Playing back-up: working in the background

Playing back-up literally means: backing-up, supporting the members of your band (or your musical friends at a jamsession). Backing-up means stapping away from the spotlights and supporting the musician that is playing lead. Banjoplayers (or bluegrassmusicians in general) are playing backup 95% of the time (more or less). This means that you have to give some attention to your backup, because it cannot be neglected. There are a lot of different backup-styles and eventually you will come up with your own ideas and style. But before that happens you have to play and practice back-up. A very good book for beginners and advanced is Back-up banjo by Janet Davis. Learn to play back-up, up-the-neck and down-the-neck. Over 250 back-up patterns which can be used to accompany any song. 30 plus songs, each with lead arrangements and several back-up arrangements. The book comes with cd and dvd, or with cd or dvd; your choice.

But how can you support fellow musicians with your playing? It’s not as difficult as you may think, but the most important thing is to develop the ability to listen to the rest of the musicians. ‘The best band is the one that has musicians working to produce a whole, rather than ‘every man for himself’ with each one trying to show how much he knows’, according to John Hickman.
Take a look at http://www.elfshot.com/banjo/info_backup.htm for some more advice on back-up.

Speed: practice slowly to achieve it

Let us be honest: a lot of people get excited by hearing fast banjoplaying. And they should, because it’s awesome! But playing (accurately) at high speed is not as easy as you may think. Start by choosing an easy instrumental and certainly not a Jens Kruger type of song (I like to exaggerate things a little bit, but you know what I mean...). For instance Cripple creek, Cumberland gap or Foggy mountain breakdown. Play with a metronome (see my article about playing with a metronome in the archieves of this blog). If you don’t like playing with a metronome, you can use a drum/percussion application like Hammerhead. Band-in-a-box is also a very nice application with lots of possibilities (this applications runs on midi’s). The freeware application BestPractice makes it possible to slow down music, like the music on cd’s.

Building up speed
Building up speed means that you have to be patient. Speed does not come overnight. Start with an easy instrumental (as mentioned above) and play it at a speed you’re comfortable with. Play it at a speed which allows you to play the instrumental smoothly and without errors. Let’s say you start at 80 bpm (bpm = beats per minute). If you can handle the song at this speed, without any discomfort, try to increase the speed a little bit. You may notice that this next step isn’t as hard as you thought it would be: staying on a comfortable speed for a little while means that you are building a ‘platform’ on which you can take the next step, without a lot of strain or discomfort. But, if the next step is too much, decrease the speed and go back to your old level. Don’t force yourself to play at a speed you cannot master. You will not make any progress if you force yourself; your muscles will protest. And, there’s another important thing: don’t use excessive force. Increasing speed doesn’t mean that you have to ‘dig’ your way through the song. Again: your muscles will protest because playing is not a workout. To end this little story: a banjo sounds great at high speed, but it’s not all about speed. Sometimes a banjoplayer hits the throttle and plays a mean instrumental, but a lot of songs on a regular (bluegrass)playlist are not at topspeed.
Good luck!

Talking about (five)speed...