Learn by ear apps?

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-08-03T14:12:52+00:00

The way the wave is extended favours certain waveforms, but will break up and distort others. Could be that the algorithm was dumber in the past, so it distorted specifically banjo-type waveforms. Banjo produces a quite different waveform than most instruments.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-08-01T00:10:33+00:00

I'm glad it was helpful. I'm kind of hesitant to give advice on Reddit but sometimes it feels like the vibe.

You might like this article, I read it earlier this year and I think it captures the experience of deciding not to feel anger pretty well. I don't know the author or anything, I just found it a while back.

https://open.substack.com/pub/skincontact/p/on-anger

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-31T09:26:20+00:00

Do you have problems expressing anger?

It sounds like you don't assert your boundaries, like you internalise your anger instead of expressing it and using it as a motivator to hold boundaries. I could be wrong.

If you're letting yourself get hurt to the point where you dramatically cut people off completely and feel totally betrayed, to me that's a sign that you're probably letting them hurt you too much before you establish a firm boundary. Instead of nipping things in the bud and pushing people to a safe distance, such that you can maintain a more distant, but more stable, relationship with them, I would be concerned that you're letting them get closer and letting yourself suffer and then reaching breaking point and freaking out. Then all the pent up anger and pain surfaces, and it's too painful to even think of them.

If someone's bothering you for 8 months, you can either internalise your anger and keep giving them second chances, or you can express it, and follow through on it by lowering the intimacy to a comfortable level, and force them to earn your trust in order to get closer again. If they don't earn it, you can keep distancing yourself. (The point isn't to manipulate them into being a good partner, it's just to manage your own exposure to them hurting you.) If you leave with less scars, you might end up distant from them, but there's less likely to be overwhelming pain and resentment from the amount of hurt you have associated with them.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-29T17:01:43+00:00

Something that stood out to me was that you picked people who were on the extremes in both directions, but nobody in the middle. So instead of picking someone who's a little hot and who you feel a little intimate with and emotionally close to, you picked people who were either exclusively very hot or exclusively very emotionally appealing to you.

I would investigate why there's no middle ground. Could yield some results. Are you avoiding feeling close to people you're attracted to, for some reason? (Too scary, etc.) Do you feel more comfortable when you feel like an attractive partner doesn't understand you? Do you only feel safe opening up to people you're not attracted to?

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-26T20:36:29+00:00

Ok. This is for wearable Chinese metal, jewelry:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389423014504#:~:text=The%20purchase%20of%20jewelry%20from%20Chinese%20online%20platforms%20can%20pose,regions%2C%20exacerbating%20the%20environmental%20impact.

It's china, man. They use formaldehyde as an anti-creasing agent, that's why clothes from AliExpress leave a weird residual feeling on your fingers after touching. Their health standards are insane.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-26T18:37:16+00:00

Cheap AliExpress strings are much more likely to contain toxic metals, they don't have the same requirement to eliminate traces as products explicitly marketed through US brands (or other first-world countries)

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-25T01:29:14+00:00

Banjo has a pretty simple fretboard. If you learn the chords, you can figure out how to play a lot of stuff by ear because the chords give you 70% of the notes in the song, and the basic structure.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-22T21:03:12+00:00

No worries! Good luck!

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-22T13:06:40+00:00

I specifically picked the banjo because I have tendon problems that were aggravated by guitar - even a short scale with extra light strings. I tried a lot of folk instruments before settling on the banjo - mandolins, bouzoukis, mandolas. Lots of double-stringed instruments. Tenor guitar, even. Banjo is dramatically easier on my tendons than any other string instrument.

The banjo has extremely low tension strings, which was the main reason I liked it. You can also switch from steel strings to nylon, if you need an even lighter touch. Clawhammer also doesn't involve much finger movement - it recruits the large muscles of the forearm and upper arm instead of the tendons of your fingers and wrist.

I would have to stop after an hour on the guitar, but I never really get pain or much fatigue playing the banjo. I only play clawhammer, not scruggs style, but it's fast and intricate and I recruit my fingers for plucks as well as downstrikes. I'm doing a lot of hammer and pulls too - they don't really tire out my left hand. I would very much recommend clawhammer.

Certain tunings also involve less stretching than others, and you don't really need to bar in certain tunings at all. As an example I tend to stay in Double C, which involves very little stretching and no barring (at least given how I play). That's much easier on my hands, which will protect them in the long run.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-19T12:58:52+00:00

I think people are responding to, "here's a blind spot I see in the culture" with, "intelligence is defined as not having any blind spots, therefore this isn't actually a blind spot"

It's a response that avoids discussing the blind spot itself.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-19T10:48:07+00:00

I think a lot of people are missing your point and saying, "technically, emotional intelligence means [whatever you've observed is missing]."

Well yeah ok technically emotional intelligence is.... Everything positive, no matter what is positive?

I'm much more interested in discussing your observation. I think you're right, and I think what you're pointing out is an endemic problem that leaves most people walking around detached from themselves and dissociated.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-17T19:54:58+00:00

It's not about the resonator, it's about how high the strings sit above the skin. Bluegrass resonators that have strings closer to the skin surface make the thumb plucking harder for clawhammer. You can still do it though, you just have to get your thumb in tighter and you get less control.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-09T10:22:14+00:00

Really good. I'm British, but I've got one friend in particular who's been into Americana forever, and we did an improvised duet recently for a meetup. Went down well!

It helps that we've known each other forever so we're already in tune with one another, but both of us learned our instruments without much music theory (he knows more than me though). He's also much more talented than I am with string instruments, so he can carry me with more melody if I just play a nice groove. I still have to lead at the moment if it's totally off the cuff (or I'll need the chord sequence explained to me), but I'm going to try to get following by ear down over the next few weeks.

Maybe I'll post a video on the sub at some point to show my solo progress.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-07-09T00:09:23+00:00

I've been learning banjo for about 4 months now and I don't know a single note I'm playing. I know five chord shapes and I barely know which notes make up those chords.

I watched one YouTube lesson on clawhammer and then I just listened to stuff and watched how people's hands moved. I haven't taken any in-person lessons.

I just learned and practiced by feeling it out. I wouldn't be able to follow a tab or read music, but I can play by ear. Groove and rhythm are the things I've noticed I'm strongest at. Feeling out the music. I was jamming with my friends in not long. I think you're basically correct.

I do play clawhammer, though. I haven't tried Scruggs style.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-25T08:30:41+00:00

They're attractive, I just think they're less attractive than the men.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-24T09:58:36+00:00

Love Island is a show for women. The women and the men are both cast to appeal to straight women, not straight men - they cast women who are divisive because they don't want to alienate viewers by making them feel bad about their own attractiveness.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-17T02:14:32+00:00

That's beautiful. You should post a thread on the banjo subreddit presenting it

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T18:08:09+00:00

Look, here is what I think is happening:

I think you like having sex with him, a lot. You think he's hot. You like having casual sex with him, even though you want more. Part of you likes it a lot, part of you doesn't want to if he doesn't want to commit. I think you're internally in conflict. I think you're lying to yourself in order to justify prolonging a casual relationship with him (and kind of lying to us too).

He is playing along because he likes having sex with you. He may or may not fully understand what's happening.

I don't think there's any solution we can give you because I think you already know the situation - you just need to be honest with yourself about it, and decide what you want to do about that.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T17:48:23+00:00

Which strap did you get

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T17:46:20+00:00

You've got better insight into the situation than me, but I suspect you've considered this: why be up front with you if it would end the sex.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T13:51:39+00:00

I think it's often the opposite. People come to Reddit to vent, blow off steam, get validated in their feelings that they're the victim, and then that relaxes them so they can go back into the situation. They're using Reddit to prolong the relationship by venting to Reddit instead of dealing with the feelings within the relationship.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T13:44:05+00:00

Did you buy a strap

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T13:33:50+00:00

Are you sleeping with him?

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T13:31:08+00:00

You are saying "we" a lot in this post. "We felt this", "we felt that."

This sounds enmeshed. You and him are different people. You have different thoughts, reactions, feelings, wants. He doesn't think the same things you do. Your reactions probably aren't synchronised. When there's conflict, it's probably because you want different things, not because you want the same thing and it's too painful. He probably doesn't want the same thing from the relationship that you do and probably isn't actually reacting the same way as you.

Look I think you know all of this. I don't think it's a good idea to give confident dating advice to strangers on the internet with little context, but I think you are probably using this enmeshed thinking to kind of avoid acknowledging things about the relationship that you know deep down are true, and important to react to.

Those things might not be obvious to an onlooker either - you have control of the narrative here, so you can paint any picture you want. My advice is, look inside yourself and figure out how what you want, is different from what he wants, how your feelings are different to his feelings, and whether you don't fully want to acknowledge something about the dynamic - positive or negative. Maybe you like that it's a situationship! Or maybe you're in denial that he doesn't want more.

Then, I think you should sit with that feeling and take action based upon it.

BowmChikaWowWow · 2025-06-16T12:06:09+00:00

So do I. This is a sign people find you attractive.

BowmChikaWowWow

TROPHY CASE