Friday | My Secret Skills

I guess you could say that I come from a musical family. No, not that kind of musical family where we all had music lessons as a school subject and can sight read from twenty paces. No, in fact, none of us has ever taken lessons, we've all self-taught, and only a few of us can actually sight read music. But between all of us, we have 2.5 pianists, 1.5 violinist/fiddler, two (perhaps a little rusty) flutists, five guitarists, three mandolin players, one banjo player, and one guy who can totally rock out on the spoons.

Judging by most of those instruments, it might not be hard to guess that bluegrass is a common musical theme in our family. We practically breath it in and my dad and brothers, with the recent addition of Karis on the mandolin, have formed their own unofficial bluegrass band that has actually gotten some recognition, especially in our civil war reenactment association. Forgive my shameless bragging, but ya know, family pride fairly oozes out of me! Don't judge.

And me, I play guitar and have for almost ten years. It's been more off and on in the past few years as life has gotten bigger, but when I pull out my trusty Yamaha, it's still easy for my fingers to fall back into those familiar places on the frets. I only play cords, I never had the patience to learn actual notes, but since I've only ever played for my own singing backup, it's not been a huge loss.

I'm also that .5 on the piano, but I only play by ear in certain styles so it hardly counts.