I have a bad habit of playing this thing like some sort of bastard ukele when I'm trying to pick out a tune without making too loud a noise. Usually it's no big deal, but I had some skin repairing lotion on my hands to try to remedy winter's cracking and scaliness when I suddenly got an urge to track down a little reel that's been embedded in my brain because I keep grabbing the same CD for entertainment in the car. When I dared move on to the bow, it sounded all mooshy because I'd gotten goozh all over the strings. These strings are old anyway. The A looks like it could go any time. Just as I carry spare shift cables on my commuting bike, I wheedled a spare set of strings out of the cellist (who is also my dealer) so I could have them with me when I finally do need to put them on.
My ultimate hope is that one day I will be able to play well enough to play my own background music for cycling videos. That way I don't have to worry about using copyrighted material or have to sift through hours of public domain stuff to find something I like. Usually I have a tune in my head when I'm riding. Since I started trying to learn to play, that tune is often something I'm working on anyway.
Don't hold your breath. We could all be dead before I'm good enough to play anywhere but a locked closet. But you never know.
Video or it didnt' happen.
ReplyDeleteRemember Tiny Tim? You ARE good enough already!
ReplyDeleteYeaaahhhh... not my image. No offense to TT.
ReplyDeleteI was fiddling in the park one day, yes, with a fiddle, when a women came up to me and said, "I just had to tell you you're a wonderful fiddle player."
ReplyDeleteI said, "Well, I'm just trying not to sound too much like a cat being tortured."
"Oh, no!" she replied. "You're way beyond that. I should know, I used to be married to a professional violist."
Ah,well, that explains it I thought. Had her ears shot off in the war.
kfg -- haaaaa! Viola jokes.
ReplyDeleteI use a violin-shaped object to play whatever I can learn. Pretty phobic about actually being heard, but still intrigued by the process.
KFG: A better punch line would have been "I should know. I used to torture cats"
ReplyDeleteOK, maybe that's only funny to me.
Seriously, what styles do you play? Celtic? Bluegrass? Classical? I'm a budding Irish bouzouki player, but not in public yet.
Haven't done any bluegrass. Some Celtic, old-time tunes from New England to Appalachia, classical, this-n-that. Mostly badly. Only in a large group in public so I can hide in the back and there's lots of other people to play better than I do. I refer to that as "musical cat litter." Their litter buries my... you know.
ReplyDeleteDan, it's not my fault if she wasn't sharp enough to come up with that one. I'll tuck it away for my own potential use though.
ReplyDelete