The funny thing about songwriting is that there seems to be about a million ways to do it. Noam Pikelny’s version comes from two places really: the man is always trying to translate other sounds from other places to the banjo and he picks at sounds like a 7-year-old picks at a scab.
He just won’t let it go.
“I’m always trying to discover sounds and ideas,” he explained.
His basic method begins with just sitting alone, making what amounts to noise.
“At a hotel, someone listening through the wall in the next room wouldn’t hear anything that sounded like a song. I’m exploring the banjo and trying to find something that sounds cool to me or sounds new. It could be me working out different tunings or just sounds from other instruments.”
The pedal steel is the sound he’s the most drawn to right now.
“I transcribe music from other instruments as a way to add to my skills on the banjo,” Pikelny said. “It’s a way to move me out of the box of what is comfortable to me. I’ve done that with the mandolin and done that with classical music.”
So far, he hasn’t been very successful. Pikelny has figured out the problem.
He said, “I’m trying to understand how to make these things work without understanding how the pedal steel works.”
The answer, he thought, was obvious: learn the pedal steel.
“But I’m learning it not to play, but to understand it for the banjo.”
Noam Pikelny appears Sunday at 7 p.m. on “Mountain Stage,” along with Matraca Berg, the April Verch Band, the Caleb Klauder Country band and some guy named Billy Joe Shaver.