...And then theres "no brained."

Rick, when I got my fiddle, my mom looked for a cheap on because 1)we didn't have much money, and 2) she knew I was going to get tired of it and quit after a few weeks or months.

Stuff comes easy to me at first, and I'm fine as long as I don't have to work very hard. I learned on from my own. I knew a lot of tunes in my head, and I could read a little bit of music when I started. When I started hitting tunes that were harder to play, I tried to learn them for a while, gave up and went back to the easier tunes - but the difficult tunes got into my head even if I couldn't play them. Eventually I got to the point where I could play most of them.

I never did quit playing fiddle when the going got rough, which is what I've done with practically everything else in my life, except computers. I think the reason I stuck with the fiddle is because I wanted to play with other people. If I couldn't imagine doing that one day, I think I would have dropped it.

I took banjo lessons once, and can still play a little. The one single thing that was most valuable about those lessons was that the teacher taught the entire first class on music theory. I don't know if I would have wanted to learn that if given a choice, but the knowledge has been invaluable. Of course, if he'd insisted on us learning nothing but scales and chords, I wouldn't have stayed in the class.

(I think I'm middle-brained from Mary's test - I can't do either thing faster. Is there such a thing?)