Adventure to the House of Musical Traditions

On Wednesday, me and two cherished high school friends went on an adventure. We drove fourty-five minutes to a music store!

It was a great day overall, starting with a good drive and breakfast at a cafe at which we discussed our futures, and the turning into reality of something we've always dreamed of. That is, opening a bookstore cafe with room for live performances and yoga class. We decided we need to scout Seattle.

Later on was great, too, especially when Jenn, violinist performance major extraordinaire (plus Ethnomusicology), played some Irish tunes with my dad. But of course the big excitement of the day was centered around the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park, MD.

I went into the music store expecting maybe to come out of there with some bongos or a maraca. I came out of it with a harp, Ravenna 26.




Music stores are pretty magical places. My friend Liz was drawn to a violin while she was there, and is now planning on bringing her own to be assessed and possibly traded. You can unexpectedly fall in love with an instrument and it can end up coming home with you.

For me, the acquisition of a new instrument is like picking up a new language: it's just the beginning, but it holds so many possibilities. Both offer entirely new modes of expression. Maybe it's just me--I love both music and language, partily for this reason--but there is something so stirring, exciting, and ecstatic about that. Definitely romantic, there is a reason why people name their guitars.

We wandered around the store together. Jenn played impressively on a violin, and at one point Liz joined her in song (she's a performance major for voice, doubling with Composition. I love my musical friends), and I was wowed. It was so spontaneous, like we were in a musical. But really we were in a music store, where magic things happen. That was the violin that Liz loved when she played it herself.

We went into the room with harps and dulcimers. I plucked around on a few. And then I met my harp. I sat down on the creaky stool and it was love at first touch. It brought up all of these memories of Scotland, and my flatmate Liz (a different one), who would play her harp to us sometimes. Mostly it was at night after we had been out having fun, and I was exhausted or inebriated. My other flatmates and I would lay around the living room lounging and listening, and her playing was so beautiful I could cry. I'd never heard a harp in person before, it's definitely an entirely different experience. But as soon as I played some notes, I just remembered these times of happiness and peace and beauty. I called up my dad and told him about the harp, and he told me to get it as my birthday gift. He said it was more agreeable to have it in the house than the drum set I had suggested last year.

I'm so in love with this harp. I've been playing it all the time, trying to get into using both hands at once, the left one for chords and the right for melody. Liz told me that it's really hard to make harps sound bad, which is so true. I've never been able to sit down and enjoy playing an instrument for hours without having any knowledge of it. I've always been so aware that I sound bad, and that leads to my awareness of the time I would need to invest in practicing and learning before it will actually sound any good, and that leads to the actual learning and practicing not being fun or satisfying. My harp is instantly gratifying, I can immediately make music without any painful wait or reliance on written songs.

I love it I love it I love it. I don't have a name for it though. I feel like harps are feminine, but as my love I kindof want it to be male. I'm thinking something classy like Hector. Well, we have plently of time to get to know each other.