fitzw | Just what I need, another hobby

So, this past Saturday at the town farmer's market, where we have a booth selling maple products, a group of musicians set up right next to our EZup tent. One played fiddle, one played keyboard (with power from a nearby church), one played guitar, and one played mandolin or penny whistle, depending on the music. Jigs and reels and the like.

So, there I was, right beside them, doing a little rhythm by clapping and slapping my thighs while they played, and between songs the fellow with the penny whistles (several for different keys) and mandolin asked if I played the bones. Well, no, not really, not with anyone else, but I could give it a try, and I have played spoons. He then pulled out a set of hardwood bones from his bag and handed them over to me, stopping long enough to check that I was holding them essentially correctly (which I was), and they went back to playing.

So, for the next couple of hours, I accompanied their playing using the bones.

Now, understand, I'm really very self-taught with these things (just as much as spoons), so I was playing them in a combination of bone method and spoon method (you'd have to see it, and know what you were looking at, to understand what I was doing), which does work, but mostly takes two hands to play. Many bones players, though, use a set of bones in each hand to set up counter-rhythms (no way that I could do that on Saturday -- for one thing, he only had one set of bones with him).

So, today we stopped in at Maude's Music in town to talk with Dan, who happens to play bones (recommended by the musicians on Saturday), and asked him about playing the bones. He doesn't happen to have any for sale (yes, I can make my own, but I would need an idea of what I was actually making from an example), but is expecting some in any day now. So, then, he just happens to reach into his pocket and pull out a couple of sets of [shank] bones to demonstrate that he has some idea of how to play them with both hands, and pulled a set of hardwood bones out of his bag to give me some brief instruction on one of the typical methods of playing them (the method that I was using on Saturday is used by some players, according to Dan).

As I said: Just what I need, another hobby. ;-)