Summertime Ambitions Part 1

In the summer time, when the weather is high

You can stretch right up and touch the sky

When the weather's fine

You got women, you got women on your mind

Have a drink, have a drive

Go out and see what you can find

Those are lyrics from the song "In The Summertime" by Mungo Jerry. A fantastic song that has gotten me in the mood for summer. No school, few responsibilities, and plenty of time to do what ever the hell I want. Being an American teenager between the months of June and August has to be the epitome of freedom. There's hardly a thing I can't do and I have a good deal of things that I'd like to... do. Let's talk about 'em!

Well for one, I'd like to learn how to play guitar, ukulele, and whatever instrument that catches my eye. I already have a blog about playing the guitar or ukulele, or at least I have a draft about it that I'm going to post, so I won't cover that in this post. However, a good friend of mine, Jack, and I have a couple of musical ambitions for the summer that we're planning on pursuing. We want to build a couple instruments of our own. One, Jack's idea, is the cajon. From my understanding, a cajon is a percussion instrument composed of a wooden box used to make different beats and/or sounds. The other, my contribution, is a cigar-box guitar. It's basically a guitar made from a cigar box that you attach a neck and strings to. How fucking awesome is that. I'm sorry, but this shit excites me. Apparently, people in the south are known for having done this as it shows up in a lot of blues and country, or so I believe. Anyway, we're planning on building our instruments in the wood shop of a neighbor and close friend to my aunt and uncle. For the cajons specifically, we're thinking about asking my aunt, who's a great artist, to possibly paint the wood with some kind of design. We'll have to look into the benefits of a paint job because I suspect that it's better for the sound to leave the wood natural so the vibrations are more free and can resound better. It sounds like a fun project and something out of the ordinary because I haven't heard of many teenagers building their own instruments on their free time in the summer. Great, now that I have unnecessarily recapped this whole paragraph I'm going to stop this paragraph. I'm one redundant son of a bitch.

I see now that I have quite a bit to say about my summer so I will be making this a mini blog series of sorts. Stay tuned for more things I'd like to do this summer!