{"id":27,"date":"2006-02-04T10:45:37","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T15:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=27"},"modified":"2006-02-04T10:45:37","modified_gmt":"2006-02-04T15:45:37","slug":"the-ever-slowing-banjo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=27","title":{"rendered":"The ever-slowing banjo"},"content":{"rendered":"

So most everybody’s listened to NPR’s Car Talk<\/a>, right? I don’t have one whit of interest in automobiles, but their talk show is still immensely entertaining to me. I guess it’s all about the personalities.<\/p>\n

If you’ve heard the show, then you probably are familiar with their opening theme song, which is a bluegrass tune mainly played on a banjo. (According to their website<\/a>, it’s a live recording of a David Grisman tune.) Ever noticed how great a tune it is? It’s just this perfectly smooth stream of eighth notes coming from the banjo, perfect pull-offs and hammer-ons, and the melody just stands out in the cascade of sound.<\/p>\n

When I first started listening to Car Talk years ago, I remember thinking, “dang, it must be so<\/b> hard to play banjo… listen how insanely fast that banjo is going!” The stream of notes where just a blur, and all you could do was just sort of listen, slack-jawed, and wonder how the guy was performing such a feat.<\/p>\n

But as I practice my banjo more and more, pick more licks and pick up speed, the magic has gradually dissipated. Over the last year, every time I hear the theme song, the banjo seems to be playing slower and slower. I actually did a double-take this morning when I heard the song. I mean, I can actually visualize<\/i> what the banjo player is doing. I can hear the exact notes he’s playing, understanding every arpeggio and run and lick. In fact, I’m sure that if I had the recording in front of me, I could transcribe the tab now, and learn to play it myself.<\/p>\n

Honest! He’s just not playing as quickly as he used to!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So most everybody’s listened to NPR’s Car Talk, right? I don’t have one whit of interest in automobiles, but their talk show is still immensely entertaining to me. I guess it’s all about the personalities. If you’ve heard the show, then you probably are familiar with their opening theme song, which is a bluegrass tune […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banjo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}