This is just a note about picking up bass guitar again after a 20 or 30 year virtual absence. In my 20s and 30s, I often played in “pickup bands” and other casual ensembles where we would pass instruments around depending on who was singing lead on that song. So…
Just ordered a device that is supposed to let me run my new digital piano into my vintage tone generators without having to go through a computer. (I’ve ordered two devices that were SUPPOSED to do that, but were really only ways of plugging a MIDI instrument into a computer’s…
On a private saxophone page, I accidentally started an argument over whether two saxophones from the same factory had the same bore. (Bundy I and Bundy II, in case you wondered). All agreed, as I had always claimed (based on my personal experience with these horns) that the Bundy I…
A note about saxophones in case you ever thought about picking one up to learn on. Alto, Soprano, or Tenor? A quick run-down on which horns are easier to start off on or to transition to. Soprano (what Kenny G’s recordings usually feature) is high-pitched and hard to start out…
Here’s a reminder for my sax-loving friends, brought on by a search for a specific style of vintage Buescher alto to compare to a Lyon & Healy stencil a reader owned. You don’t have to buy an expensive relic to learn what it was like to blow a Buescher True…
I was recently explaining to a visitor why my really old autoharps have numbers instead of chord names on the chord bars, when they asked why the note numbers on these diatonic harps go 1,2,3,4,5,6,6,7? And why is the second 6 in a strange, dotted font? Well, Charles F. Zimmerman,…
One of the sites I started – SchoolOfTheRock.com – has articles about vintage saxophones, including C Melody saxophones, which some folks use to play in worship bands, because they are better suited for playing in the sharp-heavy guitar keys of most modern worship choruses. I have had many reader questions…
I’m constantly contacted by people who can’t find playable banjos to try out, and they can’t even find anyone to answer their questions intelligently. Surprisingly many of them live in or near large metropolitan areas with dozens of music stores in a thirty-mile radius. In nearly every part of the…
Last year I put up an autoharp buyers’ guide page on RiverboatMusic.com. And I started getting reader questions about autoharps. Since I only dabble in the things, some of the questions took a lot of research to answer, and the answers I found were scattered in various places like discussion…
Why would anyone take forty hours or more to write an article to help newbies find suitable banjos? Wouldn’t it be easier and more profitable just to sell banjos outright or accept advertising from banjo vendors for representing ONLY their products? But I believe in giving as many people access…
