Making Music at Home

I found an old video of us making music at home. My father-in-law, Hans, is a hobbyist musician. Hans is a nice and funny guy. He’s always making jokes and funny faces. He plays the accordion but he can also play other musical instruments like keyboards, guitar, and drums. He has a regular job and he also used to earn decent amount of money from being a musician but early in spring of 2007 he got an accident. He was cutting some woods and somehow the machine he was using malfunctioned cutting three fingers of his right hand. Right after his accident and until now he feels that playing accordion or the keyboards will never be as easy as it used to and everybody can understand why.

Benjamin is Marcus’ younger brother. At the time of this video, he was 13. Like their father, Benjamin is also musically inclined. He’s currently studying how to play the trumpet. In this video, he plays the acoustic bass guitar. He doesn’t have formal lessons on how to play it but somehow, it was sounding okay.

We did this video last June 2007 just a few months after Hans’ accident. Marcus and Lia (their mom) were the ones videotaping us. I am not used to being video taped so you’ll notice my uneasiness all throughout the video.

It was a simple song with just four chords. When Hans heard me sing it and play it with the guitar, he suggested that we do it all together so we did it and the outcome is of course nothing close to professional or practiced performance but it’s nice and it show candid setting within the family.