For your heartstrings: Guitars, instruments provide healing

If you’re feeling great now, you should still read this column before gas prices skyrocket. Instead of even mentioning the bombing now under way in the Middle East, I’m going to try and encourage you to pick up a musical instrument, no matter your age, no matter if you’ve never tried to play one before.

You can learn to play music at any age, and it will improve your life expectancy.

“No, cuz my cousin Johnny got wasted by that dude up in Houston, and he weren’t outta Huntsville for, oh, I don’t know, ‘bout four days before somebody capped his (expletive) (expletive) just cuz he was playin’ the drums too loud. Okay, sure, he was messin’ around with the shooter’s ole lady, and the drums were stolen, but that weren’t no reason to shoot him dead. Good guy. Miss my primo.”

Sorry about your cousin, but back to music.

Like I was saying, just to keep my insanity intact, I went out three weeks ago, while the president’s “armada” was still sailing east, and bought myself a new Yamaha acoustic guitar – or as they used to say on that ancient TV show “Hee-Haw,” a new “GEE-tar.”

Actually, it’s pronounced gih-tar, but why argue over trivial matters.

Amazing, though, how music can calm one’s nerves; restore a sense of calm amidst a growing storm.

Amazing, too, how it hurt to play a guitar again until the callouses on the ends of my left fingers fully formed. Why, I don’t know, but I had set my old guitar aside many years ago. I still have it, but it needs work.

Then, three weeks ago, I woke up and realized, I need to start playing the guitar again.

I found one on sale, and here I am, ready to start playing after I finish writing.

My Love Affair

Even if you don’t want to take the time to learn how to play a stringed instrument like a guitar, a bass, a cello, a fiddle/violin, or any horned instrument, or the drums, you can always learn to play the harmonica (harp).

If you like blues, who doesn’t, you figure most blues are played in either the key of E Major or the key of A Major, which means you need a harmonica in the key of either A or D.

It’s always the fourth note. E-F-G-A, not counting the halfsteps, is how you figure the harmonica key you need if the song or jam is in the key of E Major. It’s an A Major harp.

If a blues song is in the key of A, you count -- A, B, C, and D – and get a harmonica in the key of D Major.

Meaning if you have a harp in two keys – A and D – you’re pretty much covered when it comes to playing most blues jams.

Then just put on a YouTube vid and learn how to play the blues harp.

Since the Marine Band harmonicas are in open tuning, you can’t hit a wrong note.

You don’t need to learn how to play a particular chord on the guitar, or how to work the trumpet.

The harmonica (harp) is so much easier to play compared to almost all other instruments.

You just blow and inhale the notes on the harp, and jam to the blues rhythm.

Sure, there is some finesse to it, and you have to know how to keep a beat. But if you just press the harp to your lips, angle it up about 45 degrees, use your left hand as a cup around its back end to create an echo chamber, and blow into the bottom half of the holes, while learning to inhale from them, too, before you can say, what a deal, you’re playing along to some blues song like you’ve been at it forever.

The worries of the world, the stress, start to evaporate.

The guitar takes more time to learn how to play reasonably well, but what else do we have in life but time?

Plus, with the guitar, if you put in some time, you can learn skills that will last you a lifetime. And with an acoustic guitar, you can go anywhere without any electricity, and still have a wooden instrument you can play, which is also easy to carry.

Music, it’s food for the soul, and while playing any instrument, the rest of the world is out of focus.

In today’s world, that’s a good thing.

Plus, for practicing amateur musicians, YouTube has proven to be a game changer.

No matter what instrument you want to play, what song you might want to learn, what style you want to adopt, there’s pretty much a sure bet going that it can be found on YouTube. For free.