Friday, February 5, 2010

Gave Up on the Autoharp


I gave up on being able to short cut to my dream of a female science rock band that sings lots of awesome songs about photosynthesis and ecology and evolution (like a bad they might be giants) by learning the autoharp. I decided that for me the autoharp was not going to be a rocking enough instrument. Instead I started guitar lessons with Mitch three weeks ago. So far I know two chords and I already had my first live gig, playing along to Test It Out played through the boombox by they might be giants. I sang and strummed after Mitch tuned the guitar into an open tuning that went with the song. It was great fun and the kids loved it even though my playing was somewhat, shall we say, amateurish? One fifth grader named Luis actually said to me later, "You weren't playing the guitar." And I said, "Yes I was! Did you see my stellar bar chords!" Then I told him, "You actually know how to play the guitar don't you?" To which he replied, "Yes." And I said, "How many chords do you know?" And he proceeded to count on his fingers and finally came up with 25. I asked him how long he had been playing guitar and he said two years. So I told him that now I had a goal, two years and 25 chords. Rock on. Katafanga is unsure of how he feels about the guitar lessons but he does love the guitar case.

1 comment:

Rich R. said...

Definitely keep up with the guitar, but don't give up on the autoharp yet. Way back in the 1960's, John Sebastion formed the group "Lovin' Spoonful". His main instrument was the autoharp. They recorded several albums, and had a number of tunes climb the charts. You can hear the autoharp on many of their songs.