The most obsessive things we’ve done in the name of Music.

I was watching martial arts videos on Youtube and came across a story about how Bruce Lee got kicked out of his martial arts school. Apparently he would play pranks on his peers, like lying to them that practices were cancelled so he could have private lessons with the instructor. Though I was never so competitive myself, (yikes!) this made me think of some of the ridiculous things I’ve done in the name of music, that could’ve been considered at least a little obsessive.

I think what takes the cake is an experience I had when I was in grade school. There was a musical that my private piano teacher was directing and the rehearsals were after school. Somehow I ended up not having a ride home, so I started walking from school with one of my classmates(who was walking home) to the church where the rehearsals were. At some point in our walk I felt like I was going to be late for the rehearsal, so I panicked and just started running! And I kept running, for 2 miles, until I got to the property. When getting back to school the next day, I apologized to my classmate for deserting her and she was all laughs about it: “You kept running until I couldn’t even see you anymore! I thought it was hilarious!”. Something just snapped, and I refused to be late to that rehearsal.

Another ridiculous thing… when working for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store: There was a fiddle solo that I kept hearing on the radio while I was working, but it was an instrumental so I had no way of tracking it. I called corporate to try and find out what it was, and they told me to mark the date and time I heard the music and they would be able to find it for me. Shift after shift would go by, and I didn’t hear the solo again. After buying two CDs from the store, I still didn’t find the music. So I went to work on an off day and sat on the porch and listened to the radio waiting for the song to play. I think I sat there for 4 hours, but to no avail. One day, I had to be at work for opening at 6:00 a.m. Then, low and behold, I finally heard the solo again. I marked the day and time, called corporate back, and boom there it was. It was the intro of a song on one of the CDs they sold, but they never played the actual song. Only the solo. They would play a different song from the same album. This was over 10 years ago and I still have the intro and the song in my collection to this day.

Do you know of any stories of wild and crazy things that have been done in the name of music, or do you have any of your own that aren’t too embarrassing to share?

Pick up a fiddle at age 41 and stick with it. Three years in and it seems unlikely still. 🙂

I agree with Vechey - I’d argue that the most obsessive thing most of us here have done for music, is learn to play our instruments.

I must have spent tens of thousands of hours learning first principles, learning to read music and learning to pick tunes up by ear, and all the while making millions of mistakes on my chosen instruments in pursuit of the moments when you can actually competently play a phrase and a tune and a set of tunes and a whole concert set.

And then having done that on one instrument, what did I do but transfer some of those skills and decide to learn another completely different instrument.

And now I’ve been at it for over 40 years and still keep practicing, still keep learning, still keep making mistakes, and still keep striving to get better.

If that’s not obsessive behaviour I don’t know what is!

Sure, we’re all passionate about music and have spent lifetimes honing our craft. But that’s our way, that’s what makes us musicians. What i’m asking is, when has that passion pushed you so far that you surprised yourself?

20 nights in a row out playing last year in a streak where I was out for 28 out of 30 nights of music. Not bad for a year-6 learner flute player who started in his 50’s.

PS - I was wrecked at the end of it! But mighty craic.

I don’t know what is most obsessive.
Many years ago, I played every tune in every book I had (including O’Neill’s, James Hunter - The Fiddle Music Of Scotland, The Skye Collection). When I learned _how to read_ ABC, I printed Norbeck’s batches and played those tunes as well.
Many years ago, I wrote tunes EVERY DAY.
Many years ago, I transcribed entire albums to ABC, down to grace note level.
Many years ago, I transferred all the tunes I learned on the fiddle to the button accordion.
Many years ago, I practiced a certain tune in all twelve keys. On the button accordion.

My personal albatross is listening to music virtually without cessation (while I’m indoors). This has led to an acquisition of a music library of over 3K CDs (at last estimation 10 years ago). My office mates were inundated with be-bop, which wasn’t always appreciated.

I used to think that my greatest torment was an unrestrained pursuit in learning of new instruments/musical forms, but folks like Lloyd Miller or Harry Partch and others have demonstrated that this is perhaps not so unusual.

In my 20s, I used to travel the length and breadth of London (sometimes cycling, sometimes on public transport) to sessions almost every day of the week; on Sundays, I would sometimes manage to cram in two, or even three. But that’s not obsessive, it’s normal… Anyone here lucky enough to have that many sessions within their reach (and no dependants – not that that is would necessarily be *unlucky*) would do the same. I couldn’t do it now, though.

Once I went to a concertina class taught by Noel Hill, and he played a concert for us at the end which we got to record. I took that recording home and tried to learn some of the tunes, and found that he played them in weird keys that are hard on the concertina --- but I tried anyway, worked my way through, and eventually learned a bunch of tunes in B major and E major. I even worked out some clever chords and ornaments on the third row.

I was too much of a newbie to realize that he was just playing normal tunes on a D/A instead of a C/G.

I did learn something from that, though. I learned that obscure keys are not fundamentally “hard” on the concertina, they’re just challenging because we don’t practice those keys as much.

Starting in the early 2000s, I learned to play the Anglo Concertina from Noel Hill and use his fingerings and techniques as far as ornamentation.

That being said, I also absolutely love the style of other non-Noel Hill style players like Brenda Castles.

Brenda was in town for a house concert last year and gave a one-hour Anglo Concertina workshop before the concert.

I asked her to play a jig, a reel, and a hornpipe, which we all recorded.

I wanted to know “how does she physically get that sound and feel” so I could incorporate it in my own playing to get the sort of lovely lift I heard in her playing.

I spent the next week obsessively transcribing every nuance and detail of those recordings to understand exactly what she was doing as far as her ornamentation, chords, bellows pulse, all of it. I also spoke to her about it at a session she came to the day after the concert.

When I was done, I had her look at the transcriptions and ask her if it accurately represented what she was doing in the recordings, and she was very kind to let me know that they did. I also agreed not to release the transcriptions except to the other players who were in the workshop.

It really opened my eyes to a world of new possibilities that re-energized my enthusiasm for the instrument, and that I’m starting to incorporate in my own playing.

I have done a lot of obsessive things in the name of the music. One that comes to mind is a 3 year period where I tried to get a session going in a town about an hour’s drive from where I lived, simply because my favorite person to play music with lived there.

We were in our first venue, an Irish pub, for about a year when one night they just informed us that they had decided to stop doing the session out of the blue. I had a player from England visiting at the time and we really wanted tunes that night, so we walked through the downtown area asking every bar if we could sit in the corner and play some music. The answer was no in the first several places we tried, but we ended up in the oldest bar in town. A tiny place that held maybe 20 people total. Through the course of trying to convince them, they somehow came to believe that the visiting player was 1. Irish, and 2. Famous, so they agreed. (And we told the English gentleman that he had to use his best Irish accent for the rest of the night…)

That night was such a hit that we ended up playing there regularly for close to a year. But then they got a new manager who didn’t like the music and kicked us out. In the following year, I think we played in 6 other venues, none of them lasting for more than about a month or two, until we finally threw up our hands and gave up trying in that town.

But it’s a good example of obsession. Driving 2 hours every week for 3 years just for some tunes, and never knowing if the place we were playing was going to randomly kick us out!

After nearly two days of thinking about it, it just dawned on me this morning that the most obsessive thing I’ve ever done in the name of music is to follow this site. I’ve played a few different musical instruments in different genre’s throughout my life but moved on, now those instruments mostly sit around neglected. Then, about 18 years ago, already having a long term passion for Irish music I started to read this site. I didn’t join in for a couple of years but it encouraged me to buy a fiddle. I was actually 57 then (15 years ago). The luthier told me I was too old to learn, but I took to it like a duck out of water, and I quickly made up for those lost years. This site has been incredibly crucial to my learning and even my mental health. Sure there have been a few times it has done my head in (usually my own fault) and I’ve tried to quit, but then, we are talking ‘obsession’ and I’m now resigned to it. I now feel comfortable with my daily compulsion to visit ‘the session’ for the tunes, and in the discussion pages, the good humoured banter, and the education I get free from some of you respected and much appreciated members.

Hmmm!… 4 hours later and it struck me that I said, “like a duck out of water”. It’s supposed to be "like a duck *TO* water, isn’t it?. Oh well, idiot as I am, my ducks seem happy enough either way. I’d better go and feed them.

Well said Gobby, ducks or no ducks!
My musical obsession, other than this site and the community it offers, has been to master the fiddle. It’s been the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted, and by rights I should have backed away from it after a few months of awful sounds and angry body parts being twisted into odd positions… Surprisingly, I’ve stuck with it over the past 2 years, and now it brings me joy every day (well, almost every day).

Like Jeff Lindquist, I’ve also played entire books of tunes from start to finish, including O’Neill’s. 🙂

If only I put as much time and commitment into making money, I’d be rich now!

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A while back I had a nasty (non covid) virus with a recovery that lasted for about a month. But after 2 weeks, the infection had died down, despite significant post viral fatigue, I showed up pale as a ghost to a session, perhaps made it through 3 sets before getting back to bed where I belonged!

I never considered it obsessive behavior, but I also read through the entire Seattle “Smoke in your Eyes” tunebook (700+ tunes) on various instruments every year playing each tune twice through at a moderate tempo perfectly.

It’s not a musical exercise, it’s about putting my fingers through nearly every pattern possible to provide my brain raw data to chew on.

Since I often switch between pipes/flute/whistle and B/C box/Anglo Concertina, I have to keep the switching matrix in my brain lucid so I can ideally play any tune on any instrument.

That I even try to stay proficient on all these instruments is its own kind of obsession, but I like to think it will help delay any onset of dementia.

Oops . Wrong thread. 🙂

I hate music, it ruined my life.
I could of had a job, a house, and a wife.
That’s lyrics from a song that really I took to heart.
I toured with a band for a few years, then after that got obsessed with my piping, then started into uilleann piping.
You have to find balance in life.
And also decide what priorities are most important. I can play 24-7, and struggle with wanting to do anything else but studying and playing Irish music.
I spent most everything I saved on my instruments from working at a restaurant day and night.
I’m 53 now and fortunately do have a job, house, and a relationship.
I can’t be happy unless I have tunes. I’ve been hosting a weekly session for over 12 years, and now a slow session to help new players for almost 2 years now. I’m making reeds, traveling when I can afford it.
I’m definitely obsessed with music.

Lately i’ve been obsessing on getting The Mooncoin Jig exactly right. I play it on both fiddle and guitar (melody).
An hour or more can fly by. I’m finding that working on a tune with 2 instruments is a great way to really dig into it’s architecture-to know a tune by it’s guts. What’s difficult on one instrument is relatively easy on the other and leads to a better understanding of each instrument.

Thank you everyone for sharing your stories! The roads that have been traveled through this journey… wow!