"I don't want to spend a couple of years getting to be not-bad at something, and then deciding to try something else"

What a load of old toot.  The fact is, I embarked on Learning to Play the Piano with a vague notion that I'd be playing a piano in a pub one day, and five years from now was the time scale I had from looking around usenet groups and doing some quick calculations.  What I didn't realize then was that I would learn to read music much more quickly than that - I'm probably half way there already, and would expect to get through the theory part of PSP by Christmas, or thereabouts.  But that'll mostly be a hand-eye thing, I won't have it in my ear for a while.

And then this morning I woke up and said out loud, "tin whistle".

I've been online this evening and bought a Clarks Sweetone D.  And this book.  The whistle's got a notation system all its own, and lots of the older songs here have it alongside a conventional staff.  So that should be good learning for the ear. The taking five years to get good may not even start until I fall in luerve with an instrument, and when I do that, I'll really get into practising.  That instrument won't be the ukulele.  It might be a piano.  Or an accordion.  Or a penny whistle. Or something.   And then I'll be playing it in a pub, if I'm spared.

Comments

  1. drawjerkyMon Aug 09, 09:48:00 pm BST

    I have/had the same idea... I'd like to be able to play the guitar or uke in the pub and perhaps sing along but there seems to be some psychological block which inhibits any ability I may have to remember a song.. bits of songs are fine, but a whole one? Snort.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Garry NixonMon Aug 09, 10:06:00 pm BST

    You need to hire a small child who likes you to sing songs at bedtime. I've learned about nine songs that way.

    If you go with something trad, like, say, She Moved Through the Fair, then you could learn it in a day. Jazz standards like, A Nightingale Sang, then it's a bit longer. More recent stuff is less metrical and much more difficult, like Tom, for example.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Garry NixonMon Aug 09, 10:08:00 pm BST

    Or something.

    ReplyDelete

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