Your Top Guide to Improving Your Banjo Playing Skills

It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner at banjo playing or are already a veteran player who knows more than a few tricks – it’s probably in your best interest to continue improving your skills at playing the banjo. It can give you a sense of achievement when you know that you are progressing and harnessing your full potential, and improving your skills helps you stay on top. But what else can you do to enhance your banjo playing skills? As they say, practice makes perfect, but there are some definitive habits you can cultivate to help you get in excellent shape. Here, then, is your top guide.

• Table of Contents

  Toggle

  Take steps to increase and enhance your speed

Most of those who try to play the banjo, particularly beginners, try to focus on playing as briskly as possible. But if you haven’t become truly adept at a song or technique, playing briskly will not help you perfect your skills. It is simply a waste of precious time. What you can do instead is make sure you are comfortable even when you play slowly and work on your tone and timing. Speed will come naturally as you practice, especially once you can play a song all the way through several times correctly. Once you feel you are ready for it, you can begin working with a metronome so you can pick up the pace little by little.

• Listen actively

Another thing you can do is find a video of your favorite song and then try to play it by ear. It pays to learn to play the melody, even of a pop or rock song, so you can internalize the banjo’s sound and the finer details and style of the song. It would also be a good idea for you to mix it up – listen to banjo classics from the past, such as Pete Seeger and Earl Scruggs, and combine your listening with newer greats such as Alison Brown and Noam Pikelny. When you play, you should also try recording yourself. By doing this, you can listen with a different perspective, and you may be surprised to hear something new and alert yourself to something that doesn’t sound quite right.

• Participate in a jamming session

Of course, playing on your own is one of the keys to becoming a better player. But it will also benefit you to play and jam with other musicians as often as you can. Each time you jam with others, you can get more motivation and energy, and you can even learn from them and perhaps get a chance to perfect those banjo rolls you’ve been itching to perfect, as confirmed by banjo experts like Jofflowson.com. Practicing and learning with someone also instills a sense of joy and belonging – making it even better.

• Don’t forget to set achievable goals

If you are keen on having results you can measure, then you have to set achievable goals. For example, what would you like to accomplish in the next few weeks, months, or quarter? Some excellent goals include learning to be adept at dynamics (the softness or loudness) of playing, learning a few slides, making use of different strokes, and mixing up basic or standard  picking patterns. If you know where you would like to be, it’s easier for you to find better materials to practice with, and you will more readily know your subsequent actions to achieve those goals.