opie wan
Dec-15-2008, 3:59pm
There are positive movements afoot in west Texas. As many know I haven't been playing a mandolin very long but I'm sure glad I do now. Here's what I consider a neat little story.
I went down to the local music store when all this started and asked about a mandolin. They just sort of gave me a blank look with the "could you spell that" sort of wonderment. I went ahead a bought the famous "custom cigar distressed" weber and then quit looking and started studying instruments and learning to play. A month or so later I went down to the music store for something and a kid that worked there came up to me and asked me if I knew something about mandolins. I said I guess and he asked me to look at some mandolins they had just received. I went into the acoustic guitar room and there are 3 mandolins hanging on the wall of the most cheap variety. However, they ARE mandolins. Of course, the kid had strung them wrong with strings going to the wrong tuners and he didn't know how to tune them. I briefly explained how to string the instrument and how to strobe the instrument and then left.
Okay... here's the cool part. My next door neighbor's son is a senior in high school and plays bass in a high school band. I'm close to his mom and I've let him do things around the studio over the years and that's one of the things that got him interested in music. A month or so back he told me he wanted to learn to play the mandolin. I said.... cool... but that's as far as it went. Yesterday his mom brings a mandolin to the studio and asked me to keep it. It is a little A-model Ibanez with a pick up. It plays nicely and should do fine for him to learn on. It was tuned correctly, strung correctly, and was obtained from the local music store. Maybe we're moving up out here in the western part of Texas. I suppose I'm going to be giving a few lessons over the next few months.
I went down to the local music store when all this started and asked about a mandolin. They just sort of gave me a blank look with the "could you spell that" sort of wonderment. I went ahead a bought the famous "custom cigar distressed" weber and then quit looking and started studying instruments and learning to play. A month or so later I went down to the music store for something and a kid that worked there came up to me and asked me if I knew something about mandolins. I said I guess and he asked me to look at some mandolins they had just received. I went into the acoustic guitar room and there are 3 mandolins hanging on the wall of the most cheap variety. However, they ARE mandolins. Of course, the kid had strung them wrong with strings going to the wrong tuners and he didn't know how to tune them. I briefly explained how to string the instrument and how to strobe the instrument and then left.
Okay... here's the cool part. My next door neighbor's son is a senior in high school and plays bass in a high school band. I'm close to his mom and I've let him do things around the studio over the years and that's one of the things that got him interested in music. A month or so back he told me he wanted to learn to play the mandolin. I said.... cool... but that's as far as it went. Yesterday his mom brings a mandolin to the studio and asked me to keep it. It is a little A-model Ibanez with a pick up. It plays nicely and should do fine for him to learn on. It was tuned correctly, strung correctly, and was obtained from the local music store. Maybe we're moving up out here in the western part of Texas. I suppose I'm going to be giving a few lessons over the next few months.