Hermie’s Music

I called Hermies with a single outrageous question «Would you be able to fit me in for a single music lesson today?»
I travel full time. I had one day in Schenectady. My boyfriend had taken his bass guitar on the road when he learned I had played cello as a kid. «It’s really similar» he said. But I found myself unable to remember anything from playing music. 3 years of cello, a few months of trombone & piano, and 12 years of choir… but my brain seemed as good as having never done anything musical.
Larry answered the phone and was both welcoming and confident that he could give me enough info to get me started. «Stop by anytime before 8pm». Around 2pm, I entered the shop and Larry greeted me just as warmly as on the phone.
He checked out my travel bass & tuned it for me. I watched as his fingers whirled around the strings moving from fret to fret. I heard a little voice say «there’s no way you’re going to be able to do this again». I felt lost.
Larry handed me the bass & walked me through a set of scales. I fumbled and hit the wrong string, or both strings at once, but I made it through. I went forward and then backward through the scales. It was awkward, but I did it. We’d chat a moment, he’d teach me something else about the bass, and like a good instructor «show me your scales again» and I would run through them forward & backward again.
For fun, he taught me the bass line for Louie Louie. How can you not get tickled playing Louie Louie?
That lesson was what I needed to get started and believe maybe I «can» learn this instrument.
The previous review raved about Hermies. I’m a fan too. This is a must stop if you are thinking of picking up any instrument. Violin, Guitar, Cello, Bass, Flute or Sax. This is the place to go!

In my fairly long experience, there are only two types of music stores.
Type A, you walk in and you’re looked at like you’re a perp. If you look like you might even start thinking about taking an instrument down from the walls, you’ll get a lecture about not touching the merchandise and a series of inquiries about whether you’re a serious buyer or not. The staff may be knowledgeable, but they’ll talk to you as if you’re a mentally-​challenged space alien who has never heard of a major chord or a scale and is need of being spoken to like a slow-​witted dog. The prices are fixed, as if Moses had passed them down on an extra set of tablets from the mountain top, and any discussion of same is an apostasy that will quickly get you invited to get serious or get out.
Type B, you walk in and the staff are already playing something. They check to see if you need help but will leave you alone to look if you say you’re just looking. If you have a passing question about something, instead of answering it they’ll pull down an instrument, give you a demonstration, and ask you to try it out. They’ll talk to you frankly about the best place to buy X, Y, or Z and may point out the good features of what they have but are trying to match you up to whatever it is you need or are at the right stage for. They love music, maybe just a bit too much, but they love musicians even more, and they really love aspiring musicians.
Hermie’s is firmly in the Type B camp, and are going to be Cool about just about everything you can imagine. They know the scene, the area, the schools, the teachers, the bands, and they know their stuff. Prices are going to vary quite a bit, like they do at any instrument-​oriented store, but as a working musician’s place this is incredibly friendly towards the amateur and the student. The staff took time today to show my young musician a bunch of things he hadn’t seen before on the guitar and lit a fire on inspiration in him.
Honestly, I can’t tell you whether you will get a good deal on X or Y here, relative to all the good deals in the universe. It’s a small store, and they have more at the Albany location. It’s a bit out of the way on the Jay walk in downtown Schenectady. But I’ve seen so many ***ho*es in the music business over the year I know by now how to tell what’s what with the stores. Hermie’s is good people.