Well, folks, I have seen everything now. I went down to the Barking Legs Theater on Saturday to see the instructors from Mountain Music Folk School try to teach 30 novice students how to play the mandolin, the fiddle, the upright bass, the banjo, or the guitar. Now understand this – most of these students were complete novices, or musicians with very little experience. Some were holding their musical instruments for the very first time.
At first, it sounded like a band practice from an elementary school, where every player had different music from which to play. Fast-forward a few minutes as the instructors worked with the students who were grouped by musical instrument, and things started sounding better. After about an hour of instruction, they were ready to jam.
What followed next was nothing short of a miracle. They sounded great. People that had never played before were jamming with a large group after an hour. You could just see the pride in the eyes of this group of novices. You could see it in the eyes of their seasoned instructors, too.
The Mountain Music Folk School is located at Mountain Music on Dayton Boulevard. They offer instruction on various forms of traditional music and can have a person jamming with a group of musicians in very short order. They even a have a back porch on the building for some great old time picking and grinning. They encourage budding musicians that wouldn’t know a G Chord from a wooden pony to play and show them how to do it.
For more info about the school, you can go to their website at click here.