Sunday, March 15, 2015


       Music is playing throughout our house most of the time during a regular day at our house.  Weather it be my pandora playlist when I am getting ready for work, Georgia practicing contest, or Quin coming up with a melody of her own up in her room (I think she thinks no one can hear her haha, thought wrong Quinnie!).  But my favorite time when music plays in my house is late at night on Saturday (the occasional Friday) and the early hours of the morning on Sunday.  
      The music begins usually after Shawn arrives around 10 or 10:30 at night.  Bringing with him taco ingredients and various odd instruments that he ordered on amazon, we all greet(some would say maul) him with hugs.  We all love Shawn, and he is like a brother to me. :)  Shawn has a way of getting all of the three of us sisters involved together and challenges us to combine our different styles and quirks.  We all three start in on the melodica, goofing off with nursery tunes on the kalimba(is that how you spell it? in simpler terms: its a finger piano) .  Somewhere in time Shawn gets Georgia and Quin to start making up a tune (sometimes I end up playing along, or trying to)  Quin  will dance stubbornly around the same note and pattern throughout the jam, Georgia will dance up and over  and under her, I don't know how but I end up contributing somehow (usually with percussion, sometimes the bass) and Shawn harmonize or change the direction the jam seems to be going in completely.

       Eventually me and Quin have to actually sleep. I will usually head to bed around 12 or 1, because I work on Sundays, and as I head down to bed, the music takes a turn.  Shifting into the most perfect melody to drift off to sleep in.  The twin fiddling.  When Georgia and Shawn play a twin tune together, there is a connection I can feel when I listen.  Starting out with a waltz, or like 12 waltz's (they have a Calvin Vollrath book and there are a lot of waltz's in there!).   Any anxiety I might have had melts away.  As I drift to sleep, they will drift off of their contest pieces and into their own jam.  They just start with a note and carry themselves far, far, far away into something totally new. 

       If I wake in the middle of the night (I often do on a Saturday night/Sunday morning), I wake to a music that is more energetic, or chaotic (there coffee probably kicked in haha).  Look at the clock and it might be 2 or 3 in the morning.  When I drift off to sleep, its usually always after the chaotic part of their jam...  Wake up two hours later and the house will smell like bacon and eggs; and it will sound like half a tune here or there,  frequent tuning and laughter (possibly from sleep depravation? Really I have no idea how they play fiddle for so long).  When I finally get up for work on Sunday at 7am, the house is quiet and it might have been quiet for about an hour, so I turn on the shower and start the music over again with my pandora playlist.

Some Pictures and Videos from Our Jams
 The first video is what the beginning of the night looks like #melodicasolo?
 The second video is a little fiddle vs mando battle between Shawn and Q

Jams :)
we get goofy :)

say what Shawn?

ohhh haha funny

Shawn doing his Shawn thing :)

I just love my life :)
  PS:  Shawn, if it weren't for you none of us would be the musicians we are today so thanks for being my musical brother and putting up with our occasional(maybe more than occasional) bickering :)  We all love you very much!