Self Education

I am a very stubborn student! It’s like I’m proud of my ignorance or something; “you can’t teach me anything!” (whined in a bratty 10-year-old voice). There have been only two situations where I’ve been able to overcome this self-limiting attitude; the first is when I have paid for college classes (I’m cheap!). The second is when I’ve tried to explain things to somebody else; I guess I’m a natural-born teacher, because I become determined to succeed at getting someone to understand, and then I happily research the subject on my own—basically teaching myself in my quest for world-dominance.

This is the primary reason I wrote my book, The Plectrum Banjo: Beyond Chord Melody—and continue to go out on a shaky, editorial limb with my blogs and video tutorials. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel of course—they don’t call this the “information age” for nothing!—but that seems to be the best way for me to learn. Of course I want you to benefit from the lessons of my self-education also, but I’m not afraid to admit that my own good is the primary reason for everything I do!

I have found that there really isn’t much four string banjo-specific information available (not that I would have paid much attention to it anyway, with my level of stubbornness!). There are plenty of “self-taught” players out there; I was one of them! My father (who knew better then to force me to learn anything!) taught me the C, F, and G7 chords necessary to play 90% of the typical banjo band songs, and off I went. When I switched to plectrum, it was even worse, because our band was mostly tenor players. This has always been a great-but-misguided source of stubborn pride for me, as you can imagine. The problem is, it has only made things worse for me as an adult—an adult who eventually became frustrated with those self-limiting attitudes, desperate to break through the artificial barrier.

An interesting thought has occurred to me (hey, it happens occasionally!); the banjo has always been rightfully-touted as the true “American” instrument. Put in this light, nothing could be more-true! America is all about stubborn individualism; the banjo embodies this attitude perfectly! “I’m gonna play it my way, and if you don’t like it, you know where you can stick it!” An equally-important accompanying thought: Stubborn pride only gets you so far! With a narrow-focused historic instrument like the four-string banjo, maybe it would be good to pay some homage to the originators before trying to create your own thing (who are you, anyway?)!

While America is about individualism, it has also benefited from uniformity; how many times have you stopped at a McDonald’s while on a road trip, just because you know what you’re getting—and have a craving for it? Heck, my wife and I resorted to that a couple times on an extended trip to Southern France—one of the culinary delights of the world—simply because we missed home (and we don’t even like McDonald’s; French Mickie-D’s are much better than ours, by the way)!

In my opinion—if we truly want to “preserve, promote, and advance” the four-string banjo (to the degree of other, more-successful instruments like the guitar)—we need to be walking/talking encyclopedias of the instrument’s history and historical ways of playing it (it’s “uniformity”). How can you expect to guide its future direction—which it is desperately in-need of—if you can’t appreciate/demonstrate-to-others its history? Then it is in danger of becoming just another guitar-tuned abomination, played by an admittedly-fabulous modern–jazz/rock guitarist who doesn’t even know who Eddie Peabody or Harry Reser were, much less can demonstrate their styles! [Note: The “Chicago-tuning” is of course an important part of our history—if it can also be played in a “historically-correct” manner! Remember, these are my opinions! I’m overjoyed to hear your opinions, just not couched in “you’re an idiot” terms!]

Okay, what’s this got to do with “self-education?” Good question—I was hoping you would make the connections! My point is that while I have been stubbornly “reinventing the wheel,” I have been—and am—reliant on good-ole-fashioned, run-of-the-mill musical knowledge; I am lucky to have a degree in music education (just try to apply that to the four-string banjo!), but this information is freely available to anyone with the desire to learn—or should I say, “educate themselves!”

I am a working teacher of course, but I will not work on the premise of you becoming dependent on a teacher! My primary focus is to create in you a desire to “take the bull by the horns” yourself—as I have—and become your own best teacher! Only then can I truly believe I have contributed to the betterment of the four-string banjo.