Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Well, i broke down and got myself a banjo today....
i'm really pretty excited about this. anyway, i have no real idea how to play this thing, although some of the guitar principles actually work, as far as fingerpicking and all that go... so, i've got a little something, but chords and all that are totally different, because all the strings are naturally tuned differently... to you music players, i'll go ahead and say, it's an open g tuning, which to you only somewhat oriented people, means that if you strum the strings without fretting anything, you've got a nice G chord....

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to adding a new instrument to the lineup, and it's one that i've wanted to learn for a very long time...

So, today, I went to elderly instruments and started looking around at all the banjos... my dream of purchasing one started flushing itself down the toilet as they were all over $700.... in fact most were between $1000-2500... i saw a sign for "starter" banjos and they bottomed out at around $350ish... that was around the upper limit of what i wanted to pay, but the one the sign was talking about looked like one of crappiest-built instruments i'd ever seen, and i would have been embarrassed to even own it...

so, i started poking around at some other stuff all over the store, played a mandolin for about 10 minutes, and just kinda screwed around. then, i was in the mandolin/ukelele/banjo room which also had a row of various acoustic guitars, and i was playing one of the guitars and a dude walked by and asked if i was finding everything ok... i said, "sure.... but, man, banjos are a lot more expensive than i figured they would be..."

he then proceeded to show me one that was actually highly inexpensive, but didn't look or sound like a piece of garbage... apparently, he's quite the banjo player and highly recommended that one as one to get if you wanted to see if you would last as a banjo player... good enough sound and good enough quality to get along... He moved on to attend to his various other duties about the store.

but this elderly female employee who's been playing for about 6 years came over and showed me the difference between the two cheapest models and basically said she hated the more expensive one... she played some stuff and we had a nice chat about banjos, bluegrass, and good old old time banjo playing, before moving on to less obvious banjo influences like Jerry Garcia and Steve Martin....

It was a good talk and got my banjo juices flowing, so i picked the thing up and headed home to learn how to play utilizing various internet resources to learn chords...

still don't really know what i'm doing (hey, it's my first day.. that's ok, mang)... but i can see myself really getting into this instrument... then maybe someday and thousand dollars will seem worthwhile... for now, i'm pretty content with my purchase, and no hints of buyer's remorse have set in... so i guess what i'm trying to say is, although you always feel inadequate when you walk into a big music store, you really are... but at least the seemingly smug working people at said big music store didn't try to shame me into buying a too-expensive instrument for my needs...