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Subject: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 27 Nov 99 - 03:40 AM Since I've been coming here I've heard lots of jokes about various folk instrumentalists, primarily about banjo players, but also about accordion players, bagpipers, fiddlers, guitarists, even mandolinists, but never a joke about an autoharp player. If you know any (or can create any that aren't just rehashed banjo jokes), I'd greatly appreciate your posting them here--I think Sally could use a few good laughs about now. --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: DonMeixner Date: 27 Nov 99 - 08:45 AM Ho Charles, When I was in a band years ago that I played Autoharp in I was billed as the 36 year old perfect master of the wooden accordion. It was once announced from the stage thatdurning the breaks I'd be slicing cheese and coldcuts for sandwiches in the back. But jokes that aren't a rehash? Aren't all jokes a rehash? Don |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: DonMeixner Date: 27 Nov 99 - 08:46 AM And tell Sally I wish her well and a speedy recovery. Don |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Abby Sale Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:34 AM Interesting - potentially silly as the autoharp may be, you are right that it doesn't seem to appear in any of the standard music joke pages. Seems unfair and improper discrimination to me. Well, here's a bit of a story - at least something to say, if not actually funny. From the "Happy!" file: Nobody celebrates 9/4/1817 as the birth in Morgenroethe, Germany of Charles Zimmermann. In 1881 he patented, then promoted & mass-manufactured the then-called "Autoharp." He had nothing to with inventing it, however. Seems he stole the idea from a German guy yclept Karl A Gutter who'd patented the thing in England. In the fullness of those gentler, slower-paced days, Zimmermann was run over by a horse-drawn street car & died 10/20/1898.
You may wish to contact Mary Lou Orthey |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Nov 99 - 11:05 AM Hey I like Don's!!!! It is odd that there aren't more Autoharp jokes. You realize that the thing ain't a harp don't you? Its a Zither. But as I've said before, who the hell would buy something called an "Autozither?" I dunno, maybe Bill D., but the word is too damn weird for the rest of us. Sounds like some kind of bizarro, self-gratification device that gets shipped to you in a plain, brown, wrapper. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: harpgirl Date: 27 Nov 99 - 11:11 AM ...just the joke about calling my autoharps the world's largest cheese graters... |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Michael K. Date: 27 Nov 99 - 12:49 PM Definition of an optimist? An autoharp player with a pager. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: sophocleese Date: 27 Nov 99 - 12:51 PM Geez, I thought an autoharp was Loreena McKennit on cruise control... |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: stupidbodhranplayerwhodoesn'tknowanybetter Date: 27 Nov 99 - 02:44 PM I would think Autoharp Joke would be the epitome of redundancy, but I'm told they sound great if you turn them over and clog on them. Also (and this also works for hammer dulcimers) when an autoharp player comes to a session and tunes one string to everybody else, then walks away to tune the rest, it's cruel but justifiable for everybody to tune up or down a hair so that the harp player comes back and is still out of tune. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Nov 99 - 02:52 PM Hey!!!(Why I don't do sessions or dulcimer fests anymore) Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Bill D Date: 27 Nov 99 - 02:55 PM I have heard the 'harp called "The Mickey Mouse chord changer"......or the 'idiot zither'.... and I sometimes wear a t-shirt that says... "I tune my AUTOHARP every month or so----need it or not" |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Nov 99 - 02:58 PM Is it "or so" yet Bill? Your friends are in pain and want to know. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: wildlone Date: 27 Nov 99 - 03:14 PM Bill D,You mean to tell me you have to tune the things? Bugger it that will take ages. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 27 Nov 99 - 03:26 PM Thanks, folks. Keep 'em coming. Even the recycled banjo jokes (and in my haste to start this thread this I omitted the only instrument that rivals the banjo in number of jokes: bodhran). --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Bill D Date: 27 Nov 99 - 04:11 PM well, I tune it when I hear something wrong, but my ears are not the best... Once, at Winfield Kansas, Li'l Roy Lewis, of the Lewis Family, saw me carrying my 'harp, and because he plays one, asked to try my (then new) 21 bar...he strummed a chord..wrinkled his brow and said "something's out....you got the 'krenk'?"..(crank..as in tuning wrench)*grin*...then he proceeded to fix it in a couple of deft twists! What I would give to HEAR like that!..He simply KNEW what note was wrong in a whole bunch. I use a Korg, and it makes life a lot easier....but Bryan Bowers once told me he could not use an electronic tuner, because he felt that 'perfect' tuning was not right...he claimed that not only do you need to tune string 'x' differently for different keys.., but the whole thing needs to be 'slightly' sharp at the lowed end and flat at the higher end!...So he tuned entirely by ear and used those mulitple 'harps to make every key sound balanced. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Gary T Date: 27 Nov 99 - 05:37 PM That bit about tuning the bass end a little sharp and the treble end a little flat echoes the advice I read in a book on tuning a piano. It seemed like a fine system to make the instrument as harmonious as possible. (In a rare fit of sanity, I decided not to try tuning it myself.) |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Night Owl Date: 27 Nov 99 - 06:20 PM At least Autoharp players LEAVE the room to tune their instrument.!! :o) |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 27 Nov 99 - 06:40 PM There are some who say they ought to leave the room to play them, Night Owl (great big grin--I just made up my own autoharp joke!). --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Night Owl Date: 27 Nov 99 - 06:42 PM ...BG.....;o) |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Bill D Date: 27 Nov 99 - 06:44 PM yep, nightowl...we do...can't hear a blamed thing with all the guitar & banjo players noodling..*wink*...and since we almost have to use a Korg, the darn thing goes crazy trying to make sense out of all the noise! |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: _gargoyle Date: 27 Nov 99 - 09:53 PM Jez, becuz, see tuk mie side agin yu is no rasun to pik on de kind lady. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Nov 99 - 09:53 PM Not that anyone would particularly care-I don't for instance-but much has been written about the way we hear vs accurate pitch as calculated. Ask any piano tuner and you'll find the bass/sharp & treble/flat to be true. Its not quite such an issue in guitar or other lute type instruments as it is on zither types because of the additional static range. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Joe Offer Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:01 PM Well, my shiny red Honda Civic is now 6 months old, and it only has one dent on it - the one it got when my girlfriend bumped into it with her Autoharp. Them things are powerful instruments. -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Bill D Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:10 PM Bryan Bowers used to tell a story of using one to defend hiself aginst a drunk with a broken beer bottle....'harp was fine...drunk was not... *visions of the 121st Armored Autoharp Brigade marching off to battle with the evil Bodhrans) |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: DonMeixner Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:30 PM And no one care who won the battle except the accordion players spying from the surrounding trees. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: _gargoyle Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:44 PM It is a sad state of affairs, Mr. Joe Offer...
An "official" supervising the "officials of the official government"...is forced to drive around in a deminuative(sic) vehicle.... perhaps you should move to Mexico and buy an automobile with a little more heft .... |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:49 PM The San Francisco Chronicle today had a story about West Nile encephalitis (what Sally is suspected of having) being carried by a variety of native birds--robins, bluejays, bald eagles, and especially crows. Be sure to ask any mosquito who is about to bite you about his previous contacts. In other word, practice safe sucks. (It's my thread, and I'll creep if I want to--even to the point of making dumb, grisly puns.) --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: DonMeixner Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:52 PM Thank God its tweetable Seed, Is it a canarial disease? Don |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:56 PM Who the hell,what is Sally? Does she play the autoharp? What is funny about a deadly disease? |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: catspaw49 Date: 27 Nov 99 - 10:56 PM No Don its not, but it is not cheep to tweet and leaves you very flighty. Spaw |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Date: 27 Nov 99 - 11:39 PM I'm paying 250 per once but it does not appear to be as good as yours. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 28 Nov 99 - 12:03 AM Anonymous, you seem a decent sort. Use your name--or some name--or you might be confused with one of the local diseases. Sally is an autoharp player with whom I regularly make music. She is currently in intensive care being treated for something which--while the virus hasn't been isolated--is acting very much like West Nile encephalitis, which has been found to be endemic among certain species of birds. I started this thread to get some autoharp jokes for Sally, and I created that awful pun when I was emailing the members of the group--who have been pulling for Sally for the past couple of weeks. One of our players is the most unregenerate punster this side of Art Thieme (a Mudcat member). It is the nature of the human animal--at least of many of us--that we often deal with the stress of desperate situations with humor, hence the phrase "comic relief." --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 28 Nov 99 - 11:07 PM C'mon, folks--I told Sally about this thread today: I'd like to have a few more, humor having healing properties. By the way, she's doing a lot better: she's able to move her limbs a bit. Now I'm off to the Starry Plough to hear the Dave Swan trio sing...I'll tell you about it later. --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Night Owl Date: 28 Nov 99 - 11:25 PM Could it be, Mr. Seed, .... the Autoharp is such a valued instrument by musicians that there really are No Autoharp jokes except those we make up ourselves???? ;o) |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Rick Fielding Date: 29 Nov 99 - 12:57 AM Bill, when I first read that Bryan was dead against electronic tuners, I thought "good for you, but I'm too lazy. Besides I'd been tuning the damn thing by ear for 10 years and I felt I'd paid my dues". A few years later I played with him at a festival and watched him verrrry carefully tune 3 harps (consequently missing his dinner, and the pre-concert musicians bullshit sessions). Recently a friend saw him at a folk club and told me that he was carrying 7 harps! It's a wonder that boy don't die of starvation! Everytime I use my "Frankenharp" I say a little thanks to the Korg people. Sorry I didn't drop in here earlier, but I thought it would just be re-cycled banjo and accordion jokes....cause the "chorded zither" is serious business! Rick |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Rick Fielding Date: 29 Nov 99 - 01:03 AM Oh, and Bill, one more thing ('cause you've seen mine) I got a call from songwriter Willie P. Bennett, to play on his new album. He said on the phone "I hear you can play weird chords", sure, I said, not knowing what he had in mind. Well I ended up making minor 6th bars and diminished 7ths and even a major 7th bar. Took me hours. Played the session. They buried me so far back in the mix it sounded like some faint honky tonk piano way off in the distance. Fooey! All for a hundred bucks! Rick |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 29 Nov 99 - 02:56 AM Night Owl, I think there are so few autoharp jokes because folkies are sensitive souls and don't want to pick on the handicapped--people who have to push buttons to make chords--or maybe it's because they don't think it's polite to make jokes about people when they're not around, and harpies have to leave the room to tune between songs. I'm tryin', but I don't think I'm makin' anybody laugh... --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Bert Date: 29 Nov 99 - 12:04 PM --seed, does that mean that YOU have enough fingers that you can play an autoharp without bars? I think that Abby Sales story on the origin of the autoharp is pure fiction. I thought everyone knew that they were first created from all the strings left over when they first made bodhrans by cutting the strings off of banjos. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Bill D Date: 29 Nov 99 - 12:23 PM Rick...*grin*..yep...I cut some chord bars once, and it can be VERY tedious, but now, at least you have 'em... (BTW, I have often thought: why doesn't Bryan simply tune his harps the way he wants them, THEN use a Korg to index them and note what setting he needs..+ or - 'x' amount, then he can re-tune ti that!.) I was at a 'harp workshop at Winfield years ago, and he actually had 20-30 harp players spend 45 minutes just TUNING!. and seed...my REAL autoharp joke is doing the song called "The Key of 'R'"..in which one is called on to play in minor, 7th, diminished...and finishing with a suspended 9th. Of course, the silly fumbling for non-existant chords IS the point! |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Frank of Toledo Date: 29 Nov 99 - 12:40 PM Don't have any autoharp jokes, but Bryan will be in Toledo Oregon Friday December 10th for two concerts, a children's show in the afternoon and an evening concert at our Methodist Church. I'll see if he has any good autoharp puns. And Merritt Herring from Portland will be opening for Bryan........... |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 29 Nov 99 - 02:07 PM I love the sound of Sally's custom made diatonic autoharps* (one for C/G/Am, the other for D/A/Bm) and she plays them beautifully, but I rag her occasionally about her harps' inability to play any circle of fifths progressions beyond I-II-V-I** and the fact that she has no dominant 7th chords on either of them, along with her shallow grasp of music theory and her stubborn refusal to try to rectify it (for Christmas a few years ago I gave her David Harp's clear, concise, very useful book and tape on music theory--she fell asleep one night reading it and never picked it up again). She also can--when she practices a bit--play a very nice clawhammer banjo (she owns a beautiful Bart Reiter Whyte Laydie which just hangs on her wall). *Diatonic autoharps have some doubled strings for a richer sound; consequently, they also are missing three of the accidentals: The C/G harp has the C scale plus F# and C#, the middle octave B, C, D, E, F, and G strings are doubled (I think that's thw way they are set up). --seed **actually, in thinking about it, I realized that on her harps she could do a I-VI-II-V-I run, used in such as "Salty Dog" on either: On the C/G, she'd play in F: F-D-G-C-F, and on the A/D, in G: G-E-A-D-G. Of course the circle of fifths runs sound better as I-VI7-II7-V7-I, and she has no sevenths, and she couldn't play patterns which also required the IV chord... |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Easy Rider Date: 29 Nov 99 - 02:49 PM "Sounds like some kind of bizarro, self-gratification device that gets shipped to you in a plain, brown, wrapper." Does playing the Autoharp cause blindness? |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: sophocleese Date: 29 Nov 99 - 04:15 PM No, just deafness. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Rick Fielding Date: 29 Nov 99 - 05:53 PM And unemployment. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 29 Nov 99 - 06:12 PM Hey, good riff, ER, Soph, and Rick...the kind of improvisation it's hard to do on an autoharp (and has seemed to be hard to do ABOUT an autoharp. And Sophocleese, I thought it was bodice pins that caused blindness. --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Laura Date: 30 Nov 99 - 12:04 AM As the autoharp is a truely useless instrument, it is unlikely that specific jokes can be found about it. Therefore, the autoharpist will need to learn to adapt (and read). Any joke pertaining to an accordian will be easily adaptable to the autoharp. Just simply substitute the words "Autoharp" and "Accordian". Likewise, any jokes pertaining to the intelligence level of a particular type of musician (usually drummers, bassists and banjo players) will suffice by substituting the appropriate instrument in the appropriate spot. Other possiblities would be anything that relates to a particular instrument being out of tune (banjo, fiddle, mandolin work well here) would work. When the autoharpist asks the audience for requests to play and they reply "From afar", etc... No flames please- I make fun of autoharps only because my sis can play one and I can't get it figured out. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: bseed(charleskratz) Date: 30 Nov 99 - 12:56 AM That's the way it is with all these people making dumb banjo player jokes, too. Ya jist ain't smart enuff to unnerstan us--is they, Banjer? --seed |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Andrez Date: 01 Dec 08 - 05:10 AM Its only a paltry 8 years since this thread was last accessed, but I have a urgent need to find at least a good half dozen ready made Autoharp jokes to coincide with the birthday of a friend who is an Autoharp afficionado coming up tomorrow. Just at the moment I havent the time to do the standard conversions of other jokes as detailed by Laura above. Thats because I only found out about the birthday about an hour ago as I was looking at an email and a link he sent to my wife on the theme of banjo's and obviously banjo players. I'll past that in at the end of this post as well as the link to show you how this started. Since Graeme's birthday is tomorrow I would really like to repay him in kind. Oh come to think of it, pictures, poems or anything else humorous that is derogatory of Autoharps and Autoharp players would be equally appreciated. Cheers, Andrez PS: I should point out that the person I got excited about meeting and showing my own 1928 Vega banjo was the one and only Greg Deering so forgive me....... I was not worthy, I was not worthy....:-) -------------------------------------------- Dear lesley, You have been sent this article link by graeme courtesy of www.brisbanetimes.com.au. Personal Message: Proof that banjo players not only make us suffer for their art, but go to extremes themselves! This article is also notable in that the banjo in question is made by the bloke Andrez was excited about meeting up at Guildford. Banjo maestro plays during brain surgery Arjun Ramachandran October 16, 2008 - 8:27AM To view the entire article, click on: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2008/10/16/1223750187049.html |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: Jack Campin Date: 01 Dec 08 - 06:53 AM It's always nice to know lady autoharpists since they always need felt before they can start playing. |
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Subject: RE: Know any autoharpy jokes? From: GUEST,Mr Red Date: 01 Dec 08 - 08:34 AM Now try and convert this one to Autoharp - How Many Melodeon (Button Accordian in Creole) Players does it take to change a light bulb? Depends if you are pushing or pulling Autoharp players/light bulb ? Converted from Guitar (et al) and the answer would be depends on the chord |
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