Tales of an Absolute Beginner - First Class

Ashley here. I don't know that I've officially introduced myself, but I've worked in the background at Drunken Fiddles for a few months, helping with content and other various tasks. While my work doesn't directly require expertise in fiddling, Laurel thought I should try my hand at it - partly so I'd understand what it's really like to start and partly because she thought it would be fun. And so my journey began! She helped me track down an instrument and got me enrolled in the latest session in Kansas City. Class officially kicked off last night, so I thought I'd report back about how that went. 

A Blast from the Past
While I've never played a stringed instrument before, I have some musical background - from playing piano, flute, and singing. As the lesson kicked off, I could feel my brain reactivating the parts of itself that stored information like "what are the names of the notes?" and "I think that's a quarter note". These portions have been largely dormant for many, many years, so I was relieved there was still SOMETHING retained.

An Auspicious Start
For the first class, we started by learning the names of the strings and feeling what it was like to simply pluck to a rhythm. I don't want to necessarily call myself a prodigy, but I *was* able to keep up with even adding TWO fingers at a time to make the notes. (Though as I'm writing this I am struggling to remember exactly WHICH note required that second finger... details, details...)

Before long, we were learning the most common chords and strumming along together. What was fun is even with that most basic rhythmic playing as the foundation, Laurel layered in beautiful melodies on top which made me feel like I was actually really playing. 

A Look Ahead
Apparently next week things will get real as we'll get started with the basics of the bow, but for now I'll pull my instrument each day (which, for future reference, has been named Scarlett Bowhansson thanks to a creative suggestion on Instagram) and get comfortable just moving my fingers and building some callouses. If you want more about my journey, make sure to check out our social media. I *may* get brave enough to start posting some practice content soon. We shall see...