Tuesday, February 7, 2017

The Morning Show: Stomp Fiddles and Building Frogs

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the morning edition of the Signalman show, bringing you a cool idea each weekday!  Wait...what?  Ladies 'n gents, I've started a podcast!  I do an interview each Monday, and a thought Tuesday through Friday.  Seems cool to have the idea in blog form, too.  So, here goes!

  This week's theme is disproving the Equation that Cool = Money.  That is, debunking the idea that you need to shell out in order to climb up.    I just did a workshop with some 4th graders yesterday.  I stopped by Mrs. Fisher's music class at Matula Elementary in La Plata, MD, and showed the kids how to build stomp fiddles - boards with nails in them, AND WASHERS - nobody was making weapons, I promise.  When you slam the board into the ground, it jingles.  We had a blast.  I bored them on purpose at first, saying "I should like to teach you an economics lesson."  Oh you should have SEEN their faces.  It got better from there.  I asked them how much they thought my guitar rig was that was sitting in front of the class.  A little girl nailed it.  "A thousand dollars!"   "Yes!  We have a winner!"  Then I wrote the equation that cool equals money, and then I crossed out the equals sign.  "A musician needs to get NOTICED, and here's one of the ways I've done that."  I then showed them how to design one, passed out the materials, and went around the room, hammering the nails in for them.  I felt like God must have felt like building frogs...the jingling and stomping grew and grew, until the whole room was armed and dangerous with these things.  Then we sang "Jump around" by House of Pain.  EPIC!  Don't way for a fancy guitar!  Here's the podcast audio:  https://soundcloud.com/thesignalman/the-signalman-show-morning-edition-s1-e7-disproving-the-equationAnd a video of us jamming!  https://www.instagram.com/p/BQOaeQDFo3k/?taken-by=joshurban

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