music journal

it’s not really a fife, but she likes to call it that. Michelle has taken to playing my old penny whistle that I got in a very cool store in Vermont about 10 years ago. that summer I had fun messing around with it and made up a couple tunes that I might still remember, but I havent played it in a while.

but it turns out that Michelle used to play the flute (and lots of brass instruments too). I’ve never seen her play, but she was apparently pretty good. she’s been wanting to play and sing music together and somehow stumbled on the old penny whistle, and it was a snap for her to pick it up. so now we’re combing our books for good songs in the key of D, and were finally able to jam a little today before work (on saturday…yuck).

her success on the whistle inspired her to drop off the old flute at Jake’s store for repair, so hopefully soon we can play in any key together.

so this should be a lot of fun: me on the irishy octave mandolin and her on the whistle…we’re looking forward to playing a lot on vacation. hopefully we wont drive everyone crazy.  

it’s been a long week and it’s only wednesday. I’m still having ear problems as reported elsewhere which causes a headache after a while. we did music at a special church service on Monday, which went well overall, but I found it nearly impossible to hear myself, so I laid back except for strumming chords.

anyway, I was enjoying a favorite beverage last night and was inspired to play a little and came up with this rough song idea, which I’ve dubbed “Drambuie”. I’m using the new stereo mic for my ipod recorder which sounds pretty good compared to the built-in one. but it still skips. I’ve figured out that it skips at 1:13 no matter what setting I’ve got it on (most likely when it’s writing to the harddrive) so we’ll see if I can get it replaced or what.

in other music stuff, we went to see Nathan Clark George play last week. a good singer-songwriter guy who does songs about life as well as scripture-based stuff. some of it isnt quite my thing but usually it’s good stuff. he takes his whole family on the road in their RV around the country, which I both admire and think is somewhat crazy. so for 2 years in a row now we’ve seen him at a little church down the road, and we buy a couple CDs not only for the music but to support the cause. he does inspire me to want to try to write songs…now just to find the time to sit down and do it!