Finding the Right Key
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Sometime last week I became a musician. I’ve been playing music for years but was always painfully aware of my inadequacies. I felt like the orangutan I’d seen in a video, going through the motions of washing clothes after seeing the humans do it. I’d memorize the chords, harmonies, and occasional runs taught me through endless repetition. But I could see that the musicians around me were experiencing differently the same moments we supposedly shared.
It’s been a frustrating experience, much as I imagine it must be for someone who is not so bright to see sharp people making quick calculations, or someone who struggles with language to hear others extemporize freely. I envied those who seemed so natural while playing and so focused while listening. I thought of their abilities as a natural gift that would always elude me.
And I made excuses. Real musicians heard music all around them as they grew up. Their parents paid for private lessons or, even better, played along with them. Yet when I try to recall music from my childhood, I hear only Herb Albert’s Tijuana Brass and the musical Oliver. In seventh grade I encountered my first instrument, a ten dollar plywood guitar my parents bought from a home improvement store for my introductory guitar class. I think they found it on special at the end of the plumbing aisle.
At seventeen I met Gene—my future husband, though I didn’t know it then. He was playing at a bookstore. I fell hard, wanting both the music and the black curly hair. He gave me guitar lessons, which I paid for by hand stitching patches on his threadbare jeans while we drove around in his blue Ford pickup.
Then we split for a while, taking different paths even as we stayed in touch. He played in duos and trios around town, while I picked up the bass and became a fan of Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads. When we got back together after three years, I was still no musical match for him, though I loved hearing him play around town. Soon we found ourselves dancing to the sound of live jazz at our wedding.
We got caught up with graduate school, frequent moves, making new friends, and finding new jobs. I noticed how people around us seemed less attuned to music than they’d been in college, and so, for us, it was becoming less important as well.
One day I visited an artist friend and noted her walls were bare. She returned the observation, saying how surprising it was to visit me and hear no music. I realized how much I’d lost from the days when feelings, ideas, and songs were woven together in my world.
I’d always been moved by the songs that Gene wrote, finding myself gripped by the stories he told. Now I wondered if he’d ever record them, if I’d ever have a permanent record. The day I decided he should finally make a CD jumpstarted music for both of us. I returned to playing bass, took some lessons, and we worked up new songs. For five years we practiced and then played out together, first at some gigs for tips, then at farmers markets, then at local festivals. We were preparing the soil not only for the CD, but for much more than either of us expected.
Then came last week’s bluegrass camp at Augusta, in Elkins, West Virginia. Suddenly it no longer seemed so scary or difficult to try new material with strangers, playing on the fly. Listening to different groups of musicians was exhilarating. So was puzzling over the musical minutia of a song. I wondered if my ears had become unplugged while I was sleeping, or maybe I somehow got a new brain and hands.
I suppose I’d been building up for years without noticing—slowly learning names and relations of notes, practicing songs in different keys, developing rhythms and proper finger positioning, and translating chord positions from one instrument to another.
The instructors kept on us about listening. It seemed rather ridiculous to force myself to listen to a song—shouldn’t this come naturally? But I knew my old methods weren’t working. Simply letting the music flow around me with moments of feeling or rhythm or enjoyment of a story line didn’t cut it anymore. I decided that the daily concerts would be part of my lessons, that I would try to hear something new in each song.
I started noticing little things, like a minor chord here, a tenor line there, or when to dampen the string or let it ring. Though I’m a bass player, I’ve never really listened to other bassists in an analytical way. It’s painful to recognize this, for it makes me feel like a blind person who thought she knew the color blue. How could I have played for so long and not noticed so many things?
But I realized that learning new ways to play was helping me to analyze and understand better what I was hearing. Now, rather than vaguely noticing a string of notes that was pleasant but mysterious, I was hearing some of the standard patterns from class. That was a simple 1-3-5. That was a full walking bass line, blues style with a 7. Nothing fancy, but it was exciting each time I picked up something. It also demystified the music. What these guys were doing was combining skills learned through long practice and study to create sounds that were suddenly, remarkably, comprehensible.
Even jams had a set of rules that explained how strangers could mesh together so quickly. The lead musician, a position that rotates around the circle, makes the decisions. He tells the group if the song deviates from what’s expected. He chooses who will take each break, catching the eye of someone who can play lead before each chorus ends. A raised foot indicates the song is about to finish. More subtly, a turn of the instrument neck means that everyone should repeat the last line of the melody before stopping.
But I wasn’t just learning how these simple rules made it easier to jam with strangers. As Gene and I practiced on our own together, we were both struck by the difference in tone. The harmonies were coming more freely and the subtleties more readily. Suddenly it sounded like music, and people were coming over to listen to us. It felt like our relationship had shifted keys as well, into a more genuine musical collaboration.
I’m sure that as I become a better musician, there will be new layers of complexity that I’ll hear and that I’ll play. And I know that, in part, because of what the pros say and do, the details they mention that I still don’t notice or understand. But I no longer feel that what they grasp is out of my reach. I may not achieve their level because I’m unwilling to set aside my other loves (and obligations) to devote ten hours a day to practice. But I no longer see this as a limitation within myself. It’s a choice about how much I want music to be a part of my life, how much time and attention I want to spend on it.
Now as I walk around with songs in my head and my dreams, I can’t wait to hear what the future brings.
Next
It’s been a frustrating experience, much as I imagine it must be for someone who is not so bright to see sharp people making quick calculations, or someone who struggles with language to hear others extemporize freely. I envied those who seemed so natural while playing and so focused while listening. I thought of their abilities as a natural gift that would always elude me.
And I made excuses. Real musicians heard music all around them as they grew up. Their parents paid for private lessons or, even better, played along with them. Yet when I try to recall music from my childhood, I hear only Herb Albert’s Tijuana Brass and the musical Oliver. In seventh grade I encountered my first instrument, a ten dollar plywood guitar my parents bought from a home improvement store for my introductory guitar class. I think they found it on special at the end of the plumbing aisle.
At seventeen I met Gene—my future husband, though I didn’t know it then. He was playing at a bookstore. I fell hard, wanting both the music and the black curly hair. He gave me guitar lessons, which I paid for by hand stitching patches on his threadbare jeans while we drove around in his blue Ford pickup.
Then we split for a while, taking different paths even as we stayed in touch. He played in duos and trios around town, while I picked up the bass and became a fan of Elvis Costello and the Talking Heads. When we got back together after three years, I was still no musical match for him, though I loved hearing him play around town. Soon we found ourselves dancing to the sound of live jazz at our wedding.
We got caught up with graduate school, frequent moves, making new friends, and finding new jobs. I noticed how people around us seemed less attuned to music than they’d been in college, and so, for us, it was becoming less important as well.
One day I visited an artist friend and noted her walls were bare. She returned the observation, saying how surprising it was to visit me and hear no music. I realized how much I’d lost from the days when feelings, ideas, and songs were woven together in my world.
I’d always been moved by the songs that Gene wrote, finding myself gripped by the stories he told. Now I wondered if he’d ever record them, if I’d ever have a permanent record. The day I decided he should finally make a CD jumpstarted music for both of us. I returned to playing bass, took some lessons, and we worked up new songs. For five years we practiced and then played out together, first at some gigs for tips, then at farmers markets, then at local festivals. We were preparing the soil not only for the CD, but for much more than either of us expected.
Then came last week’s bluegrass camp at Augusta, in Elkins, West Virginia. Suddenly it no longer seemed so scary or difficult to try new material with strangers, playing on the fly. Listening to different groups of musicians was exhilarating. So was puzzling over the musical minutia of a song. I wondered if my ears had become unplugged while I was sleeping, or maybe I somehow got a new brain and hands.
I suppose I’d been building up for years without noticing—slowly learning names and relations of notes, practicing songs in different keys, developing rhythms and proper finger positioning, and translating chord positions from one instrument to another.
The instructors kept on us about listening. It seemed rather ridiculous to force myself to listen to a song—shouldn’t this come naturally? But I knew my old methods weren’t working. Simply letting the music flow around me with moments of feeling or rhythm or enjoyment of a story line didn’t cut it anymore. I decided that the daily concerts would be part of my lessons, that I would try to hear something new in each song.
I started noticing little things, like a minor chord here, a tenor line there, or when to dampen the string or let it ring. Though I’m a bass player, I’ve never really listened to other bassists in an analytical way. It’s painful to recognize this, for it makes me feel like a blind person who thought she knew the color blue. How could I have played for so long and not noticed so many things?
But I realized that learning new ways to play was helping me to analyze and understand better what I was hearing. Now, rather than vaguely noticing a string of notes that was pleasant but mysterious, I was hearing some of the standard patterns from class. That was a simple 1-3-5. That was a full walking bass line, blues style with a 7. Nothing fancy, but it was exciting each time I picked up something. It also demystified the music. What these guys were doing was combining skills learned through long practice and study to create sounds that were suddenly, remarkably, comprehensible.
Even jams had a set of rules that explained how strangers could mesh together so quickly. The lead musician, a position that rotates around the circle, makes the decisions. He tells the group if the song deviates from what’s expected. He chooses who will take each break, catching the eye of someone who can play lead before each chorus ends. A raised foot indicates the song is about to finish. More subtly, a turn of the instrument neck means that everyone should repeat the last line of the melody before stopping.
But I wasn’t just learning how these simple rules made it easier to jam with strangers. As Gene and I practiced on our own together, we were both struck by the difference in tone. The harmonies were coming more freely and the subtleties more readily. Suddenly it sounded like music, and people were coming over to listen to us. It felt like our relationship had shifted keys as well, into a more genuine musical collaboration.
I’m sure that as I become a better musician, there will be new layers of complexity that I’ll hear and that I’ll play. And I know that, in part, because of what the pros say and do, the details they mention that I still don’t notice or understand. But I no longer feel that what they grasp is out of my reach. I may not achieve their level because I’m unwilling to set aside my other loves (and obligations) to devote ten hours a day to practice. But I no longer see this as a limitation within myself. It’s a choice about how much I want music to be a part of my life, how much time and attention I want to spend on it.
Now as I walk around with songs in my head and my dreams, I can’t wait to hear what the future brings.
Next