Music - a return to an old hobby
I used to play a lot of music - by this I mean actually play it myself, on instruments like mandolin, bodhran, guitar.
I first fiddled with guitar as a teenager. Badly. I had a cheap nylon strung "classical" guitar, and even for a while a very cheap and very, very nasty electric guitar.
When I went to University in 1984 I was already into folk music, as well as heavily into early Mike Oldfield. So I knew of the bodhran. I bought myself a basic model mandolin and found a guy who made bodhrans in a small workshop in Manchester. All I could afford was a very basic calf-skin bodhran but it was enough to get the hang of it.
I listened to a lot of Planxty, Bothy Band, Boys from the Lough, Andy Irvine etc. back then, all on vinyl. I still have the same vinyl albums and play them occasionally even now.
Here's a B&W photo of my stash of instruments from around 1986. I developed & printed it myself, using an enlarger a mate had borrowed & set up in the bathroom in his flat. I recently found the photo again, and put it in a clip frame and hung it in my den.
my original mandolin, bodhran etc.
I later bought a better mandolin, and also got better goatskin bodhran from Hobgoblin Music.
I sold my 1st mandolin, and bodhran to a mate of mine. I think he still has them. I certainly still have my 2nd mandolin and bodhran.
While I was at UMIST, between 1984 and 1988 I used to drink in the Jolly Angler in Ducie Street. It was a backstreet Irish pub, but had no music session. I went to play pool with mates and drink copious quantities of Hyde's Anvil bitter (and at Christmas time their strong Winter Ale from a small barrel on the bar).
The landlord had a niece who at that time was doing her O levels and was struggling with maths. She was a mean piano accordion player too. We started a weekly maths tuition followed by a few tunes. I took my mandolin and she took her PA.
After a few weeks of this a few customers asked
"is this a regular session?"
"no, just us having a few tunes"
"is it ok if we join in next week? There's no good session on a Thursday nearby"
" Yeah! that'd be fun"
and then it exploded from there.
More and more and more people came on a Thursday night. After only a few weeks I found I was well out of my depth, and stopped playing, or trying to play. I'd learned a few new tunes in the first few weeks of the session but then found all I could do was sit and watch and listen.
But I still played mandolin for my own amusement. I wasn't particularly good, but I enjoyed it.
There have been various instruments over the years since then.
Later, after leaving UMIST and getting a job I bought myself a bouzouki from Hobgoblin too.
My parents had found an old Hohner Double-Ray Black-Dot in B/C at an antiques fair which I later bought by visiting the guy's house in Cramlington (nr. Newcastle) while we were visiting.
The story of this is on my old, old website which I recently uncovered...
I then bought a 2nd hand Saltarelle "Le Bouebe" melodeon in D/G in around 2002, and later a Castagnari Lilly melodeon for my 40th birthday in 2006. I later sold the Lilly, as I wasn't playing it enough to justify keeping it.
I still have the Saltarelle. But I rarely ever take it out and play it any more.
Here's an old photo of me in the Westings, Shetland.
Me on Saltarelle D/G with Neil Donald on a Chromatic button box
I got to be "ok" on melodeon - but nothing better then "ok".
In fact I've never got better than "ok" on anything, in the 45+ years of my trying to play.
I didn't have a guitar for several years and during Covid lockdown in 2020 I bought a cheap classical guitar (Yamaha C40) and spent a lot of time while isolated at home trying to learn proper clasical guitar. I followed some of the excellent courses by Bradford Werner This Is Classical Guitar. When life returned to normal I stopped studying, but I'd already found some physical problems with my wrists and hands due to the Rheumatoid Arthritis. I still noodle on the guitar, but I can't see me being able to really immerse myself in learning it properly.
I also bought a Treble Recorder last year and then neglected to do anything about it. I'd played Descant Recorder as a primary schoolboy aged 10 or so. That's where I learned to read music. So the Treble Recorder was supposed to be my way of reconnecting with the fun of learning a new (and at face value fairly simple) instrument. Of course the Recorder is a vastly under-rated instrument capable of magical sound when played by an expert.
I recently found some old mp3 recordings I'd done in around 2002, in a zip file which contained the HTML and other files from a website I had back then. There were 4 mp3 files that had me playing mandolin, and bodhran (and guitar, out of tune)
They are badly recorded - from memory I did it by using a pair of cheap stereo headphones as a microphone (!) and recording using grecord on a linux box (an old Gnome app for simple sound recording - probably running on Red Hat 6?)
To multi track I'd play the 1st recording back from the speakers on another linux box while recording the 2nd track (and the playback of the 1st which was audible in the background....) and I'd repeat this again to get a 3rd track.
The are in here and these are the links to the files
The future?
some of my current musical instruments
So, now, at 60 years old I'm wondering what to do with myself. What hobby to persue. How to find joy and fun again.
I found myself looking up at my mandolin a few nights ago, thinking "I wonder if I remember any tunes?" and I took it down from its hanger. And 2 hours later I forced myself to put it down & go to bed....
I've been a little lost recently, not knowing what to do with my spare time. Perhaps this is the answer. Just enjoy playing music for my own amusement again.