Practicing. Believe me, this is something we know about because over the years we've tried everything, and if we didn't try it, I daresay one of our students has. Mary once figured out how to read a book while playing a piece she’d memorized (awesome time management skills eh?). After a few days of this, her family asked why the piece she was working on sounded like it was getting worse every day instead of better. Peter had an even better idea. He and his brother invented imaginary practice. They’d come home from school, watch TV, and then both report they had done their practicing when their parents got home. Unfortunately for Peter (despite a vow of secrecy) his brother spilled the beans on their revolutionary new method. Peter got grounded until he managed to actualize all those hours of imaginary practice.  Over the years we've tried all kinds of things, slouchy postures (that’s Peter), doing it the easy way (that was Peter too), wishing really hard (mostly Peter), convincing ourselves our teacher was just kidding about that, (definitely Peter), fiddling around instead of playing the piece we were supposed to be working on (Peter), checking out what the worst sounds were the instrument could make (Peter), staring off into space (Peter), etc… (Peter - seems like there’s a theme here). 

Any way with all that experimentation we've finally gotten good at practice and we have some good news. There are ways to practice that not only work, but seriously cut down on the amount of time it takes to learn a piece. You’re reading this so we’ll assume you want to get good. Really good. Championship winning good. Awesome! This blog is for you. I daresay we know a bit about championships having won a few (even Peter despite all that practicing kerfuffle we mentioned above). But the real truth is that we've lost far more than we've ever won. Behind each lovely blue ribbon is a whole string of lesser ribbons (and sometimes a long string of no ribbons at all). You can’t get to the blue ribbon without climbing the ladder it’s at the top of. You have to start where you are at.

One thing about Championship. We think the whole idea of a single winner is misguided. We've played in enough championships to know that while there is sometimes one player who is clearly better than all the others, more often there is a pool of 5-10 monster players who are all so good it’s impossible to choose. So don’t let a “loss” get you down. You didn't “lose” at all. If anything, you gained experience. The only way you lose musically is if you get injured and can’t play or refuse to seize the day and don’t take an opportunity to perform. The rest is all a win, and big or little, wins add up. Here’s a recipe for winning a championship.

1. Prepare. 
   
2. Show up. 
   
3. Repeatedly. 
   

And the rest is luck. So, let’s get this straight at the beginning.  Here’s what Championship IS and is NOT. Championship IS about being the best YOU can be. Do that, and you’re a winner. Championship IS about rising to the occasion, taking a chance, working hard, and spreading a really big tarp out to catch whatever luck falls your way. Championship IS about showing up repeatedly (after you have prepared). 

Championship is NOT about “winning.” Sure it’s nice to get recognition, and if you keep showing up, recognition in some form will eventually show up for you, but don’t try to tell the universe what that recognition has to look like. Just take aim at what you want and get going. Odds are that the stuff that’s in that direction, whether you hit the bull’s eye or not, will be pretty satisfying. 

Oh… and don’t worry. There will be plenty of tips to come, so stay tuned. Here’s a spoiler though: Imaginary Practice™ doesn't work.

“Stop fiddling with that or you’ll break it!”
“I fiddled around with it enough that I finally got it to work”
        -Kate MacLeod, quoting her father


“Stop fiddling around!” I spent most of my school years in a fog of missed deadlines. I never knew about schedule changes, when my homework was due, or sometimes even what class I was in… I still vividly remember looking up from reading a book and discovering that the kids sitting around me weren’t the ones I had been sitting next to when class started. I must have totally missed a class change! It wasn’t that I didn’t pay attention, it was just that my attention was always drawn to the wrong thing, like a really good book, where I was going hiking after school, or how to construct a robot of myself so life like no one could ever tell if it was me or my robot sitting in that school desk.
 
I was one of those kids whose pockets, if turned out, could have probably filled a small rucksack. I was terrified of being caught with nothing to do (which was pretty much my view of “appropriate” school behavior) and so had enough materials with me, on the sly, to keep my attention occupied precisely where it shouldn’t have been. I still remember the day I realized that all the desks and tables height was adjusted with Alan screws. Most kids my age didn’t even know what an Alan screw was back then, but my dad was quite the tinkerer and I knew just where I could find the tool I wanted. I spent plenty of time working on a look of decided innocence and mild disinterest when puzzled teachers had to reseat classmates whose desks were now to small or too tall, or call the custodian when a table collapsed because the screw on one leg had suddenly given way. I didn’t view myself as a troublemaker, just a very curious student of the world around me. I couldn’t understand why my teachers valued repetition and sitting still more than imagination and movement.

 My interest in music started at the age of four when I saw a performance of a violin concerto on the television at home. My parents traded and bartered to afford the cost of classical training with a family friend who played in the Utah Symphony. There is a VERY specific way to play the violin that has been carefully honed, honored, and cherished over the past 500 years. My instructor initiated me into the world of etudes, exercises, and note reading (with somewhat sporadic success) and I made reasonable if not stellar progress. I was expected to practice a lot. (Often two hours a day or more). As I advanced into more difficult music my teacher prescribed an abacus which I was to use to carefully count the number of times I played a difficult passage
  correctly (often 50 or 100 times were ordered). I found the structure stifling and the repetition mind numbing. My sight reading skills negligible, my attention span crumbling, I often turned to the instrument and simply fiddled around, following my dancing thoughts up and down the fingerboard, growling with anger, or laughing with delight. Luckily I was blessed to have one of those rare teachers who could honor imagination and passion as well as rote learning. She always told me that to play music you had to be like a tiger, you had to take a risk and leap at the prey or you stood no chance at getting what you wanted.
 
I switched to Viola when I was 11. This more introspective instrument was a better fit.  As the “poet-philosopher” of the string family its deeper tone and more dreamy nature spoke to me. Still, I found myself wasting my practice time “fiddling around,” making up tunes, trying out tones. I carried my passion for Viola into college, pursuing a double major of Music Composition and Viola Performance, but, as usual, I got involved in too many things and my graduation languished on the periphery of unfinished projects and an overbooked schedule. My composition teacher eventually forced me to make a choice. He advised me to drop one side of my double major and progress on toward graduation. Agonizing on which side of myself to favor, performance or composition, I finally went with the latter, feeling  it offered more room for my “fiddling around.”
 
From the start it should have been clear I was more of a fiddler than a violinist. Naturally curious, I spent hours exploring the sounds the instrument could make. The fiddle is a remarkable canvas for the imagination. An embodiment of paradox, it can both break and heal the soul. Perhaps that’s why so many folks have been frightened or dismissive of the fiddle, it represents something other than business as usual. It refuses to sit silent, or still. A tool of dreamers and prophets it can both create and destroy. It can set the feet of the righteous dancing down the path to hell, stich up a broken heart, or leave one grasping on the edge of epiphany. It caters to those whose attention wanders the roads less traveled and whose feet march to the rhythm of a music only they can hear. As a musical explorer, the fiddle keeps me on the sharp edge of discovery; exploring new sounds and techniques, diving into the deep waters of tradition, or gathering the strands of a new song out of the immense shimmering firmament of notes. The fiddle can stand the strain due not to its rigidity, but because of its flexibility.  For a long time fiddling was a secret side affair for me, something I did when I should have been doing something else. Now I realize that everything else was just getting in the way of fiddling.

All my life I’ve harbored the not so secret aspiration of being a hobo. It goes right along with my love of the outdoors and trains and travel. I don’t know where I first picked up the desire, but in order to keep my wife, Mary, from pointing her finger at me I’ve given it considerable thought.  I initially assigned blame to the movie “The Journey of Natty Gann” which I saw when I was 12 or 13 (I mean, what’s cooler than riding the rails with a wolf at your side) but more often than not over the years I’ve blamed the banjo. I also blame the banjo for my love of boxcars, beans cooked in a can over a fire under a bridge, and the wild crazy idea I have of running all across the country to play music. There’s something about all those things that just seems to fit with the banjo. 

My introduction to the banjo came before I was born. My father was a folksinger, and although his professional performing days were mostly over before I came along, he often sang for family and friends (or more often just to please himself). Most of his songs he accompanied with the guitar, but when it came to homeless tramping or trains he generally pulled out the banjo. There were just a few of these songs but they seemed so perfectly suited for me. The plucky tone of the banjo, along with my father’s rich baritone spoke to me of letting go of attachments and fear, of letting the wind and the rain and the rails carry me far from home. They taught me of the wistful longing of lost innocence and the sweet lullaby of a long journey, and the wonder of belonging to the wide, wild, flabbergasting world we live in.  

Click to listen to a recording of my father singing “Hobo’s Lullaby”

That was a long time ago. I’ve had plenty of times in my life where I’ve done the opposite, where I tried to hide from my wild wandering self, times of fear and loneliness, denial, and clinging. I’ve fought change till my knuckles were bloody and I was exhausted.  But somehow, when the time came, I’ve always heard the sound of the banjo and the train as a summons to let go and move on.  I started playing the banjo at a time like that, a time where I was hanging on for dear life and at the same time afraid of where that life might take me.

My father wasn’t performing much anymore so he loaned me his banjo for a while when I said I wanted to learn. When I came back playing tunes he’d never heard before, he generously told me that since I could play it better than he could, maybe I better keep it. Doc Watson once told an interviewer that his first real instrument was a banjo his father made for him. Doc said “one day he brought it to me and put it in my hands and said, son, I want you to learn to play this thing real well… it might help you get through the world.” In a very real way, my dad did the same for me.

Over the years, I’ve generally kept the Banjo to myself more than my other instruments, I get it out when I’m feeling the wistful pull of the road, or when I’m feeling a little stuck, or need to connect with the wild untamed being I am inside. Recently I began teaching a beginning banjo class for the University of Utah. Although I’ve taught before, I was really struck while preparing lessons just how deep down the banjo was in my soul. I teased the members of the class that they should enter the novice division of the State Banjo Championship, and they in turn challenged me to enter the open division. It was something I’d never really considered too deeply before. I finally decided to give it a go. Knowing that my old-timey clawhammer pieces might not be quite what the judges were looking for I didn’t expect to win, but Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson had just died, and in some way, this was my way of letting them go. They are both on that last train over the River Jordan, and I guess, in that way all of us are just hobos passing through.