Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Picking along

So, I actually played my first song. I think. It's called "Ida Red" and is a simple ditty to teach the A and E strings. I squealed it out of my violin...kind of...

I took my fiddle to work to show my co-worker who has been teaching himself mandolin for a few months. He brought in a tuner and I was trying to tune the A string and it snapped! This put me out of commission until I can get to the city and buy some more strings. Lesson learned: Keep extra strings on hand.

Anyway, I have been listening to the CD that accompanies the lesson book and it is helping me with the rhythm which, to me, seems to be my major stumbling block when it comes to music.

Years ago, I dated a singer of a rock-a-billy band. He was fun, but whenever we would dance I could not get the rhythm down. He would say, 'You're awfully cute, but you can't dance at all..." I think it was the rhythm that got in my way. Or maybe it was the alcohol (oh, the single days!)

He was right of course, I am awfully cute! :) (Just kidding...!!!!!)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

6-3-2009

Back in May, Jenna at Cold Antler Farm wrote about how she self-taught herself how to play Old Time Mountain music on a fiddle. She also mentioned she could teach her readers how to play the fiddle and encouraged us to sign up for her challenge. By the end of July, she said, one could play Old Joe Clark fairly well.

I started to self-teach myself fiddle last fall and after, a lot of trial and error, I finally learned how to screech out a few sounds. I have very little prior music experience. Life became busy and I put my fiddle back in her case and thought about getting a banjo.

Jenna brought back my passion for the fiddle (or at least gave me hope I can learn the thing!)

I am still waiting on the instruction book we are using for our lessons (Amazon has become really slow lately!), however, I have been tuning and getting re-acquainted with my fiddle. I also bought one for Shawnee as he has expressed interest in the violin/fiddle. I hope we can learn together.

So, for week one, I am playing screeching at least 15 minutes a day, but I am still waiting on the textbook.