The Brain Of A Master Musician | Brainjo Bite

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[@harrylawless8580]

I once gave a ride to a young musician to an Irish session. He asked me how I came up with the fills, riffs and countermelody I used as an accompanist (in this case, as a bouzouki Player). I told him, I really don't know. They just seem to fit. I guess it comes from God. But I was not able to articulate it. Yeah, not in my conscious planning.

[@ClawhammerBanjo]

I remember hearing this sort of thing (expert musicians claiming to not know how they came up with stuff) when I first started learning to play, and couldn’t even fathom that such a thing was possible.
I figured they must just be keeping the secrets to themselves. :)

[@mountainman4774]

Sorry to be late to the “comment party”, but here are a few of practical tips that I’ve found helpful. Pardon my laughably simplified neurology, but to me musical learning comes in two macro mental steps. Step one I think of as left brain learning, where you consciously think about what you are doing (first finger, second string, first fret--got it!). Unless you are a musical savant, everyone has to start this way. But, as you say, skilled musicians are not simply thinking faster than beginners. Rather, they have made a jump from left brain learning to what I think of as right brain learning. They have developed unconscious skills so that they can stop thinking and just play in a creative way. The problem is how to make that jump. How on earth do you learn an unconscious skill?
Here are some things I found not only help, but I believe are essential to the process: One, ditch the visual aids like chord charts and tab as soon as possible. Force yourself to play by ear. Make your right brain carry the load. Two, listen hard and critically to what you are doing. Is your timing spot on? Are your hammer-ons smooth? Is your phrasing musical? Again, make that right brain work. Three, don’t go too fast too soon. If you do, the left brain sort of panics and starts shouting at your fingers. Go slow, let the left brain feel like, ok, you’ve got this, I’ll just let the right brain have the con. Four, practice a lot and practice smart. You can’t let the right brain take over if the left brain is always jumping in to tell you how do a drop thumb or remind you that an Em is coming up. Practice the basics until they are as natural as tying your shoe. Work on a handful of songs until you can sleepwalk through them. Don’t “practice” by playing 100 different songs once or twice a month because your left brain will be so overwhelmed it will never be able to let go. Hope this helps.

[@TheyStoleMyHandleAgain]

Thank you---I think that I knew this, but unconsciously.

[@ClawhammerBanjo]

Well played!

[@SJWoodworks]

I was the commenter in the banjo group who suggested I'd like to see more content helping us see how experienced banjo players arranged a song. I get your point here, Josh, and it makes sense. But as a sort of early intermediate player, if I want to start coming up with my own arrangements of songs, I'm definitely going to sit down with the raw melody and the chords to a song, and go phrase by phrase, make some decisions, try a few different ways to play it, and then settle on "my way" to play the song. And as you said, the more experience I get, the more I listen to banjo music, the more tools I have in my toolbox, the more complex and advanced my outcome is going to be, for sure. But along the way, I'm going through a process and thinking "a hammer-on fits naturally here," or "if I do a drop thumb I can catch a melody note here and make it sound a little cooler," or "I can break from the melody in this phrase and go up the major scale for this chord and still capture the essence of the melody but be a little more interesting to listen to."
I still think it would be instructive to watch someone go through that process and see the outcome. I might make different decisions when working on the same song, but I think it would expose to my less-experienced fingers some new choices I might not have considered, or new ways of hearing the song. I'm definitely not going to sit down right now and play a version of a song without some pretty serious thought, recording myself along the way to remember how I had wanted it to sound, and maybe even tabbing out "my way" so I can remember later what I decided.

[@ClawhammerBanjo]

Thanks for your comments! Doing that sort of thing is definitely great to do for learning how music works (as well as for remembering things you've come up with as you're starting to create your own stuff). Every creative process needs constraints, and knowing what those are in music (melody, chords, etc.) is essential. I wrote a series for the Banjo Hangout for several years that demonstrated the process you describe. You can find those here: clawhammerbanjo.net/clawhammer-core-repertoire-series-2/.
I also did this video breaking down that process for Old Molly Hare: ua-cam.com/video/JhmwdfhDdJI/v-deo.html (2 parts)
and Pretty Polly: ua-cam.com/video/0zJpTPK_b58/v-deo.html
What I'd recommend as you're working on creating your own arrangements is to start by imagining what you want it to sound like, and then figure out how to match that sound on your banjo. In other words, practice using a "sound first" approach rather than a "technique first" approach. At the same time, keep listening to lots of music, especially of players you like. Also, when you're listening to music of any kind, imagine how you might play it on the banjo.
The main idea here is to understand how to leverage unconscious processing when learning music, since it's what drives musical (and linguistic) fluency. I think one of the challenges here is that when we're doing things that are leveraging unconscious processing (like listening, or imagining playing something), it doesn't feel like we're "practicing."

[@dougnesbitt8820]

This is tied into something I've noticed. It's easier for me to learn a level 2 tab and then add pull offs, slides, hammer ons ect. to make the song more complex like a level 3-4 version than it is to learn the song as a level 3-4 from the beginning. I feel like if I keep learning level 3-4 songs that might change. However even years ago I was able to learn certain complex songs almost instantly by ear.. like in 5 minutes yet still today some songs I really want to learn take me weeks to learn and play well. Always the ones that take a long time involve a left hand sequence that I have not done before.
Because of this I would prefer two different TABs for the same song. A level 1-2 and a 3-4 side by side for the same song.

[@ClawhammerBanjo]

Yes, I think that’s a great observation. It’s also the reason behind the layout of The Vault - as you progress in skills (including ear development), the tab should become more and more like a “consultant” rather than a primary source.
This is also why there are many level 2 and level 3-5 arrangements of the same tunes in The Vault.

[@geraldcizadlo8222]

Josh: I’m so glad that you took the time and energy to compose this explanation. It makes it much clearer why there is such a difference between learning to sight read and to play by ear, indicating exactly what must be done in each to succeed. The understanding of the process of learning relieves some of the anxiety of “trying,” and just allowing the process to happen.

[@janwillemtulp]

Great episode! Thanks for sharing!

[@mdritch]

Have you ever considered the Brainjo Method to learn a foreign language?