[Harp-L] Calculating Cumulative Stage Time Pianos vs. Guitar vs. Harmonica

[Emily Keene]

As a multi-instrumentalist who played music for money for over fifty years
(and was actually paid to play most ot those instruments), I have no idea
of the "right" way to calculate stage time on any given instrument.
However, these three things I know to be true-

1. One never forgets the lessons one learns under stress and on stage.
2. At one time or another I have used EVERYTHING* I've ever learned about
making sounds (both "good" or "bad") in playing at least one other piece of
music.
3. While it might not something that fits into a formula, musical knowledge
is, in general, cumulative.

* Though as a fiddle player, one spends an enormous amount of time trying
NOT  to make such noises, one of the best paying gigs I ever got was for
playing on a commercial for a large corporation trying to convince people
that whereas Mother Nature had left the land they extracted resources from
a desolate wasteland, this corporation turned a former hellscape into a
verdant wetlands teeming with wildlife, including (I don't know much about
birds) a heron-or maybe and eagle flying majestically out of the wetlands.
Somewhere, from out of my memory, I was able to retrieve the knowledge of
how to make an awful squeaking noise reminiscent of a bird flying out of a
wetlands.