78 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
78 lines
3.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Bluegrass Music"
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description: "My thoughts on old time and bluegrass music"
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author: Amolith
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cover: /assets/pngs/guitar.png
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categories:
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- Music
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tags:
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- Music
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- Bluegrass
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- Old time
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- 100 Days To Offload
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date: 2020-04-28T02:13:16-04:00
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---
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When I was younger, I prided myself on being a classical musician. I
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played piano and organ, I was in a nearby fine arts university's choir
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(singing soprano of course), and, quite honestly, I was rather stuck up
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about it. I didn't know any bluegrass musicians so I had never really
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interacted with them or gotten "into" the genre but, whenever my mother
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would show me a group of people with a double bass, a banjo, a mandolin,
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and a fiddle, I would listen for a few seconds and write it off as
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"boring country". It wasn't until I started taking lessons that I grew
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fond of genre.
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One of the things I had always wanted to play was double bass. However,
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lessons were *extremely* expensive and the instrument was even more so.
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Coming from a rather poor family of just me and my mother, classical
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lessons were completely out of the question. She did end up finding a
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way for me to take bluegrass lessons at an incredibly cheap rate; I
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won't say what the program is called because my name is plastered all
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over the internet for the branch in this area but it allows student to
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take lessons at a greatly reduced cost. Pricing was based on school
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lunch status and, with this particular branch, I was able to take free
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lessons and rent a bass for something like $30/semester. I picked it up
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quickly and started to really enjoy it, learning some classical pieces
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on the side and playing with a violin bow rather than the expensive bass
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bows. Throughout the lessons, my main goal was not to get "roped into"
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doing bluegrass for the rest of my life because I was entirely
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uninterested in that; I wanted to keep bluegrass in the back and
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classical in front.
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Because I picked it up so quickly, the style is very common in this
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area, and bass players in something of a shortage, I ended up playing
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for a number of different groups at different levels. In one of them,
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the youngest member was 12 and, in another, I was the youngest with the
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next being 30 years older. With all of these groups, I ended up meeting
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*many* amazing and wonderful people, playing *so much music*, and
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getting to travel quite a lot. It was very slow but, about three years
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after first picking up a bass, I'm actively seeking out more bluegrass
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to learn, recently picking up fingerstyle guitar, banjo, and maybe
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mandolin in the future.
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In opening my mind to the genre, I also discovered a lot of beautiful
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music that's...not quite bluegrass but...not quite anything else I've
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heard either. I absolutely *love* the style and can't wait to meet up
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with a friend of mine and put some pieces together. The main band I've
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been following is [The Punch Brothers.](https://www.punchbrothers.com/)
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[Chris Thile](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Thile), the leader...holy
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shit he's a *musician*. From classical to bluegrass to jazz, he's an
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absolute madman. A couple of my favourite songs that The Punch Brothers
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do are written by him: *[My Oh
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My,](https://invidio.us/watch?v=staHSMEE1pw)* *[Julep,](
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https://invidio.us/watch?v=lLdtEiUKDig)* *[Patchwork
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Girlfriend,](https://invidio.us/watch?v=CMtyWB_Pzic)* and *[Between 1st
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and A.](https://invidio.us/watch?v=2hsXcl4X5vQ)* The style is just so
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unique and different yet has those evident bluegrass roots underpinning
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it all.
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---
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This was posted as part of
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[#100DaysToOffload,](https://100daystooffload.com/) an [awesome
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idea](https://fosstodon.org/@kev/104053977554016690) from [Kev
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Quirk.](https://kevq.uk/) If you want to participate, just write
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something every day for 100 days and post a link on social media with
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the hashtag!
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