I Play the Instruments

I make music as Asian Turtle Crisis and jam with some friends as Fink Tank

I’ve been making music since my early teens. You’d think I’d be good at it by now.

I started by whacking wooden spoons on phone books (these were giant catalogs of phone numbers people used to have.) I’d put Hendrix or The Who on my dad’s turntable and jam away. After a while I started to think I had some decent rhythm and saved up for a drum set.

My first kit was an entry-level Tama Swingstar which always sounded horrible. I stuffed it with pillows, tuned it down, put tape on it. Nothing worked. But before long I was carting it to a friend’s living room to play Honky Tonk Woman over and over and over again. Ugh.

I played that kit in a number of bands and took lessons from a guy who opened once for the The Who. I was pretty good. I had great energy but tended to get excited and speed up, which isn’t good.

Eventually I decided to branch out and got a cheapo knockoff Stratocaster so I could play like Hendrix. It was also garbage. 

Look cheap instruments are fine. It’s a way to see if you’re really committed to something without spending a lot of cash on it. But when your guitar goes out of tune every time you pick it up it’s hard to progress. At least for me it was. 

I eventually graduated to more professional instruments. I got some good guitars, a nice drum set. And then over Covid I got into synthesizers and bought a bass. So yeah, I play the instruments. Well enough for myself to enjoy it.