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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