Banjo

February 20, 2024

Jens Kruger - online banjo lessons

"Even if you have a great teacher, you're always going to be self taught."
"If you want to get smarter, sit beside the smartest kid".
"Be reckless, play fast and ugly, forgive yourself"

The above is the "Online Academy" for beginners, but we also have a "Master Class", only 2 episodes, but they are each an hour long --

In an interview with Janet Deering, I learned that Jens Kruger uses stainless steel frets on his banjo. Usually they are nickel silver. Here is what she said:

The stainless steel frets we put in for Jens are larger frets than what we normally use. He likes the crown to be a bit higher so that he can glide over the strings and just press enough to get the note but not necessarily clamp the string on the fingerboard. It's a different technique than most players use.
While stainless steel frets tend to wear out the strings faster, if you play enough to need to change strings often, then the fact that they wear out faster won't be an issue. Many professional players change strings several times a week.

Here is an interesting interview with Kruger:

Some highlights:

Jens comes from the city of Lucerne, in Central Switzerland.
He first became interested in the banjo at age 7
A priest once heard him practicing and told him: “I can hear in your playing that you’re worried. Are you?” Jens admitted he was sometimes worried that he wasn’t good enough. The priest told him, “The more you worry the worse it gets. You need to relax, and find peace. If you find peace in your music, your audience will hear that.”
silence (between the notes) can be as beautiful as the music
Bill Monroe (his mentor) would sit on the porch 10 to 14 hours a day playing music.
The world is divided between those who invent another world, and those who want to just recreate the world that is already there.
Jens prefers his solitude and practices his banjo nightly from 11 pm to the early morning hours. He composes a minimum of 4-5 compositions a week, most of which will never be released to the public.