I CAN HELP

When I was a kid, and as I grew up, I thought a lot about what I'm really good at, and what I enjoy. As mentioned elsewhere, I've picked up a motley assortment of skills—a few I grew up with, but mostly it's been in my teens and beyond. What do I take to easily? What lights me up and gets me excited? What keeps me interested? How do those change over time?

My hobby, and my gift, is just "learning stuff." Which is weird. More typically, people find things to dig into, and keep digging—often decades, or a lifetime. Whenever I tell someone about machining, they say "What are you going to make?," which is a reasonable question, since most folks will pick up skills for a purpose.

I, on the other hand, get curious about how something is done, acquire a basic competency in it, and at some point I drift away and find something else. It's definitely an ADHD thing, same as how I'm always in the middle of a couple dozen books at a time, where I'll read a few pages before needing to switch books. This is a superpower, especially when combined with my other skills, and winning Brain Yahtzee with the high-intelligence genes that are visited, with the most absurd intensity, on both sides of my family tree.

(There are exceptions. I would be in my third decade of aikido, if my health had let me continue. I'm 7 years into the violin. For whatever it's worth, for those, I did have purposes in mind.)

One source of novelty has been the flow of musical instruments into and out of—mostly in—the household. I don't buy instruments on impulse; I spend a lot of time understanding what sound or experience I'm trying to get, and if I can't do it with the existing zoo of instruments. I do buy them regularly, but each one has had years of thinking and pondering behind it.

I love buying musical instruments so much, I get really excited about helping other people have instruments, whether buying one for them (Honor’s ukulele, my niece’s 7/8-scale violin) or pointing them in the right direction. Around here, my advice for acoustic instruments is "go to Gryphon and tell them what you need," since they’ve added lower price ranges over the past 15 years or so, as carefully-curated imports have gotten better, even as prices have been static-ish. There’s a lot of really amazing work coming out of China, South Korea, and Indonesia: Paul Reed Smith’s budget SE line, for example, started production in South Korea, but now they’re made in Indonesia and the improved quality is remarkable. Outfits like Fiddlershop or Acoustic Electric Strings work closely with the overseas import shops, checking out samples and making sure the output is up to snuff. And it’s humbling to discover that many parts of Asia have been making Western-origin instruments since before any of my late grandparents were born.

I love how accessible and downright good instruments are now. From a colonialism and globalization perspective…maybe not so great. But it enables people to make music, and that’s always worth feeling grateful for.