Harmonica Workshop

Attended a beginners' harmonica workshop today at the Folk Center. The cost was $20, plus the cost of a harmonica. I couldn't find my Pocket Pal, so I sprung for a Hohner blues Harp, which cost $29.95.

I mean, what the hey.

A local blues harpist guy ran the workshop, which was pretty much a bust. The lesson here is two-fold: 1) Not all talented musicians are good teachers and 2) It is hard to teach a large group of people how to play a tiny instrument that you have to blow air into, or suck air out of, for that matter.

I had a similar experience during a pennywhistle workshop at the Folk Festival last summer. Didn't learn much there either.

At start time, the class was pretty small. The instructor stalled, or so it seemed, until the class size swelled to about 20 people. The attendees ranged from folk like me, who had barely ever attempted to play harmonica, to those who had elaborate harmonica cases, with Multiple harmonicas in different keys. Billy C brought Blowhard Canary with him, as did another father his son. A mother and daughter came. They looked like sisters.

The guy played a pretty good harp. But he spent the first 45 minutes of the two-hour workshop talking about other players, playing cuts from a couple of CD's, and talking about places where you could hear the blues or sit in and jam with the players. Gave us a few handouts that we could have gotten if we had just bought the book he copied them out of.

Most of the rest of the workshop was that way, with a few demonstrations by the teacher, interrupted by the occasional excuse for the class to blow into their own harps.

I mean, the guy could have had us in the palm of his hands if he had shown us how to play a scale. He could have followed that with a couple of progressions or techniques. I don't think people would have cared that they weren't playing any songs, as long as they learned how to move their slobbery lips back and forth a few times. It would have even given the actual players that showed up a chance to show off a bit-maybe even help the newbies out a little.

At the end, one of the players asked that the instructor teach an intermediate class where he shared some of his licks. Translation: teach us how to do something next time and we'll forgive you this time.

I asked Jerry who was teaching the uke workshop. They have never offered uke workshops before. This was for beginners, so I thought it might be a waste of time. But I was interested in taking a more advanced workshop. This workshop was cancelled because of poor turnout, but Jerry suggested that maybe I could teach one as I was farther advanced than the lady who would have taught the cancelled workshop.

I was flattered. Billy C and I talked about it a bit and thought we could co-teach. It would be fun to do it that way.

We had dinner at the Pizza and Such next door. We usually dine at Heroes, a local big food, beer, and wine establishment. By "big food," I mean that the portions are huge, as are the servings of beer and wine. But I have never had anything there that I thought was as good as it was big.

We had eaten at Pizza and Such once before and it tasted good. I had a salad (eating a lot of those these days), as did Virginia Canary. Mine was good and hers looked interesting. Tonight, I had a different salad, which was just as tasty as the other. So, it looks like Pizza and Such will be my future stop for eats on Open Mike Night.

Right now, I'm gonna get my Harmonica for Dummies book and my new blues harp and do some damage.