Roger the Blogger

I’ve been an amateur musician since junior high.

 My name is Roger and I’ve been an amateur musician since junior high. Sounds like introducing myself to people at some 12 step program. Maybe it is. I also have a home business repairing stringed musical instruments, although I have been doing less and less of that, by choice. I’ve made guitars and learned to play quite a few instruments, playing some of them reasonably and some poorly. I have an advanced degree and know something about chemistry, physics, and electronics.

From about 1995 to 2004 I played violin, mandolin, and pennywhistle with the Tucson Friends of Traditional Music’s Slow Jam, its successor, and one spinoff.  At the Slow Jam I met Catherine and limell’. They introduced me to the Mount Lemmon Marching Mandolin Band, and later to the String Bean Folk Orchestra (SBFO).  In 2009 I joined the SBFO, playing a banjo tuned an octave below the mandolin. Lately I’ve been playing violin III and clarinet.  After a layoff of about 30 years, I’m back on woodwinds. Yay!

In 2010, Catherine started Minute2Minute (M2M), with me on clarinet, bass clarinet, penny whistles, and, lately, ocarina. I have begun typesetting music by computer and arranging a few pieces for performance by both M2M and the SBFO.  Maybe we’ll introduce the tarogato. (I have one, and can play it, but you should Google tarogato to figure out what it is. For that matter, you should Google the ocarina.)

Some of what I will write in this blog concerns the technical aspects of musical instruments.  Some will be background into the history and evolution of musical styles, and some will be music theory.  I do not claim to be a musicologist, but I know how to do research and how to be skeptical about what I read, especially on the internet.  I will present literature references for my source materials and will indicate which are my conclusions and which are those of the experts.