Sharp hearing

I like to play a little music now and then, but was not blessed with the greatest of ears.

Given enough time, I can get a guitar or mandolin or bass in the vicinity of correct tuning, but I always figure it is off enough to be grating for someone who has good musical hearing.

A few years ago, I got a tuning app for my phone. Activitate the app and you have two choices: a., pluck a note and let the app tell you if it is sharp or flat, or b., have the app play a tone and you try to match the note on the instrument you’re tuning.

It works well. I usually have the app tell me if my note is sharp or flat. It’s a lot quicker than me twisting a tuning peg trying to match a tone.

I don’t get to play as much music as I’d like these days, but the tuner app makes it much more pleasant when I do.

I thought about taking a guitar along when Kindra and I got away for a few days last week, but forgot about it when we were packing.

When we got married, there were too many basketball games and livestock shows and whatnots for us to take off work for a trip, and then the whole COVID thing happened. So we put it off for a few months.

Finally, last week, we got a cabin in the Ozarks for a few days and had huge fun. The weather was good, the scenery was beautiful and there were lots of trails for hiking and taking pictures.

Our first day there, we took a mile-and-a-half trail that ended with a suspension bridge with a couple of steps to the ground. As we hopped off the last step, a speaker somewhere in the area started playing a steady, loud radio tone of some sort.

It was 6 p.m. on Friday and the weather was clear, so we theorized the Arkansas Park Service was testing some kind of storm alert system.

But dang. The tone kept going and going. And going. It went for another 10 minutes, at least, as we walked to the van.

It was annoying, very much like having a mosquito trapped inside your ear. Kindra and I both offered our opinions that the test had gone on plenty long enough to prove the alarm worked, but it didn’t seem to bother the other dozen or so people milling around the park.

The tone was still going when we got to the van, but, oddly, it changed pitch when I sat down.

Curious, that. Almost as if me sitting and the tone changing pitch were connected somehow.

My phone was in the cargo pocket of my shorts and was mildly uncomfortable in the van seat, so I took it out to put it on the dash.

It was then that I realized that my phone was making the sound.

I’d managed to activate the tuner when I jumped off the bridge and it had spent 15 minutes trying to get the universe to adjust to C-sharp.