Musical Connections

The other day a friend of mine posted on her Facebook page that her son was “failing” preschool music class. Apparently, he “infrequently connects to the music emotionally.”

Hmm. I remember my preschool classes where we learned important Western musical classics like “The Eensy, Weensy Spider” and “I’m a Little Teapot.” I’m sure her son’s academic career is threatened (despite the fact that both parents graduated from Yale), and she probably needs to take important steps to rectify the situation. Maybe I should send her a CD of songs like “A Tisket, A Tasket,” “Here we go ’round the Mulberry Bush,” and “The Farmer in the Dell.” I mean, unless remedial action is taken, her son may end up like my son Matthew (he’s 17) who infrequently connects with the musical assignments of his piano teacher. I tell him that it’s probably because he’s emotionally shallow. But he thinks it’s because she picks lame music—anything by Chopin or other composers who lull you to sleep.

Matthew may have a point. It seems like all my sons have connected with Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. When the boys were young, every Saturday morning they’d put the “1812 Overture” CD into the stereo and crank it. They especially liked the section with the cannons. Maybe my friend needs to donate that CD to the preschool.




N.B. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I normally post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Between this blog and my other blog, Screwing Up Time (where I post on Tuesdays), I’m blogging four days a week and that’s a bit more than I can do right now. So I’m planning to post on here on Mondays and Fridays and at Screwing Up Time on Wednesdays.

My Life Doesn't Need a Soundtrack

I’m a non-music person living in a house of music people. My husband and most of my children love to listen to music. Me? Not so much. When I’m cleaning the house, I listen to Pat Benatar or Aretha Franklin. But otherwise, I prefer what little quiet I can get. Maybe it’s because I’m with kids most of the day, and there’s always a buzz of noise in the background. So when the kids want to play music on the stereo, I say, “Let’s leave it off. My life doesn’t need a soundtrack.”

My family thinks that’s insane. So when I get in the car, there may be classical, country, or rock playing. Sometimes I just leave the radio on as a favor to whoever is with me in the car. Occasionally, I’ll recognize a song from the 80s, find myself humming along. And someone will say, “Uh, Mom, you do realize what that song is about, right?” And I say, “I have no idea.” My confused child says, “Don’t you understand the words?” And I say, “No. I’ve never been able to figure out music lyrics. Somehow when words and music are put together, my brain can’t suss it out.” Then, my child tells me what the words are. My face pales and I change the station.

This is why my life doesn’t need a soundtrack, I couldn’t understand it anyway.

n.b. I don’t usually post on Tuesdays, but tomorrow, April 2, is World Autism Day, I’ll be posting on our family’s experiences with autism.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Meaner Than Me

My children call me “the meanest mom” they know.  It’s a title I wear with pride as it really means, “You make me do chores,” “You monitor my computer time,” and “You make me do the schoolwork that I’m capable of instead of what the government/schoolboard requires.”  Also very high on the list of why I’m so mean is music lessons.  The kids take music lessons until they graduate from high school.

Cal and I both come from musical families so we think of music lessons like we think of math—it’s just one of those things you have to learn.  And the music teachers have agreed, the children all were given musical gifts.  Of course, just like math, they’d rather not study it, even if they’re good at it.  

Jacob was, according to his teacher, born with an internal metronome.  So he’s particularly good with rhythm.  His teacher’s given him lots of syncopated, swing, etc.  But she’s also given him sonatas. She claims he was created to play sonatas.  Jacob strongly disagrees. Here’s what happened at his lessons the other day.

Teacher: Take the second ending.

J: Can’t I take the first? (So he can replay the stuff he has just played and avoid the difficult stuff coming next.)

Teacher: No.

J (After finishing the section): I don’t like this piece.

Teacher: Too bad.  I do.

J: It’s really long.

Teacher: Honey, this is only the first movement.

J (After the stunned silence wears off):  What?

Teacher (paging through the piece): This is the second movement

J (grunts)

Teacher: Oh, look here is the third movement.

J: I really hate this song.

Teacher: This is my favorite sonata

J: When can I quit it?

Teacher: When you love it as much as I do.

Jacob sighs heavily and meditates on the fact that he’ll be working on the stupid sonata FOREVER.  And me, what am I doing during this exchange?  I’m smiling—there are way “meaner” people in the world than me.

Friday Five

A follower of the blog (Andrew) emailed me this week and asked if we could do a Friday Five. I realized that we haven’t done one in a long time so we’re due for one.

I asked my kids for suggestions for Friday Five topics and they suggested “Favorite Computer Games.” I immediately protested that I didn’t have five computer games that I played, let alone five favorites. They suggested I could choose Pong—then, they laughed derisively. Yes, I did play Pong back in the day. (And I was a master Asteroids player.) Maybe we’ll do that Friday Five eventually—when I have five computer games that I like. In the meantime, tell me what your five favorite songs are and why. Here are mine.

1. Anything by J. S. Bach. Okay, not anything—I am so sick of Sonatas and Partitas. *Gag* Ariel’s violin teacher believes S & P are the most beautiful things. They’re not. Get over it.

2. “It’s a Beautiful Day” by U2. Also “Vertigo” and “Elevation.” The music video for “Vertigo” is bizarre, but notice the visual allusions to Dante’s Inferno. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98W9QuMq-2k

3. Cooking music. My kids will hassle me for days if I don’t admit to my cooking music. When I cook, I listen to an eclectic mix of songs on playlist.com. My playlist includes everything from Pat Benetar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” to “Sloop John B” to “Dreams” by the Cranberries to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (which I really, really love and I don’t know why) to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” (I have to say that based on the fiddle playing, the Devil should’ve won, which would be more Faustian anyway.)

4. Dissonant music. Honestly. I like Bartok—it reminds me of forests shrouded in fog and mystery. I even like Schoenberg. *Gasp*

5. “Who Spiked the Eggnog?” by Straight No Chaser. They’re an amazing a’cappella group. (I know that sounds lame, but they make it cool.) Here’s a link to the song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7byjAaLcRM And every aspiring writer, who thinks they’re never going to be published, ought to read SNC’s story on their website.

I’m sure you haven’t failed to notice that I’ve listed way more than 5 songs. Neener. It’s my blog. But you’re welcome to do the same—just make them fit in five numbers.

A Notch in My Lipstick Case

After Luke and Ariel’s senior recital, lest you think I’m a music snob, let me assure you I’m an equal opportunity music lover. At another recital (given by professional musicians), I fell in love with Schoenberg. If you’ve never heard of Schoenberg, let’s just say his compositions are what would happen if music married math and gave birth to chaos. Only instead of being a train wreck, it’s a cool, geometric dissonance. Really.

Of course, my kids think I have little taste in music. They point to my playlist at playlist.com (it’s free), which consists of everyone from Martha Reeves and the Vandellas to the Beach Boys to the Cars to Sting to the Cranberries. When I click on my playlist, Luke shuts his bedroom door. Ariel says, “You’re listening to that?!” Okay, but in all fairness, she likes the Cranberries too. But, it seems to me that most music has a purpose. For example, I do my sit-ups to Pat Benetar. I can “go for the burn” when she sings about “putting another notch in her lipstick case.” And even Matthew, who was walking through our bedroom the other day when it was playing said, “Hey, that’s a cool guitar riff.” Yep, I can do twenty in that riff alone.

Hemi-demi-semi

I don’t have a good sense of rhythm. That’s why I’m a poor musician, that and nerves. On the other hand, Jacob and Ariel have rhythm. Jake’s teachers usually assign him all kinds of fast syncopated music because he has nimble fingers and an “internal metronome.” (For the uninitiated, metronome is a device that makes “beeps” or “ticks” according to the rhythm of the music.)

This internal time keeper is not a gift they inherited from me—I run the treadmill and have for years because I don’t have the coordination and rhythm for aerobics. (I also do the treadmill because I can read my favorite detective novel/thrillers while I exercise—unless they fall into the washing machine. But that’s another story.) During Ariel’s violin lesson today, I discovered that this internal metronome is a scourge. Ariel and Jacob rely on their sense of music and don’t count. Both she and Jacob admit they rarely count, they just “feel” the music or hear it in their head and match it.

But, this doesn’t work for Ariel anymore—the third movement of Mozart’s Concerto in G won’t allow it. Her instructor told her, “Ariel, Mozart is among some of the most difficult violin music there is. You are not counting—you must be absolutely precise. You are just playing the long notes (a long note being an eighth or sixteenth note) and thinking that’s about right, and then moving to the next note.” Ariel smiles politely. Her instructor continues, “I know you are doing this; I used to do this too. You cannot respond to tempo—rhythm is a river.” This metaphor is lost on me, though I suppose there is some kind of organic theme.

Of course, after the first page, the tempo alters to something very fast, which causes her no problems at all—I think it’s all 32nd and 64th notes (also called hemidemisemiquavers, or in French quadruple-croche) or worse. As the lesson proceeds, he lectures Ariel on bowing, emphases, stylistics, ad nauseum. After the lesson, I said, “Are you okay?” Ariel answered, “Oh, yes, wasn’t it a wonderful lesson—he doesn’t let me get away with anything. He’s such a good teacher!”