oh! those britches full of stitches
Now, don’t laugh. Or laugh, it’s all the same to me. Hrmphf.Like a lot of people that feel the power of music, I’ve always wanted to be able to play a musical instrument. I played the cello in 6th grade very briefly, but that’s the only time I’ve been near an instrument. Earlier this year I got offered a piano for free, all I had to do was pick it up and take it with me when I moved, but come moving day I realized it just wasn’t going to happen. Everything was too rushed and too hectic and I regretted it every damn day. I had fantasies of being the next Billy Joel.Fast forward a bit and I was watching some reality show, similar to American Idol, except it had bands instead of singers. I think it was America’s Next Greatest Band, or some such shit. A handful of bands had an instrument that I wasn’t actually familiar with. This is no surprise, because I’m not big on details – if it sounds good, I’ll listen to it. But, this happened right at a time when I was pretty down and needed some sort of goal to perk me back up. Michael, bless his heart, looked up the instrument because I was talking about how cool it was. It was a mandolin. So, of course, I bought myself a mandolin. That’s how I roll.The night it came in I spent two hours playing with it without a plectrum (fancy word for pick that I learned when I got my mandolin, heh) and got a fantabulous blister on my thumb. I’ve been practicing now for a little over a month and, good god, I suck balls. A mandolin is a double stringed instrument – so it has 8 strings. You have to hit the double strings at the same time and I can’t do it. Also, my fingers are not so nimble, so I’m having a hard time switching between the notes fast enough to play any songs in a recognizable kind of way. Luckily, I’m teaching myself with an Irish folk song book (post title being the song I'm working on now), so no one knows that I’m playing the songs at a third of their normal speed. Haha.Anyways, I suck and I’m having the time of my life. I totally should have decided to do this ten years ago. Now, if any of you know how to play the fricking mandolin, will you tell me how to hit the stupid strings at the same time?
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