Ever since
I found that Woodrow, I've been thinking and thinking about it and all its other stringed cousins, and I've decided that I don't want to wait the approximately seven million years (or, like, a year) it'll take to save up for the woodrow with my super-limited current budget, so I'm going to stair-step it. I'm still getting that woodrow, but I'm also going to get other, cheaper stringed instruments in between! I'll be a strings virtuoso. At least for a minute before I catch another passion.
Here's the plan:
- Ukulele* - I found one for 25$, which I can probably get in another week or two. It's a pretty green one, good for beginners.
- Dulcimer - About 50$ for a basic one, and they're so neat looking and sound beautiful. Plus, I get to be a damsel playing a dulcimer, so there's that. This would be an Appalachian Dulcimer, so it's played like a lap guitar, but it's still a dulcimer!
- Mandolin - Around 80-90$ is the best price, and they're so pretty. I could play cool modern stuff, or I could play really old-fashioned stuff. It'll be great.
- Fiddle - I've wanted a fiddle for AGES and just never got around to actually buying one, so I just dropped it into the plan. I want to learn Celtic fiddle, but the fact that it's the same instrument as a violin, just played differently, makes it a bonus piece! I can get a nice green beginner one for around 100$, it seems.
- Woodrow - They're 150$ if I can catch the makers that showed me them at a show, and 185$ if I order one off their website. They're based here in North Carolina, and they hand craft each one, and they have five models starting with this little baby and going up to one that's almost a guitar around 300$. I like the bottom two priced ones the best, though.
- Psaltery - Have you heard of this thing? It's a triangle box and strings, and you bow it like a violin and it's got a sort of creepy, sweet, drony sound I really like**. It's a medieval intrument I first saw at a rennfaire and have been wanting for ages but forgot about until recently. They run somewhere around $200-250.
- Hammered Dulcimer - The classic dulcimer, played like a xylophone, or the inside of a piano, and a gorgeous sound. Expensive, though, at over $250 unless there's a cheaper one I couldn't find somewhere.
With possible detours along the way. I found a super-beginner's xylophone for about 45-50$ while looking up stringed instruments, and I've just discovered an array of AMAZING sounding prehistoric Celtic horns that I don't think I can buy anywhere but maybe I can find a way to make or have made for me...though that'll probably put it after the Hammered Dulcimer in timing and price, so...
And there's lap harps, and this ancient Scottish harp that someone reconstructed and I'd probably have to have specially made, and the Norwegian Hardingfele, a folk-music fiddle with a second layer of resonating strings and gorgeous inlay work all around. And a hurdy-gurdy! And not to mention the non-stringed instruments I'd like to get--a concertina, various variations on flutes and pipes, a cistrum, that xylophone, hand-drums...And a piano. I've wanted a piano since I learned to play one when I was thirteen, and my house won't be complete until I get one.***
Man, I have a fantastically musical future ahead of me, and I can't believe I never committed to it before.
Do you guys play any instruments? What do you play?
Notes:
* I like the popularity these babies have right now. It means I can find info on them and probably people to actually show me how if it comes to that. Side-story: I was watching a video of how to start playing a uke while babysitting yesterday, and the baby came up and watched it with me, and the whole time, he kept saying "And me play! Me play, too!", so now he wants to learn ukulele, and I think that'd be amazing. He could be an expert by the time he's four (he's two now). My brother also wants to learn, and he wants one of the bigger, deeper ones, so maybe we'll all learn and start a little uke session band. A weird take on the family bands in our Irish heritage.
** It turns out, I love a good drone-sound. Bagpipes? Ulean Pipes? Psaltery? Hurdy-gurdy? All of them drone, and I just adore the sound of all of them. Side-story: When we lived in Scotland, my sister and I used to plug our noses, hum through our sinuses, and 'play bagpipe'. It was great when we could hit that perfect moment when we harmonized. Side-side story: When my grandmother died and we were all in her house, mourning in the laughing-and-telling-stories way we do, my brother broke into song and sis and I started singing along. None of us have that great a singing voice, and even though Sister was in chorus, she had a bad teacher who was probably tone deaf and so got no real training out of it--but our aunt, who is a real musician, band and tours and all, heard us and said it was amazing. None of us were in the same key, and none of those were the right key, but we harmonized perfectly with each other! I think it's because of an early childhood with no TV and lots of tapes and records, and therefore a lot of singing.
*** Of course, right now, I don't have a house to put it in. And nowhere in this house to put it in the meantime. But I know for a fact that regular standup pianos go through thrift stores fairly regularly, and last time I wistfully checked Craigstlist, there were literally about twelve pianos either for sale or for free if you move it, so I don't really think it'll be all that hard to find one. The hard part will be getting my own place to put it, and getting it from wherever it is now to wherever I wind up living. But man, a piano of my own!
