An Inspiring Story For Beginners - And Everybody

[journeybear]

I hope it's all right to post this here. Even with correct attribution, I'm not sure of the correct protocol. I thought this was an inspired and inspiring story of the writer's efforts to learn to play the mandolin on his own as an adult, and that many here could learn from it - even those who have progressed far from the experiences he describes.


The Mandolin Player by David Hochman

From Reader's Digest - August 2008 http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspi...icle89828.html

Somehow the usual anxieties of life didn't matter when David Hochman focused on mastering the mandolin. The author found the courage to take up a musical instrument nearly 30 years after his last piano lesson.



To the outside world, we probably don't sound like much. Our banjo player is deaf in one ear and sings like he's deaf in both. The nine-year-old on fiddle is sawing G notes though we're playing in A. Then there's the mandolin player (yours truly), whose bluegrass jamming skills before today were limited to air banjo renditions of that song from Deliverance.

What our group lacks in musicianship is offset by our willingness to humiliate ourselves. Failing publicly is the point at Dr. Banjo's Bluegrass Jam Camp, where I have come to strum alongside kindred spirits -- rank beginners like me whose families couldn't bear the twanging anymore.

My path to musical greatness was diverted roughly 30 years ago. At age 11, after three years of indentured servitude to my crabby piano teacher, I was at the Baldwin upright when my father and I (in matching three-piece corduroy suits, no less) sang "Heart and Soul" for the extended family at Thanksgiving dinner. The cheek pinching afterward was the final straw. I vowed never to play again.

It turned out the joke was on me. In the decades that followed, any urge to express myself musically had to be exorcised in the privacy of my shower or car. And while I could clap, snap, and hit all the high parts of "Bohemian Rhapsody," so could a howler monkey. As I approached 40, I felt a craving to actually play something -- and not just my iPod.

The mandolin looks harmless enough. About the size of a tennis racket, it's easy to get a clear, golden sound just by brushing your pick across its four sets of double strings. That doesn't mean I didn't feel slightly panicky when my wife surprised me with one when I hit the big 4-0. "We support you, sweetie," Ruth said, speaking for the family. By day seven, she and our four-year-old would quietly slip into another room whenever I took a crack at "Turkey in the Straw."

But I was in heaven. I signed up for lessons at a music shop in town and felt deep satisfaction even as I butchered "This Land Is Your Land" and "Sweet Georgia Brown." I was making music! And by choice, not because my mother or anyone else was forcing me to. The focus and fancy fingerwork the mandolin demands were a relief from pecking mindlessly at the computer all day. Plus, there was something powerful, mystical even, about the old songs themselves and the sweet simplicity of lyrics like "Through the ages I'll remember blue eyes crying in the rain."

Even more remarkable was how grounding it was to play. Somehow the usual anxieties of life -- money, status, the possibility of a meteorite landing on my head -- didn't matter when every atom of my humanity was focused on mastering the four-fingered D chord. Experts in positive psychology call it flow, the rosy feeling of losing oneself in a challenging activity. One night, while working out the melody of "Over the Rainbow," I was startled to see I'd been picking and grinning nonstop for four hours.

Which is not to say I was very good. My sister-in-law, who was dating a professional guitar player, brought him over one evening so we could play together; part of me still believes my plinky, stop-and-go rendition of "House of the Rising Sun" was the real reason he never called her again.

But that experience got me thinking. What good was banging out songs alone in my living room when I could be inflicting them on complete strangers? When I typed jam camp for mandolin basket cases into Google, the first result connected me to Dr. Banjo and his happy circles of hapless beginners. "It's easier than you think!" his website promised. Learn to take "your first out-of-the-closet solos!" Next thing I knew, I was that guy on the airplane trying to shove his instrument case into the overhead bin.

Dr. Banjo is Pete Wernick, who's been running camps around the country for bluegrass greenhorns since the early 1980s. His PhD is in sociology, and he clearly knows something about the wisdom of crowds. Before we even had our instruments out at the camp in Boulder, Colorado, he asked, "Who's the worst player here?" All 28 of us shot up our hands.

Wernick's philosophy is that private music instruction often fails, which is why most instruments in America haven't seen daylight for decades. "The only way to learn to play and keep playing is by playing with other people," he tells us.

At the moment, our little group within the larger group is ripping through (make that ripping apart) the normally inspirational gospel hymn "I'll Fly Away." Our Dobro player, a shy computer nerd who's never played outside his basement in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has his eyes shut so tightly and is playing so quietly, I fear he might be dead. But then comes the real horror. Our lead guitarist, a garage door installer with a bushy gray mustache, nods in my direction and utters the three words I was hoping might never come my way: "Take it, David."

There are many ways to grow as a musician, not to mention as a human being. So far this weekend, I've learned the importance of patience, gratitude, humility, resilience, and, above all, listening. On the practical level, I've discovered that once you master four basic chords, you can pretty much play along with every song in the bluegrass songbook. I know, too, that jamming, like life itself, isn't about perfection but about playing through your mistakes and trusting that you'll get back on track if you just keep up the rhythm. That said, when you're called on to solo, the only lesson that matters is, Sometimes you just have to jump right in. Dr. Banjo showed us how a beginner could take a "break" on mandolin. I flutter my pick up and down on the E strings, then switch to A, then back to E, remembering to make the chord changes as I go. And to stay on beat. And not to sway too much. And to smile. "You are the music while the music lasts," T. S. Eliot wrote. And I am, though luckily the solo doesn't last long. My talented companions come in on the chorus with harmony as beautiful as I've ever heard. "When I die, hallelujah, by and by," we sing as we play our hearts out, "I'll fly away."

When I actually do fly away, back home to Los Angeles, the world somehow feels like a different place. My older brother, never one to follow my lead, tells me that he, too, has decided to take up the mandolin. Around the same time, two friends -- a photographer and a buttoned-up lawyer -- show up at my door with a guitar and a banjo, respectively, asking to play. And last week, my dear, sweet Ruth emerged from the other room to say she wants to find the violin (she calls it a fiddle now) she hasn't played in three decades. That might not sound like much to the outside world, but it's definitely music to my ears.

[mandozilla]

That is a really neat story journeybear. The author perfectly echoes the feelings and thoughts that so many of us are or have gone through. How did that Readers Digest article escape our attention for so long I wonder?

[journeybear]

Originally Posted by mandozilla

How did that Readers Digest article escape our attention for so long I wonder?

Hey MZ

I've done so much surfing today on only one cup of coffee I forget exactly how I tumbled onto this - prolly "mandolin" + "famous people" followed by much scrolling.

It's a good 'un, though. Also, having a pretty nice Kentucky must have helped him some ...

JB

[rgray]

I loved it and wish that the forum powers-to-be could keep this story in plain sight and not let it be lost in the shuffle. I plan to show this to my wife as it does a far better job than I could of explaining why her 50 y/o husband of 27 years is so intent on blistering his fingers to play songs titled, "Mary Had a Border Collie".

[barney 59]

Show this story to anyone you know that suffers from depression!

[journeybear]

I did - but I'm still depressed!

[mandozilla]

OMG journeybear! Maximum smilies in use! Multiple crying smilies no less! Better watch out for the Emoticon Police!

[journeybear]

Originally Posted by mandozilla

OMG journeybear! Maximum smilies in use! Multiple crying smilies no less! Better watch out for the Emoticon Police!

Yes indeedy! It is no doubt a good, great, wonderful thing that there is a limit of five. If more were allowed, who knows where it would lead?

[Gerry Hastie]

Should we have a mandolin wisdom section under miscellaneous in the forum? It'd be great to a have a section where people can post their stories/journeys in mandolining.

This piece reminded me of a book by Will Hodgkinson called Guitar Man. The book told of his journey from 'pure novice' to well... 'pure novice playing in front of people' with his piece de resistance playing his own version of the guitar instrumental Anji by Davey Graham. He was a journalist and managed to get a few tips form the likes of Bert Jansch, Roger McGuinn and Johnny Marr.

There's nothing like playing in front of people, no matter how badly you do, you always feel like a better player once you get through it.

Thanks for the post journeybear. Your emoticon use should be legendary.

[Bertram Henze]

LMAO - what a funny storyteller, and what a deja-vue.

Replace the piano with a violin, the instrument-less decades by 8 years and that forensic serial musicians' camp by the first group I played in, and that's more or less my story. I especially liked "...jamming, like life itself, isn't about perfection but about playing through your mistakes...", says it all.

Thanks for sharing.

Bertram

[GTG]

Originally Posted by journeybear

Our Dobro player, a shy computer nerd who's never played outside his basement in Cheyenne, Wyoming, has his eyes shut so tightly and is playing so quietly, I fear he might be dead.

Hah! I really did laugh out loud! Thanks for sharing this great story.

[desaljs]

That was a great read. I have done most of what he describes, except, take the solo. Playing out with others is the way to go!

[Womandolin]

Originally Posted by mandozilla

Emoticon Police!

This makes me think of the Sandwich Police.

[journeybear]

Originally Posted by desaljs

That was a great read. I have done most of what he describes, except, take the solo. Playing out with others is the way to go!

Have faith - your time will come!

The way I got my courage up to play with others - and by that, I mean others better than myself (which at the time was pretty much the same ) - was to get good enough at "fakin' it" so that when it came to my turn, I could play something well enough to get by, at least not get kicked out of the circle. As time went on and I paid attention to what others were doing and tried to work up licks that were somewhat similar, I gradually moved from fakin' it to really playing. But since I was coming from nowhere, I needed that intermediate step, and this strategy worked.