Birthday girl
Dec. 2nd, 2003 06:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillTomorrow is my birthday. It's a landmark birthday; I'll be 40. Previous landmark birthdays (25, 30, 35) have been a little depressing; I'm getting older and have nothing to show for it, wasting my brief time on earth, that kind of thing. Not for the whole birthday, but now and then leading up to it, you know.
This time I've mostly been gloating. Not that I suddenly have more achievements to point to (sure, there are *some* achievements, but I frequently feel that if I weren't wasting my talents, surely there would be more). But I just feel happy--like a kid. My birthday is coming! There will be a special dinner, probably a Hobbit-Feast; it will depend on whether I can find Portobello mushrooms or not. There will be presents. Gloat, gloat. :-)
Maybe it's being married to Kip that does it.
And my lesson yesterday went fine. For some reason we got on the subject of early Bluegrass, and wound up spending nearly the whole half hour talking about that. Which certainly took a lot of the performance pressure off me :-). But I did play through Cherokee Shuffle and Roy said he heard a real difference in my playing. Which is very heartening, since I spent the whole week practicing the tremolo and running through scales (mostly Dmajor, which sits happily right in the middle of the mandolin, and just seems like the most natural key in the world for that instrument--but I really should practice other keys and modes, or I'll be able to play like a demon in Dmajor and Dmajor only :-).
I woke up at 5 this morning and was tired enough that dyslexia kicked in when I looked at my watch. I thought it was 7 and decided I might as well get up. This delusion persisted through several more watch glances, and it was half an hour later, when I'd had half my morning caffeine, that I realized what time it actually is. Oh well, there's no reason I can't go to bed early tonight.
My birthday is coming!
This time I've mostly been gloating. Not that I suddenly have more achievements to point to (sure, there are *some* achievements, but I frequently feel that if I weren't wasting my talents, surely there would be more). But I just feel happy--like a kid. My birthday is coming! There will be a special dinner, probably a Hobbit-Feast; it will depend on whether I can find Portobello mushrooms or not. There will be presents. Gloat, gloat. :-)
Maybe it's being married to Kip that does it.
And my lesson yesterday went fine. For some reason we got on the subject of early Bluegrass, and wound up spending nearly the whole half hour talking about that. Which certainly took a lot of the performance pressure off me :-). But I did play through Cherokee Shuffle and Roy said he heard a real difference in my playing. Which is very heartening, since I spent the whole week practicing the tremolo and running through scales (mostly Dmajor, which sits happily right in the middle of the mandolin, and just seems like the most natural key in the world for that instrument--but I really should practice other keys and modes, or I'll be able to play like a demon in Dmajor and Dmajor only :-).
I woke up at 5 this morning and was tired enough that dyslexia kicked in when I looked at my watch. I thought it was 7 and decided I might as well get up. This delusion persisted through several more watch glances, and it was half an hour later, when I'd had half my morning caffeine, that I realized what time it actually is. Oh well, there's no reason I can't go to bed early tonight.
My birthday is coming!
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:34 pm (UTC)She's got a great book of Shaker hymns arranged for dulcimer. I wonder if they make the same book arranged for mandolin so we could play more of that stuff together.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 06:45 am (UTC)Now, there are a few chromatically fretted dulcimers out there. I know this, as I saw one at Elderly Instruments quite a number of years ago. IIRC, it was a large "church dulcimer" (six-stringed, with doubled drones), fitted with wound strings. It looked to be designed for low-register chorded accompaniment of a group of singers.
I'm sure you can find a reasonable number of tunes that go well with mandolin and dulcimer. Also, you might look into the fiddle repretoire for some inspiration.