, piano, or flute.

Orff, while also ear-based, is more about creativity, improvisation, collaboration and participation. Musical creativity is encouraged as the ultimate goal with the knowledge that making music should be an inclusive, playful and fun experience. Students learn by doing, acting as co-creators in the learning process rather than passive recipients of information. It’s not about being told or shown, it’s about being actively involved in the music making - making it your own without worrying about theory.

Students engage in an ensemble setting, working together to develop their sense of timing and harmony. The basic elements of music, like form, rhythm, texture, harmony and melody aren't learned the traditional way, but through experience.

Common Orff instruments include xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels. Some are just pentatonic or diatonic, while some might be fully chromatic. These relatively simple instruments allow students to focus on creativity, improvisation and musicality rather than technical complexity. Instruments are seen as tools for exploration and expression, not ends in themselves.

So what can we learn from these two somewhat opposing processes?

Adults can benefit from the methodical structure inherent in Suzuki - the clear, logical progression of pieces. However, Suzuki is really just a choice of repertoire. You could just as easily use Irish trad tunes set up in a gradual progression: polkas > slides > jigs > reels > hornpipes > slip-jigs might be one way. Gradually working up in difficulty and introducing ornamentation along the way. Adding pieces based on what techniques each new piece teaches or reinforces.

The Suzuki method is well suited to single-line melody, which makes fiddle tunes and Irish traditional music a logical choice. When you play Irish traditional music, you can also find camaraderie in this common repertoire, bonding over a shared experience and knowing that music is not a competition. That is in line with the Suzuki philosophy.

Whereas the Orff approach may inspire you to see what kinds of melodies you can come up with on your own, and to have fun while learning and not be worried about making mistakes. Maybe you get into melodic variation, exploring a hundred variations of a tune. Or maybe you experiment with different ways to play a rhythm.

Or maybe you simply internalize the various rhythms by adding movement and singing to your practice, using onomatopoeia mnemonics such as “buy the band a beer” for hop jigs, “I saw three ships a sailing in” for slides, “humpty-dumpty” for hornpipes, and “pineapple apricot” for jigs.

Orff's emphasis on improvisation and participation will definitely come into play when you are at a session or a jam. A major benefit of playing with others is your sense of timing and rhythm will improve, and you can react in real time to what's going on around you rather than being locked into rote memorization or what's written on a page.

I hope that does it!

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Review - Sonor Orff Meisterklasse TAG 25 Tenor-Alto Chromatic Glockenspiel

Here's a quick review of the 25-bar Sonor Meisterklasse Chromatic Glockenspiel. I decided to get the Sonor TAG 25 tenor-alto glockenspiel (range C2-C4) instead of the SG 25 soprano model (range C3-C5) because it was lower pitched and seemed like it would have a more mellow sound. 

What I like about it:

-Fairly compact size. 20 inches wide side to side, 18 inches top to bottom (left hand side) and 9.5 inches top to bottom (right hand side). A traditional 2.5 octave G to C glockenspiel would have been more like 24 inches wide. I don't know the dimensions of the SG 25 chromatic soprano, but it's got to be even smaller.

-Removable bars per the Orff approach. I mostly play in Irish keys/modes with one or two sharps where the lowest note in a melody is often going to be no lower than D and the highest note is never going to be any higher than B. The two octave C2-C4 range fully captures these notes with one or two to spare on each end. With removable bars, I can take off the bars that don't get played at all or hardly ever such as A#/Bb, D#/Eb, F natural, the low and high C bars, and so on.

-Sits in lap. The beechwood resonator box that the bars are situated on is fully enclosed so it can be played on your lap while sitting in a chair or on the couch. It also easily sits on a table.

-Comes with two sets of mallets: a rubber head set and a wooden set. These have different sounds. Check out the sound sample video below! I play a brief melody with the rubber mallets first, followed by the same melody played with the wooden mallets.

-Cool design. It looks better than most other bells or xylophone type instruments.

What I don't like as much:

-It resonates forever!!! The notes ring out for a loooooong time so they are still ringing when you go to play the next note. This can create a cacophony of sound as one note blurs into the other. Plus any "wrong" notes are going to be ringing for a while as a reminder of your mistake, LOL! I don't know of a way to dampen this. My first instinct was to send it back due to the alarming amount of sustain.

-It kind of sounds like a doorbell chime ringing at different pitches. Now that I've heard it in person, I kind of wish it had fiberglass xylophone-like keys with a quick attack instead of these aluminum alloy bars. Maybe I'll get used to it.

-The e3 note on mine doesn't ring quite as well as the other notes around it. This is probably related to the rubber pins that hold the bars in place. The good news is that these pins are easily replaced.

These glockenspiels are available from West Music and other retailers.

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Which Irish tunes types are the easiest to learn?

Which Irish tunes types are the easiest to learn?

Well, polkas are probably the easiest to learn. They are among the simplest types of tunes with straightforward, often happy melodies. Polkas sound relatively normal to Americanized ears, along the lines of nursery rhymes or basic folk songs. Barndances with their moderate tempo, and marches with their stately, unhurried style are also fairly easy to pick up.

Jigs. What makes jigs difficult is not necessarily the notes but the rhythm. However, once you conquer the “pineapple apricot” rhythm, jigs can become fairly easy to learn. For one thing, jigs have fewer notes per measure than most other Irish tune types, which adds up to fewer notes to have to remember across 8 or 16 measures. 

Slides are also pretty easy to learn, probably because they are very whistleable. Slides can feel fast, but if you slow them down and bring out the dotted swing of the rhythm you’ll often find that slides are melodically more simple than jigs. The 12/8 time signature seems like it would be complex but it doesn't have to be.

Reels can be intimidating due to their fast tempo and blazing runs of notes. With practice, you may find that reels are the most “fiddle tune” like of the Irish tune types. For example, the bluegrass or old-time tune Liberty could definitely pass for an Irish reel. Once you become familiar with how reels are structured, including repeated patterns that show up time and time again, you can eventually hack your way through learning them.  

I find hornpipes to be among the more difficult tunes to learn. I think this is because hornpipes have some intervallic leaps unique to their structure which require stable technique to pull-off. Hornpipes also commonly feature built-in triplets that can make the standard melody more challenging to play. One other aspect of difficulty could be attributed to the more complex chordal structure found in hornpipes. 

Lastly on my list there’s slip-jigs. These "hoppy" tunes are in 9/8 time which can seem the most baffling and unfamiliar from a rhythm standpoint. The unusual timing makes it very hard to stay in sync with where the “one” is and know where to place the emphasis as phrases begin or end. Never fear. With practice and familiarity, once mysterious tunes such as The Butterfly will become ones you can play in your sleep!

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YouTube to MP3 Converter + Cloud Music Player

A few months ago I found a free (donation-based) Ad-free online YouTube to MP3 converter site called CNVMP3. You simply paste a YouTube URL and it'll convert it to mp3 and save it to your downloads folder. I've been using this converter to make audio files of the Irish tunes played in the Portland, OR area sessions. My favorite posters of Irish tunes on YouTube are those who make short videos of just the tune being played two or three times through with no preamble or extra talking. These include:

• Dulahan Ireland (my overall favorite!)
• Irish Music with Gavin McNutt 
• Liz Faiella 
• mandolinuk 
• peakfiddler
• pluckinstrings 
• ROUX Recordings
• Tergal14Mandolin
• The Irish Mandolin

Now that I had all these files saved, I was looking for a convenient way to get the music onto a player on my phone with a random play option. I finally found iBroadcast Media Player and it couldn't be easier! It works exactly how I wanted it to. On your PC you simply create an account and upload a folder containing the mp3 files. Then download the app, log in to your account and boom the music will be right there on your phone. Earlier today I drove around town running a few errands and had one of the playlists on shuffle play.

 I also uploaded a folder to iBroadcast containing all the tune sets I could find on the Trailjams.org site. About 70 of them! Now I can put these files on random play and play along with them. This is exactly what I've been looking for. Hopefully you find this helpful too!

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