I’m slowly working my way through the Ken Perlman beginner clawhammer guide. A lot of banjo stuff is (knowingly or not) written for guitarists who are picking up their next instrument, and this looks like no exception. But I’m not one of those; my deal is that I played the cello for eight-odd years as a kid and know next to nothing about guitars except that they have a lot of strings and are tuned all funny.

Earlier I was dealing with chords that Perlman seemed to think would be second nature, and they were all but making me sweat blood. Much GRAR. Much muttering about “too many fingers”. But now later on I’m finding things that Perlman seems to think are hard and I whip ‘em into shape in twenty seconds flat. There’s a series of tied eighth-notes of which he says, “Part B Measure 5 is analyzed in the description accompanying figure 13-6. If, after an honest effort, you just can’t get the feel of it, feel free to substitute part B measure 1.” It’s easy, though. It goes “ba-DAA-DAA-be di-da”.

Maybe I should be working through this book from back to front.