Am I Stoned?

[Bell Banjos]

I hope it's not the prednisone.

Had to take a couple days off from banjo building. Kinda sick and my mind is whirling away into curly maple patterns of purple hazy tophats.

I got out my old clawhammer fretted banjer that I used to play a lot and in recent years occaisionally played a minstrel tune or two on - and it sounded kinda cool in a different metal string high pitched kind of way. So I grabbed it and played a little of Circus Jig and had to stop, then Charlie Is My Darling, then Alabama Joe. And nothing was right. Nothing. I mean, my notes were in place and I was in tune but it sounded perverse, or vulgar. WAY too much sustain. All I could think of was the beautiful medium tempo, fast decaying notes of the 1800's. Wonderful awakening or prednisone?

Then I got out my multi track recorder and dialed up a tune that I recorded and just for fun or boredom hit the speed/pitch thing. Holy Moly!!!!!!!!!!!! It was just one of the Briggs tunes but at warp speed pitched up about 4 or 5 tones it sounded like some kind of spacegrass that you could NEVER imagine or a tenor banjo player that came up with a way to do some CRAZY triplets and the melody was so great while at the same time, anything "Minstrel" was unrecognizable. And as I went on listening, I heard somewhere in the distance like a million 4 and 5 string banjos playing and trying to grab the minstrel licks but only coming up with something a little different and NOTHING like this sped-up minstrel music. It didn't sound Mickey Mouse tinker toyish, it sounded like a Mastertone doing the IMpossible.  I'll never hear modern banjos the same - it's like the things they play are sloppy attempts at minstrel music. Like they quickly just blow through any triplet, double thumb, or many other old techniques. They HAVE to.

I'm not comparing great modern playing to minstrel music, I'm comparing it to pitched and sped up minstrel music - which NOBODY could ever play. And wouldn't want to. So the next time I get the urge to rush, I'll stomp my foot harder to keep it right 'there' and wade in these great melodies.

Time for my bedtime Prednisone now.

[Ian Bell]

Hmmm....Might be time for an intervention of some sort!
I like playing in the tiny banjo room at the Twelfth Fret in Toronto where there are maybe two dozen mostly high-end banjos hanging in-tune on the walls, and every note you play creates a shimmering wash of natural reverb.

You can't play fast in there.

[Strumelia]

Awesome tale.

I find I go through phases in my music.  Each phase comes at its own correct time, and I never know when or how it will happen.  Getting my fretless nylon strung gourd banjo brought me here recently, and now the gourd has gotten me back into the music that first turned me on to the banjo 13 years ago- banjer tunes from West Virginia and the Hammons family.   I have also picked up my steel strung banjers again and I tweaked them into a whole different tone from what they were- way more scratchy and textural and intimate, and I'm back to the old rhythmic tunes that I started this whole journey with. 

I love that things come around again and I get something altogether different from them each time.  Banjo playing is like an old love that always feels right and good.