concertina

One of my resolutions for the year was to learn a musical instrument. The instrument I wanted to learn is the concertina. So early in January I stopped in and checked out our local music shop to see what they might have in stock. They did not have one, but usually do, can we call you when it comes in so you can see if it is what you want? They finally called a few weeks ago to say it had arrived. We tried to visit last weekend when we were out for a walk Saturday but they were already closed. I managed to stop by this afternoon about a half hour before they closed and I bought the concertina. A very simple Hohner D40 20 button concertina in the Anglo style. I also bought a book title, appropriately, "The Concertina And How To Play It" by Paul de Ville. I then proceeded to spend the rest of the evening futzing around with the thing. I started out with simple stuff like figuring out how I wanted the hand straps to rest and making sure I could reach all of the buttons. I moved up a notch and spent some time seeing what I could do with the scales that were listed in the book. Not the most graceful of things to witness but helpful. I decided I needed to take a shot at a tune I chose the first one in the book. It only uses three buttons on the left hand and is called "Augusta's Favorite" but in fact turned out to be "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". After working my way through it for a while I thought I would record it for posterity. And sheer amusement value. (Don't forget, I am not the most musically inclined person. I really like listening to it but that is in general about as far as it goes. In fact I have never studied any kind of musical instrument, so bear with me. Ok, there was like maybe two clases in drums when I was 12 but that hardly counts now does it?)



My last class for the graduate degree thing starts on Monday and continues through late April or early May. So there might not be any interesting updates once that kicks in. That means I will either not be posting at all or posting all of the time a vague effort to avoid doing my research etc. We shall see.

*smiles*