Learn bluegrass banjo to jamming in six months
Six months of daily practice — about 30 minutes a day of three-finger rolls, a handful of tunes and, from month four, other people — gets a beginner from an unopened case to keeping up in a slow bluegrass jam. Roughly 100 hours total. You will not be Earl Scruggs. You will be invited back.
6 months · ~100 hours · play Cripple Creek and Foggy Mountain-style backup at a slow jam
1.A Deering Goodtime banjo
Buy a Deering Goodtime Two, the resonator model, or the plain open-back Goodtime if money is tight. They are made in California, they stay in tune, and their necks are straight — none of which is true of the $200 import banjos that sit unplayed in closets. Add thumb and finger picks (a National or Dunlop set, a few dollars) and a clip-on tuner. Wear the picks from the first day; learning without them and switching later costs you a month.
~$849 Goodtime Two, ~$599 Goodtime; used ones sell for about two-thirds of that
Deering Goodtime banjos →2.Banjo Ben Clark — beginner banjo lessons
Ben Clark is a working bluegrass picker who has built the most complete beginner curriculum online: forward and alternating rolls, the G, C and D chord shapes, slides and hammer-ons, then tunes like "Cripple Creek", "Boil Them Cabbage Down" and "Cumberland Gap" at slow, medium and full speed with tab and play-along tracks. The slow-speed play-alongs are the reason to pay. Do one lesson a week, and spend the rest of the week playing it with the backing track until it is boring.
~$25/month or ~$250/year; plenty of free lessons on his YouTube channel to try first
Banjo Ben Clark →3.Wernick Method jam class
Pete Wernick, Hot Rize's banjo player, has spent decades teaching beginners to play with other people, and his certified teachers now run small group classes across North America and beyond. The only entry requirement is that you can switch between G, C and D in rhythm. You will be playing real songs with fiddles and guitars in the first session. Banjo is a group instrument; a home-only banjo player is missing the point of the thing.
Varies by teacher; most multi-week classes run roughly $150–250
Find a Wernick Method class →If this doesn't fit you
If the sound you want is old-time — Appalachian fiddle tunes, front-porch frailing — not bluegrass, learn clawhammer instead. Buy the open-back Goodtime, skip the picks, and replace step 2 with Josh Turknett's Brainjo clawhammer lessons or Dan Levenson's "Clawhammer Banjo from Scratch" (Mel Bay). Then find an old-time jam, which is usually friendlier to beginners than bluegrass anyway.
Why this path
Beginners buy the cheapest banjo they can find, learn three rolls from scattered YouTube videos, and never play with anyone. Each of those is fatal. A Goodtime removes the instrument as an excuse; Banjo Ben gives you one sequenced method with play-alongs at speeds a beginner can actually hit; the Wernick class gives you the thing banjo exists for. Go to the jam class before you feel ready. Nobody is ready. The group will carry you.