Steve writes:

Hi Pete,

I'm a novice player thinking about buying one of your "jamming" DVDs. I've been learning by tabs for ~ 2 years now but have hit a standstill, fairly bored with just playing isolated solos. I thought your videos might give me a good start to trying to get jamming with others. I don't know which one would be appropriate though.

Is there a real skill level difference between " Bluegrass slow jam for the total beginner" and "A guide for newcomers and closet pickers"?

Pete Replies:

Yes, Steve.

The Slow Jam is truly for "total beginners" and is quite slow, to accommodate people who are slow at changing chords. And the entire video uses only G, C, D, and A. There are no gaps provided for trying a solo.

On the Closet Pickers one, with the greenish cover, the tunes start slow and very simple, and gradually pick up speed toward the middle and end of the video. "Soloing opportunities" are provided, meaning the band goes into "backup" mode for one solo per song, and the viewer at home can try to put it a solo there.

At this point in your development, you should try mightily to see if you can make up your own solos to songs, even if they don't perfectly follow the melody. You're long past the time where you should have started trying this. Memorized solos don't get you to the place where you can really play the way "real" players play. In other words, you have to start learning, so to speak, to write your own paragraph, not just memorize paragraphs others have written.

I should note, this is not a simple task. It may take you a while to make up solos that follow some of the melody and come out in rhythm. But I assure you, this effort is worth it, because it's an absolutely essential skill for real-life banjo playing.

In real-life jam sessions, it's common for players to not have a worked-out solo for a song, yet the more developed players can always come up with "something" on the fly. This is in itself a skill, and indeed even if you have worked out a solo for a song, it's not always simple to suddenly retrieve it exactly the way you memorized it. So part of the skill of learning to play bluegrass banjo is to be able to come up with something even when you've not prepared. You can practice this skill with the jam videos.

The Intermediate jam video has speeds a bit faster than the "closet pickers" one, but still moderate compared to many typical jam sessions. The tempos center around 100 beats per minute, and the chord changes aren't particularly tricky, though a variety of keys is used. On this DVD, the viewer is given *two* chances to solo on each song.

I hope this helps. What will really help is, once you've gotten comfortable jamming with the videos, to venture out into the real world and find a jam you can fit into, and start getting real life experience. For useful hints on how to connect with suitable-level players, go to the Jamming Tips page on my site, and click the yellow button saying "Can't find people to jam in your area?"

It's at that point that I think all your efforts will pay off and you'll feel like a "real" banjo player!

Best of luck!

Pete Wernick

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