A Mighty Wind

If you love folk music and haven't seen "A Mighty Wind" you really must. It's a pity that I didn't see it in the theatre, that would have been awesome. As it is, I own the DVD, CD and the music book. Yes I spoiled myself for my birthday just over a year ago, and I still watch the movie from time to time when I get in the mood. It's still holding up and I can't even tell you how many times I've seen it, probably about a dozen by now. At least. Tonight after watching it I decided to tune and practice my autoharp. So I tuned...and tuned...and tuned some more...and I started to practice and the poor darling was still flat. I've been tuning it at least once a week for the past month, thinking that it would get better the more often I tune it, but the strings are going flat by half a note or more between tunings.

I've had the 'harp for over two years now, and I've never changed the strings. I figured I'd have to change them this summer, but with all the fun things I've been up to I just haven't gotten around to it. Oh, I bought a lovely display stand for it, but buying strings means changing strings and that is a daunting task that will take hours and hours. Not to mention that the set costs about $65.00, more than double the cost of the stand. My other concern is that it might not be the strings, it might be the autoharp itself. You see, somewhere along the line, the support straps gave way under the chord bar area. You can't really see it above the chord bars where I strum, but the wood is sunken in pretty dramatically right before where the strings are attached to the fine tuners at the bottom of the autoharp. I think it might be time for my first dulcimer lesson from Karen and maybe she can take a look at my 'harp and let me know what she thinks. Because I just don't have the cash for a new Autoharp right now, I'm really hoping it's just a thing with old strings. Sigh.

Lucky for me I have my trusty mountain dulcimer, which is getting it's own stand courtesy of my darling husband as a belated birthday present. He's so supportive of all my enthusiasms. I haven't been practicing it much lately, so I think it's time to dive back into it and practice every day for a little bit, and re-watch all those lovely dulcimer videos on YouTube. But I have to share another video with you first, it's actually a deleted scene from the movie "A Mighty Wind" which features a song I've been trying to learn on autoharp.