I'm feeling pleased with myself and that I have stepped past another milestone in my learning about the harmonica. Last week I got hold of an electronic chromatic tuner and a toolkit designed for harmonica maintenance, and over the weekend I took my first steps in customising my own harmonicas. I took a cheap and fairly nasty harmonica that I had previously damaged, and with a couple of hours work I had an instrument that played better than several of my far more expensive harps and was retuned to the "Paddy Richter" scheme (by tuning one reed to a different note you can make it a lot easier to play certain tunes, especially traditional diddley-diddley music). By the end of the weekend I had a second Paddy Richter (in a different key) and another harp just retuned slightly to sound better — and I was getting a bit quicker at the job.
This is a true revelation. I can buy a £3 harmonica and make it sound at least as good as one costing £20 (though the resilience, etc. probably still isn't as good). Once I've messed with a few more cheapies and get the confidence up, I'll try tweaking one of my decent instruments.
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Saturday evening was fun. A friend was celebrating her birthday by hosting a ceilidh in Chippenham, so <3, the in-laws and I all turned up with our best dancing pumps on. The band (Random) were good, the caller did a great job, and we all danced our socks off. <3 was feeling a bit tired (pregnancy does that to you, apparently) but joined in on plenty of times, even managing to survive the bonkers Orkadian strip the willow towards the end. I keep forgetting how much fun ceilidhs can be.
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