Three gold stars

I bought myself a present for my birthday; a chromatic harmonica. Now this is not your usual chromatic harmonica it's a custom tuned (G diminished, if there are any musicos reading along) number made by a little company located what was formerly Eastern Germany.

The whole process of getting this beauty was a lovely experience (more on this later) but todays topic is a few thoughts on learning and accomplishments. OK let it be known that I have an aptitude for music. I can pretty much make a passable noise on a bunch of instruments. But with this aptitude comes laziness which has hindered my ability to move to a higher level of skill. Translation: I can fake it, so why bother with all the tedious stuff? I've been playing piano since I was 4 years old but if even you put a gun to my head I still couldn't play a scale the "correct" way.

I've been playing harmonicas off and on since my debut with Dave Johnson and Devan Garlock in the Fremont Jr. High talent show. I played the french horn (?) line on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer." It was the beginning of my short but sweet academic "popularity phase" where at lunch time I actually got to sit at the same table as the groovy kids. Anyway, I kind of get harmonicas and can do (fake) some pretty mean "Chicago" blues riffs on the diatonic (OK jargon watch, a diatonic is the short one favored by cowboys, sharecroppers and burley black guys in sharp suites). The chromatic is another instrument all together. It has all 12 notes available (the diatonic, "officially" only has 7). Fewer people play the chromatic and as such there really are only a handful of relatively famous players. Toots Thielman is probably the most well known but Stevie Wonder started his career (when he was known as "Little Stevie Wonder") spicing up his lovely tunes with a chromatic.

Anyway I made a promise to myself to not to just dink around with this new intrument. I want to learn it properly; starting with the basics and then moving into tunes and then improvisation.

Allow me to bore you for a bit. The diminished tuned chromatic is a pretty novel harmonica. You can play all 12 keys by learning just three simple patterns. Compare this to a normal chromatic where playing 12 keys require you learn 12 patterns (some of which are pretty nasty) and you can see it's advantages.

So I gave myself a goal; one pattern in one week of 1/2 hour sessions. Well I was too generous with needed time, basically it took me an hour per pattern to more or less "get it."

By learning the patterns I felt as though I had really accomplished something with a small but well directed amount of effort. I then decided to reward my self by learning a tune. I've always wanted to play John Coltrane's beautiful ballad "Niama." You know what? On the "dimi" chromatic I had it picked out in half an hour! So reward rewarded it' back to the wood shed; task: play the patterns descending. Once that is acomplished the next reward is learning Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." Another slow wonderful ballad that I've been dying to play for years.

It seems that just about everything in life is so intangible. What are we successful at? Being a parent? Our work? Friendships? Relationships? So much effort is put into day to day life and to be honest the rewards are often pretty hard to percieve. Money. Affection. Acknowledgement. Acceptance. Other than dinero these are all so vague. I've always wished there was somebody out there to put a gold stars on the top of the notebook paper of my life. I guess it's up to me to put those stars on. Getting this instrument maybe the best thing I've done for myself in years. Three gold stars for Robin. "Good Job! Keep it up!"