Banjo practice. Use picks or not.

So I practice my banjo right in my living room in my recliner most of the time. My wife is always in the same room trying to watch t.v.

Now, you probably know that a person who is practicing a musical instrument of any kind can do a lot of really annoying things. Especially to a person in the same room. By annoying I mean things like practicing scales over and over or strumming the same chords repeatedly. Or my personal favorite annoying thing that I do is I will be just pickin and stumble upon some cool new lick and just wear it out.

I try to do it again and again so I can drill it into memory. Usually if I do come up with a new lick and I think about going jumping up to record it then by the time I get my banjo in the room with my recorder then I forgot my new lick. For this reason, I just do it over and over.

One thing I do to make life more tolerable to anyone who has to be subjected to my playing and practicing is that I practice without my picks on. Just kind of bare knuckled pickin I call it.

This works great because you can still practice rolls and licks without it blasting all over the place. The sound is way more subdued and tolerable to other people in the room. My problem with that is, when I try to play something with my picks on so I get that beautiful banjo ring, I fell like I have banjo mittens on my fingers and I fall all over myself trying to play at the right speed.

So on one hand practicing without the picks is more considerate of others, but on the other hand if you are going to get used to playing with picks on you probably should practice with picks on.

2 days till Ralph Stanley