When Dear Old Dad started going to Kitt’s house for the original  Wednesday Night Banjo and Donut Marching Society, tab software was still  years away. To record the exercises, tunes and licks he picked up  jamming with Paul, dad relied on a small spiral-bound music notebook. 

I still have that notebook – and I don’t hang on to things…

There is something about pushing a stylus across a sheet of paper  that burns things into your brain. I can still remember cutting class in  the 80s to sit with a sheet of manuscript paper in the library working  out banjo licks in my brain and jotting them down.

As an experiment, I am going to post this week’s Daily Frail  exercises as a snapshot of a handwritten tab. I’m using a fountain pen  my brother gave me because I enjoy the way it writes, makes me feel  close to my friend and I get ink everywhere.