I've played in a couple of banjo contests, and I would like to get advice about how to arrange a song for a contest.
Standard tunes repeat the AA BB pattern three times. My question is about how much variation there should be between the repeats. Should a song be played the same way three times? Or is it standard to embellish it differently each time through? If so, is there some way to approach the embellishments (other than being told "just add slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs"). I tend to learn to play tunes one particular way, and I often find it difficult to add variation, so I'm wondering to what extent I should worry about that for a contest.