Bub & trumpet

At the moment there's no good place to set my guitars up for easy, casual noodling. And anyhow, I'm still a bit skittish of '' smash & grab'' burglaries, after having most of my guitars stolen last year. So I keep everything hidden, and/or under lock and key.

I feel guilty spending more than a few minutes per evening playing -- 'cause I should be making Dissertation revisions. But because there's no good place to keep my guitars set up, and because it takes time to set up and break down (one disadvantage of electric guitars over acoustics!), the few minutes I'd spend assembling and disassembling my gear would use up myplaying time.

My working answer -- of sorts -- is to play the trumpet. There's really only two pieces (the mouthpiece and the rest), and I can noodle around with it when I'm watching The Bub play on the living room carpet: I sit on the sofa, and she'll be playing on the floor in front of me.

Generally when I start playing, she'll crawl over and want to come up, so I pick her up and put her on my lap. She likes pushing the buttons in to make the sound change. Sometimes she grabs the "neck" of the trumpet and puts the mouthpiece in her mouth -- but of course that doesn't do anything. So she takes it out of her mouth, and pushes it towards my mouth -- and I blow on it, and she pushes the buttons some more.

I also have a used clarinet (both from my maternal grandparents, from the estate of a friend; they knew I like musical instruments, so they saved it for me and handed them over when I visited in June). I haven't had a chance yet to use the clarinet -- but after I finish my Dissertation and can turn my attention to other things waiting to be taken care of, I want to take it to a place that specializes in woodwinds, for a "tune-up"/reconditioning. I also have an accordian that I need to get tidied up: one of the keys gets jammed in the "down" position, such that I have to flick it back up to get the note to stop sounding.


--GG