Beginnings

Just Play that Damn Banjo

Starting out in learning a musical instrument, especially as an adult, is a very strange thing. Think about how weird it is to bang things together and make sounds out of it, and then repeat that action a million times, while reading another language and also trying to stay in time, get the rhythm, stay on pitch and also make it sound nothing like a screaming goat. Hard, right?

As mentioned in my first blog post, I’ve grown up playing music and identify as a musician. I’ve played on stages, at music festivals, in large concerts and ensembles. I love music so much, I’ve got a freakin university level music degree. But I don’t think I really ever learnt a lot of what I was doing. I felt like my music teachers hated me, and I was sent to music class as a punishment for not being coordinated enough to be good at tennis. Which is obviously delusional, I was never going to be good at tennis.

By the time that I realised I knew only a little of the technical work, the practical work was all second nature to me so it was hide-able, but I could only ever bumble my way through a theory exam.

So this project will be going back to the start, to learn absolutely everything I can and actually understand why we play certain songs in a 12/8 time signature, how fiddle players’ fingers don’t catch LITERAL fire when they play fast, how I should actually hold a violin bow, what that whole ‘Good Boys Always Eat Fruit’ bullshit was about. And maybe, just maybe, sight read a bass clef?

The truth is, I got away with a lot in school thanks to my ear. My dad taught me the musical sounds, as he’s never been able to read music, so that’s what music was to me. Playing along with dad in the loungeroom. Not dots on a page. By the time the school gave me dots on a page, I didn’t really know they meant, but if I could hear it just once, I’d repeat it pretty perfectly. I’m dyslexic so reading notation was really quite difficult anyway, so I would heavily rely on learning things by ear and just silently pray my angry German clarinet teacher wouldn’t find out. It got to a public forum at university for a lecturer to brutally call me out for being a musical fraud before anyone knew I didn’t truly know what I was doing.

I’ve dabbled in MANY instruments. I (very unfairly) could never sing well, so to make up for my lack of pipes I’ve learnt a variety of strange and wonderful instruments, mostly by YouTube tutorials and sheer stubbornness, as well as playing CDs back millions of times.

I can confidently say I can adequately play these instruments:

• Violin-Irish fiddle style (10 years)
• Tenor Irish Banjo (1 year)
• Guitar- in fluent Paul Kelly (15 years)
• Ukulele (11 years)
• Mandolin (8 years)
• Saxophone (8 years)

I can confidently say I can inadequately but bumble-play these instruments:

• Piano (6 years)
• Clarinet (5 years)
• Tin/high whistle (4 years)
• Low whistle (4 years)
• Appalachian dulcimer (4 years)
• Bodhran (1 year)
• Bluegrass 5 string banjo (3 years)
• Irish keyless flute (1 year)
• Trumpet (a very hot 6 months)

Am I proficient at any one of these instruments? No. Is every instrument on this list for me? Heck no. Do I have no savings because I keep buying expensive musical instruments? Guilty. Have I had a relatively tumultuous love/hate relationship with instruments and music making in general? In every possible way: I once threw a banjo down some stairs in the hopes that it would ‘accidentally break’ and I wouldn’t have to hear my failure resonate so very loudly (spoiler: banjos are surprising hard to kill).

As you can see from this strange mismatched list, I’ve had a weird journey of searching for the magical ‘my instrument’. The instruments I’m currently getting the most possible joy out of are violin and tenor banjo (not so coincidently, they’re tuned the same).

From about 2014-2019 I didn’t play a single thing. It’s the longest I’ve gone without music. I had breakdown/ long hiatus where I put all my instruments and music-related things away in cases and said ‘that’s it! I’m dOnE’ and that was fine for the time, it’s what I needed- despite my dad acting like he’d lost his bandmate and my mum acting like she’d lost all beauty in the world. And now that I’m back playing, I’m also back to basics with my technical violin playing and it requires constant attention.

It’s very hard to convince myself to keep practicing and keep playing, especially if I’m not in an ‘ensemble’ or something to work towards, but doesn’t the quest less spoken, make it all the more special? (Surely Gandalf said something like that?)

I’ve come to realise this is for me, and the joy I get from playing and getting slightly better or learning something I didn’t know yesterday is way more exciting than playing on stage for a room full of strangers (way less stress too, I don’t even have to do my hair!)

If you’re looking for a hobby or for something to lift your spirits in lockdown during this global pandemic of strangeness, I URGE you to play some of that damn lonely piano sitting in the corner. I EMPLORE you to work out that tinny and annoying ukulele song in that YouTube tutorial. It’s a sense of achievement like no other, and it’s kind of like a house plant – the more love you give it – the more it’ll love you back, but without dying for no reason like one of those stupid ungrateful houseplants.