Banjo Comes to Smash – When Does Banjo Come to Smash
When does banjo come to smash? The answer, like with many question, depends on how you wish to define it. In most circles, the right definition is when you have a really good banjo and you bring it out on a regular basis and then realize that you are strumming out the chords on your banjo far too often, while the rest of the band is standing around waiting for the rhythm guitar player to get around to strumming the banjo.
Even if you’re not strumming out the chords on your banjo, even if the rest of the band is doing it well enough that you have to do it as well, there is still that little voice inside of you that complaining about it, because it’s the chord part that makes the song so good. When you hear your banjo playing “shred” a song or two, then you realize that it’s time to raise the banjo to a level where it is strumming some truly great songs.
If you want to know the answer to when does banjo come to smash and when does it pass its good-playing-years, then you should look at the question of when good songs start sounding better. That is to say, when do you start to feel the music come out of your instrument? It might not be obvious at first, but there are certain key points in the songwriting process when the sound starts to take on a new, more pleasant, and inspiring quality.
Generally speaking, when good songs begin to sound better, it happens because that instrument begins to take on some other characteristics. What this means is that the notes and sound of the instrument change.
For example, if you are strumming out chords on your banjo, and you start to hear the same note repeated many times, then you are in a place where it has begun to shift in the notes it produces. (For the purpose of this article we will not be talking about how those notes relate to each other, which would require a full book of its own.) You are in a place where the notes are a little bit out of balance with each other, and at this point they are no longer in tune with each other.
A chorus from a song will make this happen when the strings become out of tune. It sounds almost like a slap, as if you have hit a string hard enough to make it open up and allow you to hit another string somewhere else. Of course, the entire song works together to create this effect, but the chorus is the result of the dissonance that occurs between the notes.
A refrain is an instrument that is also well tuned and out of tune with the others. As the singer sings a phrase, the guitar strums a high note, the piano notes a low note, the bass plays somewhere in between, and the drums do some other stuff as well. But there is something odd about that refrain, as if it seems like it has its own harmony.
If you listen to the vocals, the harmony is in harmony with the harmonic progression, but if you listen to the strings, the harmony is a little off, and you can hear it as something where the instruments do not harmonize harmony with each other. This may not be the case in the melody, which is perhaps the instrument that needs to be most consciously aware of its tuning.
Some other instruments that must be more acutely aware of their tuning to harmonize harmony with the others are the bassoon and bass, trumpet, and trombone. You see, if the whole band is tuned very close together, and there is little room for each of the instruments to be tuned independently, then the notes from all the instruments can interfere with each other. Sometimes this can be remedied by changing the order of the instruments, but sometimes it cannot.
In other words, to harmonize harmony, you must do it collectively. If you let the notes from the different instruments carry on their own without being in tune with each other, then they will produce some odd results, especially if the individual instruments are very loud.
Of course, when you sing, the verse voice, which is just the bass or some other instrument playing the lowest note does not play harmonizing notes. When it goes out of tune, you hear a dissonant sound. sound.
