It's been almost a year since this writer's last blog post.
There are two reasons for this hiatus. The first is that your faithful correspondent is a lazy man by nature and finds that writing is hard work. To paraphrase Hemingway, a blank page is like facing a white fighting bull while holding nothing more than an idea and pen. Who needs that? That's work. The second reason is because a promise had been made previously that the blog posts would be more upbeat and less critical of the international situation than they had been. But over the past near year we here at Nib Manor have looked in vain for a world getting better in those things that concern us. In other words, we have tried and been found wanting. The ever-lovely Lady Nib has spent countless hours on her fainting couch clutching a bottle of smelling salts after reading the news and such looking for the uplifting.
So it appears that yours truly will have to take the prerogative of the nobility and the politician (being of the former and disdaining the latter) and break his promise to be a Sunny Sam. Life is good, but there are a lot of dark and evil portions of the world that go unremarked by our media lords.
But to prevent the impression that this writer thinks it's a good idea to throw the unsuspecting into the deep end of the cesspool, we'll start with something that has been addressed in several previous posts and is pretty light. The topic will be: Cheap Musical Instruments!
Those who know this writer know that he has no musical talent whatsoever. But he keeps trying. After a childhood spent studying the mandolin (not bluegrass mandolin, but American popular music style mandolin) he decided that perhaps instruments such as the harmonica, the pennywhistle or the ukulele may be the vehicles to financial riches. None of those turned out very well and his carer on the music hall stage went up in flames like a Pinto at a petrol station. The mangled chords of 1920s ukulele songs, bad imitations of the Harmonicats and tin whistle versions of "English Garden" still cause the hounds to howl and Lady Nib to stuff cotton waste into her ears. But hope springs eternal (or infernal, depending on your point of view {or what you can hear}).
Music is one of those things a bit like golf. You can't buy a game or talent. But if you've got the game or the talent you can get by with either K-Mart golf clubs or an $80.00 guitar. The player makes the tool work for him. The intonation may be a bit off (in the case of guitars, dulcimers or ukes) or the balance may be a bit off for golf clubs or horse shoes, but the person who has the talent or persistence can get much more out of a cheap instrument than a person with an expensive instrument without the talent or willingness to put in the hard work. One of the most entertaining guitarists the writer has seen in person was a guy playing on the Redondo Beach pier. His guitar was cheap and it looked like it had been sat upon by a very fat person; the sound board was almost like a bowl. But they man overcame the limits of the instrument because he knew the instrument.
Having written that, while one can get by with a cheap instrument, one really can't get buy with a rotten and bad instrument. Recently this writer bought a Hohner Old Standby Harmonica. In the past the Old Standby was Hohner's second level diatonic harmonica behind the Marine Band. It was a pretty good harp and was actually favored by some professional harp players over the Marine Band because the reeds were easier to bend. Apparently now Hohner has decided that the Old Stanby is a toy harmonica dedicated to putting any young and aspiring harmonicist off the instrument. The particular harmonica in question not only had a stuck draw reed (which was soon corrected after a bit of investigation and fiddling) but at least three reeds were way out of tune. Nobody who is not willing or not knowledgeable about the mechanics of harmonicas could play a decent tune with the thing unless it was some strange Central Asian musical scale.
The point is that Hohner has really let harmonica players down by allowing this thing out of the factory in China. And it's not a matter of the thing being now made in China instead of Germany. The Chinese take harmonicas more seriously than Americans. They teach harmonica in schools. They know what is and is not a decent harmonica. Allowing this thing out of the factory is almost criminal for the simple reason that few people who want to take up a musical instrument are really interested in spending a lot of money before they decide whether or not they like playing or have a talent or are willing to put in the work for the instrument. A Marine Band costs about $30.00. A Special 20 costs more. An Old Standby costs between $10.00 and $15.00. All are cheap compared to buying a guitar or drum set, but to use the golf analogy, if one buys a set of clubs that have shafts so bent that they look like something from a Three Stooges bit it is unlikely that the aspiring harmonicist will progress beyond an out of tune version of Hot Cross Buns.
This writer has played $20.00 ukuleles that sound okay and $6.00 tin whistles that were in tune. Why cannot Hohner get out a modern version of their previous second level harp that is in tune and doesn't have stuck reeds. It makes one what to start playing the bones or the spoons.
