Long ago and far away at Kent State, I signed up for the wrong college course, Intro to Music for Education, not a BS Math requirement. I dropped the course, but kept the recorder and a textbook, which said nothing about playing recorder. Years later my wife and I visited one of the first Music In The Valley festivals at Hale Farm. I discovered folk music and bought a penny whistle, but couldn't play it. Later, at the Great Trail festival, I found a dulcimer. A simple strum sounded good, they had instruction books, and you just needed to read the numbers. What a great idea! Next I discovered a tuner; playing that dulcimer in-tune, making progress, not too good with the bum-diddy*, but learning a lot about music. That old college book "Learn To Read Music" started to make sense.

My young daughter started Irish dance lessons, followed by dance competitions: each one a full day of live Irish dance music, interesting instruments, and gee whiz - penny whistle instruction books with a great invention "tablature". I started whistling tunes on the drive home (with the lips, both hands on the wheel); back home I puzzled out tunes from the tab books. I was busy learning dance tunes on the penny whistle with a Irish group in Cleveland, when I saw a flyer for a dulcimer class at Barberton High, and though I could get my bum-diddy* straightened out. The class was cancelled, but they had a music jam, which became Mixed Up Strings.
I play with Mixed Up Strings, an Irish Seisiun in Girard, a hammer dulcimer based group in Richfield, and anywhere else I can fit into my schedule. Wooden flute is my main instrument, with penny whistle as backup, and mandolin for tunes that don't fit the winds. I have presented festival workshops on whistle and mandolin. I play recorder, but prefer flute and whistle; still working on my bum-diddy*.

* bum-diddy is a fancy dulcimer term for a type of strum pattern.