No More Melodica for Me

I'm a mouth breather. Always have been. I spent all of my childhood and much of my young adulthood being completely stopped up, unable to breathe through the nose. Nowadays, thanks to Flonase, I can take in air through the nostrils but old habits are hard to break, I guess. I also have a history of asthma and bronchitis. My earliest memories are of being in the hospital with tuberculosis. Somehow I got T.B. when I was 2 or 3 years old and almost died from it. Breathing is a thing.

All that aside, a few weeks ago I got a melodica with the intention of learning some of the slower pieces that come up in Irish sessions like airs and O'Carolan harp tunes. A melodica is a portable, breath-powered keyboard instrument or "air piano", played by blowing through a mouthpiece while pressing piano-like keys to make the reeds sound. This is the first wind instrument I've ever tried to play. The tunes I was learning included Blind Mary, Inisheer, Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór, The Parting Glass, South Wind and Fanny Power.

Within a month of getting the melodica I developed a lingering cough that required prescription steroids to get rid of. Try as I might, during any 30-minute melodica practice session I would accidentally take in some breaths through the mouth tube. This led to the cough. Considering my history, this is not something I want to mess with so I have stopped playing melodic effective immediately. Nothing against melodica. Plenty of people are able to play them just fine without getting these symptoms. I'm not one of them.

It just sucks because for a moment I thought I had found a device to serve as my secondary instrument. Something to play in addition to the Irish tenor banjo. I was really enjoying playing melodica and it seemed like it had the potential to be tolerated on select tunes at the Irish sessions I go to. I briefly looked into other sources of air for powering the melodica such as the bellows and air bag setup used for uilleann pipes, but I don't see myself wanting to invest in such a precarious workaround.

Casio Casiotone SA-50 mini keyboard

For Christmas I asked for and received a Casio Casiotone SA-50 mini keyboard. Thanks Santa! The SA-50 has the same 32-key layout as the melodica I was playing, so I can continue working on the repertoire I had intended for melodica without having to use any kind of tube or mouthpiece. It has its own internal speakers and can run on 6 AA batteries or with an AC adapter. The SA-50 has 100 sounds with #9 vibraphone being my favorite. That's fine but I don't know if playing The Parting Glass on a mini electric keyboard designed for kids would the right way to end a session.

In the more longer term, I'm still looking for another instrument to play. I don't want it to be a stringed instrument and I don't want it to be an instrument that uses the mouth to blow air. It should also be non-electric and relatively compact and portable. I'm considering a melodeon or Irish button accordion. At this point I'm not even sure if these are different instruments or the same thing! I'm also considering a harmonium which is usually associated with yoga or Indian music but could also be used for Irish pieces. Or perhaps tuned percussion such as a chromatic Free Notes mallet instrument or a Hammered Mbira made by Don MacLane. Any of these would require a significant financial investment that I am not ready to make at the moment.

In the meantime I think I am going to have a new neck made for my one-of-a-kind J. Romero tenor banjo. For the last six months I've been playing a custom made 5-string Zach Hoyt tenor banjo tuned in all 5ths GDAEB from low to high. It has a 5 strings at the nut and the addition of that high B string makes getting to that high B note a lot easier for me because of the one-finger-per-fret way that I like to play. Played as an open string rather than at the 7th fret of the E string. I don't see myself ever going back to just 4 strings GDAE. This might be a doable task for local banjo luthier Brooks Masten. 

My Favorite Music of 2025: Two Albums Really Stood Out

Tortoise - Touch

I've posted a list of my favorite albums of the year each year for at least the last 15 cycles, and at this point I'm definitely past my peak. I'm not listening to tons of new artists the way Trey Anastasio does. I didn't do a bunch of end of the year cramming. I mostly checked out new releases by artists I was already familiar with as they came out, including Mulatu Astatke, Big Thief, Béla Fleck, Page McConnell, Bill Frisell, Enda Scahill, Mary Halvorson, Circles Around the Sun, Thomas Morgan, and Andy Thorn. More on those later.

I did have two big-time standouts this year though. Albums that I couldn't stop listening to. One in the spring and one in the fall. Those were Phonetics On and On by Horsegirl (spring 2025) and Touch by Tortoise (fall 2025). Neither of these artists were new to me. I've been a fan of Horsegirl since their 2022 debut Versions of Modern Performance and my obsession with Tortoise goes back well over two decades, ever since I first heard TNT. 

When the all-female rock trio Horsegirl first came on the scene they were still teenagers, and their slacker indie sound gained them comparisons to Pavement and Sonic Youth. On their 2nd album I still hear that, but I also hear the introduction of a mod, paisley-hued nature that made me think of The Shaggs. I know that's a lazy comparison but oh well. According to Spotify, Phonetics On and On was my most listened to album of the year. Despite being my most listened to, I think it was my 2nd favorite overall, with the number one slot going to Tortoise who won the race by a wide margin!

How do I describe Tortoise to those who don't know? First off, it's all instrumental, with elements of rock, jazz, classical, and film scores. Very heady. It's often drum forward although their guitarist Jeff Parker is one of the best jazz/experimental guitarists working today. Plus, I've always liked how Tortoise incorporates mallet instruments (vibraphone?) into their band. When I first listened to Touch, I would note the places or tracks where Tortoise sounded like Tortoise. It wasn't all the time. Now when I listen it is all the time. I might be biased because it's new, but if it's not the best Tortoise album of all time, it's at least on par with Standards and TNT.

Of the aforementioned names in the first paragraph, Life Lessons by Tim O'Brien, Bill Frisell and Dale Bruning is worth checking out, and is probably my 3rd favorite of the year. I think that one came out this year. The vinyl version is missing the Dylan cover Spanish is the Loving Tongue, which is a bummer. My 4th favorite might be BEATrio by Béla Fleck, Edmar Castañeda and Antonio Sánchez. I saw the first time that Béla and Edmar ever played together live at Big Ears in Knoxville in 2019. Now they've added a drummer and recorded an album together. Also worth noting is Banjo Dreams by Andy Thorn. Yes it's a banjo album, but it features some noticeably tasteful piano work by Erik Deutsch.

That's it for this year's list!

Learn It Fast to Play It Fast

A friend's newsletter this week led me to the Fast Practice Technique as taught by trombonist Jason Sulliman. The basic idea is that you should be learning new pieces at the actual tempo you will need to perform them at rather than slowing them down while learning. So if you play Irish music, this means learning a reel or jig at session speed to begin with. You might not get all the notes this way, but you can get it to survival mode and by doing so you accustom your brain from the get-go to the actual speed that is required of you. Not the speed that will eventually be needed, but the speed that is needed now. This bypasses some of the note for note, step by step learning that goes on when you slow the piece down and learn it that way.

The problem with learning a piece at a slowed down tempo is your brain can't process the information the same way when played at the faster speed. I've experienced this myself at sessions. Something I was playing at home at a much slower tempo completely breaks down when trying to keep pace at a session. It's kind of like going to the batting cage and practicing hitting off of pitching machine throwing at 60 mph. You might develop a perfect swing but when you finally face a pitcher throwing 90 mph you're not going to be able to hit it.

After getting the gist of the tune by learning it at tempo, with the fast at-speed version being your place of reference, you can slow it down later on to fine-tune and refine any notes you were misunderstanding or glazing over. You do this after learning it at speed, not before. What I'm not sure of is how much you have to worry about bad habits and tension creeping into your playing of the piece. Does that stick around or is it ironed out as your interpretation of the tune grows and evolves?

Recently I have been toying with the phrases "happy enchilada" and "whet your appetite". A happy enchilada is a tune where you know the general structure, you feel like you have most of the notes, and you can play it at-speed along with others as long as someone else is leading. You hear happy enchilada where the actual notes say half an inch of water. Close enough to survive in a session.

Then in the practice room you whet your appetite for the happy enchilada by going over the tune from a theory point of view, studying the actual notes of the piece compared to what you were playing, correcting notes you had wrong, and so on. Note that it's not "wet your appetite". It's "whet your appetite". Whet means to sharpen. So when you whet your appetite for a happy enchilada you're simply sharpening your understanding of a tune that you can already kind of play at speed. Here's to many more happy enchiladas!

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You Don't Have To Be Irish To Play Irish Music

From what I have noticed, as long as you're playing an instrument suitable to Irish music, and as long as you are playing it with some semblance of understanding, it doesn't matter how flimsy your connection to being Irish might be. 

I have no known history of Irish culture in my family. No relatives claimed Irish roots. We didn't grow up listening to Irish music in the house. I probably didn't even hear Irish trad until I was 30 years old on my first visit to Ireland and saw Yvonne Casey, Eoin O'Neill and Quentin Cooper play in McDermott's Pub Doolin. 

When I finally did start playing a musical instrument a couple years later it wasn't necessarily with the intent of playing Irish music. However, when I discovered that there's this type of music where you get to play all-melody all-the-time I was sold. No chord changes, no singing, no waiting for your turn to solo. Just play the melody 100% of the time in unison with other melody instruments. I thought, "I can do this". I try to keep thoughts of being completely inauthentic to the back of my mind.

To the original point. If you learn the etiquette and are making an effort to learn the tunes and get them up to speed, then you'll be fine. Don't wait around until you are good enough. I didn't. If I was waiting until I was good enough I'd still be waiting.

Welsh singer Tom Jones playing fiddle

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Happy Enchilada Tunes

We all have our Happy Enchilada tunes. By that I mean tunes where you mis-hear some of the notes so that your fingers play something that isn't quite right. Happy Enchilada comes from the John Prine song That's The Way The World Goes 'Round. The actual lyrics are "that's the way that world goes 'round, you're up one day, the next you're down, it's a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown, that's the way that the world goes 'round". But instead of "half an inch of water" you hear "happy enchilada". I also call these Brass Miracle tunes, after the Prince song Raspberry Beret. She wore a (brass miracle ring), the kind you find in a second hand store.

You might sing along with these songs for years until you finally get to see the written lyrics and realize you had part of it wrong. It's the same with tunes we are trying to learn by ear. Try as you might, someone still trying to develop play-by-ear abilities is going to have many Happy Enchiladas in their version of the tune. A minimal amount of Happy Enchiladas is OK. A large amount of Happy Enchiladas is also OK. The latter just means that you've unintentionally "composed" your own tune. It may be best to play these so-called original compositions in the comfort of your own home!

You can also play something that sounds correct, but represents a misunderstanding of the theory behind it. Like if you're someone who says "for all intensive purposes" instead of the actual saying "for all intents and purposes". It may be hard to aurally pick up the differences but there their. Is this a mute point?

The point being that the occasional misheard phrase is within an acceptable +/- range when trying to play something by ear. Sometimes this is to your benefit. For tunes like Dinky's, Dusty Windowsills, or Gravel Walks you might be better off relying on your ear rather than consulting the notation, because if you look at the notation you might see more notes than your ear was hearing that actually makes it harder to play from a technical standpoint.

Most of the time I do think it's beneficial to look at the notation, albeit after you've had a little bit of time to digest the sound of the tune. You don't want to be blatantly playing notes that exclaim "she wore a brass miracle ring" when you could be playing "she wore a raspberry beret". And you don't want to be playing notes that express "wet your appetite" when it should be expressing "whet your appetite". That's why a minimal amount of theory knowledge can come into play. 

You might be able to say the sentence "the small dog chased a red bull", but if you have no theory training you won't pick up the nouns (dog, ball), the verb (chased), and the adjectives (small, red). Secondly, you won't be able to interpret this in your own style by saying "the little pup hunted a crimson sphere". 

The One Thing I Wish I Had Done More of When I Started Playing Tenor Banjo

It's been over 19 years since I first got a tenor banjo. There are lots of things I wish knew starting out, including don't worry about when you will get "good", don't be afraid to change strings, don't let the fact that there are great musicians intimidate or de-motivate you, don't waste so much money on other instruments (banjo is where it's at), don't go on so many tangents and side trips, stay focused on things that help you reach your goal, know what your goal is, understand that music is more than just what you see as performance and entertainment on a stage, that there is a whole DIY hobbyist music community of peers, and more.

However, the one thing that I wish I had allowed myself to do more of is struggle. When I started playing tenor banjo at age 32 I quickly learned how to read mandolin tab fluently and sheet music on a basic level so I never tried to learn anything by ear. It felt like a seemingly insurmountable hurdle to have to learn entirely by ear with no notation or tab. But what I could have done is give myself like 30 minutes to try and learn or transcribe a tune by ear, then compare what I was playing to the actual notes on the page to see how far off I was. That 30 minutes would have been a struggle but if I had done this over and over and over again the unpleasantness of the struggle would have eventually subsided into a routine delivering positive outcomes. 

It was not until 2017, 11 years after I picked up the instrument, that I started to do something resembling this. In 2017 I became frustrated with almost everything I had been doing related to music. Instead of giving up entirely, I decided to create my own repertoire completely from scratch without any regard to genre, style, tradition, tune type, and so on. I accomplished this by listening to a wide variety of different sounds and then trying to write my own melody based on what I was hearing. I stopped playing anything I had ever played before.

Because of the freedom I gave myself this wasn't actually a struggle. Let's say that I was listening to a track like De La Montaña Venimos by Maso Rivera. What I would do is listen to this piece and then write my own melody inspired by it. I titled it "From the Hills I Go". From the Hills I Go became my tune and part of my personal repertoire. Emphasis on feeling as though it were my own. I never once saw sheet music and my goal was not to try and copy the existing melody. If I heard it a certain way I went with that. Then it would be on to something else. Maybe a track from a 1970's KPM library music LP, or a Jean Luc Ponty tune or a field recording from the Seychelles islands. Within months I had over a dozen of these little melodies to call my own and within a year I had "composed" over 50 of them. It was a fun and all consuming creative project and I can't believe I kept the momentum and focus in place for several years leading all the way into the pandemic.

The funny thing is, one day I actually paid a music transcriber on Fiverr to transcribe De La Montaña Venimos for me. I had my own tune that I was playing which was inspired by this melody but I didn't know how close it was to the actual melody. Lo and behold, I had almost transcribed the head melody to the tune note for note. My tune, the one that I supposedly wrote and felt ownership with and called From the Hills I Go, was essentially a plagiarized copy of De La Montaña Venimos. That was both good news and bad news. The bad news that I couldn't really claim it as my own. The good news was that it proved that you could learn something without needing sheet music! I didn't check the other 150+ tunes that I "composed" during this strange period of my life, but I'm guessing that many more closely mirrored the melody from which they were stolen from.

When I moved to Oregon last year and decided to get involved in the Irish trad community here I used this newly gained confidence to approach struggle with a positive mindset. Wish Irish jigs, reels, polkas, hornpipes, slides, slip jigs, and so on there are almost always going to be tunebook lead sheet transcriptions of the basic tune, but thanks to YouTube and other sources there are also always going to be audio versions to listen to. I treat the audio as my primary source and the notation as supplemental. I try to limit how often I allow myself to look at the sheet music. Resisting the urge to look at the music when you are stumped and letting your mind work through the issue does pay off in the long run. A tune is not static anyway. Your day to day interpretation of it is allowed to vary. One day your version may have a lot of "wrong" notes. Then as you learn the tune better, the wrong notes fade away only to be replaced by other notes that you hear in their place.

When I start a post like this I never quite know where it's going to end up. I think I'd rather go work on some tunes now than try to write anything else.

Poulsbo and Leavenworth - Exploring Washington's Euro-Themed Towns

We did a close to home "European" vacation this past week, visiting both of Washington state's European style towns: Poulsbo and Leavenworth. Here's a comparison of the two.

Poulsbo sits on the water at Liberty Bay about 18 nautical miles from Seattle. The downtown area offers many water views from its shops and restaurants. Poulsbo's maritime history relied on commercial fishing and seafood processing, plus logging with transport by water. Today, the town attracts recreational boating, sport fishing, kayaking, rowing, and day trippers from Seattle.

Poulsbo's Liberty Bay at night

Originally a bustling logging and sawmill town, Leavenworth is surrounded by mountains in every direction with some peaks reaching over 8000 feet in elevation. The town has cold, snowy winters and warm, dry summers. The surrounding area offers many outdoor activities including snowshoeing, mountain biking, and hiking.

Poulsbo has an authentic claim on its "Little Norway" nickname since it was actually founded by Norwegian immigrants in the 1880's. These Scandinavian settlers were drawn to the area's resemblance to Norway's landscape. Norwegian was the primary language spoken in Poulsbo until World War II. The town leans into this Scandinavian history and cultural identity with folk art, murals, and flags, an annual Viking Fest, and other Nordic aesthetics and traditions.

On the other hand, Leavenworth's German history only dates back to the 1960's when town leaders came up with the idea to turn the declining logging town into a Bavarian-themed tourist village. Existing buildings were remodeled in a German style and henceforth any new construction within the town limits has had to conform to these Bavarian design aesthetics. The marketing strategy was a success and Leavenworth was transformed into a major tourist attraction in an otherwise remote part of Washington state.

Downtown Leavenworth in a smoky haze

Poulsbo's most iconic shop/restaurant has to be Sluys Bakery. Located on Front Street in the heart of Poulsbo, Sluys is open everyday from 5am to 6pm. Sluys sells baked goods and traditional Norwegian pastries, including the Viking Cup, a cinnamon bun filled with cream cheese frosting. That's what I got.

If the lines to order are any indication, Leavenworth's can't miss eatery must be München Haus, an outdoor beer garden specializing in Bavarian sausages with a wide variety of mustards and other toppings available. We ate there one evening after the line had died down. It was worth it.

Painted steps in Poulsbo

The best place in Poulsbo for a tourist to grab a drink and mix with the locals is definitely The Brass Kraken, a lively no minors allowed bar/restaurant located directly on the water at Liberty Bay. They had a great pork belly taco and a welcoming atmosphere. Leavenworth didn't seem to have a Brass Kraken equivalent, but Blewett Brewing Company is a good place to get away from the tourists and enjoy craft beers and delicious pizza. It was a breath of fresh air only one block off the main drag.

Other notable places we went to in Poulsbo included Valholl Brewing, Tizley's EuroPub, and The Loft at Latitude Forty Seven Seven. Poulsbo also has a pleasant park for walking called Fish Park, a short drive from downtown. In Leavenworth we liked Icicle Brewing, Andreas Keller Restaurant, and the dog-friendly Bushel and Bee Taproom. And we liked that Leavenworth had walking paths right in town along the picturesque Wenatchee River as part of Waterfront Park.

Enzian Falls Championship Putting Course

Poulsbo's tranquil location on Liberty Bay reminded me of other harborside small towns I have visited such as Lunenburg Nova Scotia and Akureyri Iceland. Leavenworth had more like a Deadwood meets Telluride feel, with a little bit of old country Busch Gardens mixed in.

Between the two I probably liked Poulsbo better, even though Leavenworth has more tourist amenities including Enzian Falls Championship Putting Course (like a putt-putt but with real grass that looks like a tiny version of an actual golf course!). Poulsbo is worth an overnight stay so that you can have time to explore nearby Bainbridge Island. Leavenworth, with its middle of nowhere setting and multiple lodging options, is definitely a place you'll want to rest your head. You'll be driving through the mountains and then all of a sudden there you are!