in which musicians look at me funny.

I went to Wintergrass last week, in Bellevue, WA, spitting distance from Seattle. My many, many, many trips to Sea-Tac Airport were mostly for work, with only so much free time and energy for going places. So I’d never been to Bellevue. I spent the whole time in the downtown office-buildings-and-hotels kind of area, so arguably I still haven’t been to Bellevue. I hope there’s more to it than that.

Wintergrass is, surprisingly enough, a (mostly) bluegrass-focused festival, in the winter. The days are full of workshops, and the afternoons and nights are full of concerts. I mostly went because the Internet told me Le Vent du Nord was performing, and also Genticorum. The Quebecois bands don’t come to this coast much—who can blame them?—and at this point I’ve met a couple handfuls of people likely to be there, so it seemed promising.

It was fun! It’s still depressing to be around such high-level groups and have such a hard time joining in, the same as at Fiddle Tunes in 2019; I found a beginners-friendly subgroup, and eventually realized I should have just been with them all week. I have some perception stuff that makes music extra challenging, and one of them is that I don’t have a strong working memory for audio, and I can have a hard time determining figuring out what note someone else is playing. For example, say I’m trying to suss out a tune a group is playing: I’ll have a hard time figuring out the starting note. I do okay after that, but also I can have a hard time hearing which pitch is higher or lower,  and also I have a hard time hearing or singing or playing octaves.

I noticed something as I would talk to people. I have 6 violins (I think), and my two favorites are the "actually quite nice but still made in China for a certain price point," and the "absolutely stunning, much more expensive handmade in the U.S. by a master of the craft," both 5-strings. I bought the Very Nice Violin through a guy in SF who I met at Fiddle Tunes 2019, who introduced me to various folks as "the guy who bought the Very Nice Violin." (I have #4 of that model, and I got to play #5, which seemed about the same, but I’d need them next to each other to know.)

Then I tell people that I brought the Picnic Violin, because the Very Nice Violin hasn’t left the house yet and I would just be anxious traveling with it. I love the Picnic Violin, but it’s a commodity instrument, easily replaced.

And then some people look at me oddly. I think so many of them are professional musicians, they had some difficulty understanding that I would not bring my favorite instrument to this week where I would be learning and sharing music. It’s their companion for expressing themselves. It’s not like mine isn’t, but one of its gifts has been to help me be a better player, so I can get a great sound out of the Picnic Violin, and use it to learn on.

(In the beginner-friendly subgroup, one of the coaches said I was getting a really good bluegrass tone out of it. I started to say "Yeah, I like—" and he said, "No, you’re getting a really good sound." I should probably have that embroidered and hung on the wall.)

It’s nice to be home, though. The Very Nice Violin just has…more, of whatever quality you’d imagine. Responsiveness, volume, depth, anything. It’s just…more.

I’ll leave the house with it someday. But not yet.

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.