The Music in Me – 300.5

Last time I mentioned taking beginning guitar because I was the guitarist in my band, so learning to play seemed like a good idea. That should give you a pretty good idea of the band right there. Honestly, I am not sure how we even assigned parts, but it would have made no difference.

We were all very into music back then. This was the mid-eighties. Music was danceable, you could see videos on two channels, and girls just want to have fun, right?

There were three of us. Danielle was on keyboards, and did get her parents to buy her a Casio SK-1. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Lise was the drummer. I did buy her a pair of drumsticks, which was only a small start, but after all, you can drum on anything.
I was the lead singer and guitarist. Nowadays, I can’t even conceive of forming a band without a bassist, and I no longer think it’s practical to have the same lead on vocals and guitar, but we were young and naïve.

Yes, since I had taken piano lessons I might have been a better fit on keyboards, but I think I was the only one who felt capable of learning guitar. Also, my uncle’s old guitar was still in the house, plus at that time Lance’s electric guitar might still have been around, so I certainly had better access, and I had the free slot in my schedule. Still, I wildly overestimated my abilities.

Yes, I did slowly pick up the ability to pick out Ode to Joy on the guitar, but I was not progressing much beyond that, and in trying to figure out if I should start taping my fingers, or just power through the pain until the calluses formed, well, I’m just not sure that I had the commitment. The biggest problem, though, was my ear.

I could not tune a guitar. I could hear that it was not in tune yet, and I could fiddle with the knobs and try and get it right, but I never actually reached the point where I could get it tuned. The other students were all very nice, and so after I tried a little, eventually either Jennifer or Scooter or Max would do it for me, but clearly I was not on my way to becoming much of an axe-man.

I don’t think Danielle or Lise ever made more progress, so what, you may wonder, did No Socks ever do? (Yes, our name was No Socks. One day Danielle and I were looking at the Duran Duran poster on her ceiling, and on of the guys was wearing loafers with no socks, and that’s where it came from.) We never played any sets. I was at one early point optimistic that we could play in a school talent show, but with our skill levels the only thing we could have possibly done would have been the one rap number, London Talk.

That is what we did right there, actually, is that we did write a lot of music. Okay, I wrote most of it. Lise showed up with lyrics for two songs, but I created the tunes for them. Even after we gave up on the band, I still wrote music throughout high school, and at various other times when inspiration comes. The last song I wrote was during the winter before last.

Unfortunately, write is kind of a strong word, because that ear is still a problem. I would try picking out on a piano what I heard in my head, but it was never quite right. So, I would write down the lyrics and just need to remember the tune. In my French class one year, doing the assignments would only get you a B. For an A, you needed to do some extra project to stretch you, four hours worth of work. I wrote two French songs, but to turn them in I had to record them because I could never have represented the proper notes. (And I could still sing either one of them for you at a moment’s notice.)

Now, as a teenage girl, with immature ideas, most of what I wrote was very pop, and would probably have limited worth. However, what I had not realized at the time was that you have to spend a lot of time writing badly before you write well. I could feel the inadequacy of my music more that I could of my prose, so I stuck with the prose. I can go back now and look at old writings and just wince, but it was part of the process.

My sisters and I often have theoretical conversations about what we would do with children if we had them, and one thing we have decided is that we started piano too late, when we had too many other distractions. We decided four or five is the right age, and then your odds of success go way down. I know I could have practiced more than I did, and I was aware of it at the time, but I didn’t, my choice.

Now I wish I had stuck with it. First of all, it can be very handy to play piano, but also I know that I have more to do with music. There are ideas for songs within me that will need to come out, and if I had stayed consistent with music all along, that would be easier.

I also wish I had written more consistently all along. Ages ago I was at a presentation by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch. When they opened it up for Q and A, a young boy asked Wynton about how much to practice. He was trying very hard to get an answer about how long he should spend on his music each day, but Wynton kept dodging that to focus on playing every day. Did you practice for one hour? Two hours? Sometimes, and I played every day.

I have had days when I felt like I could not write anything, and I didn’t write anything, but there have been other days when I ignored that feeling and made myself write something, and I actually was able to do it. A lot of it really is showing up. This is why now I have to write something new every time I want to get onto Facebook. I’m not getting on as much as I did, but I am writing more. I was probably getting on too much anyway.

When I was young, probably even as young as three or four, I was always making up stories inside my head. The first time I remember writing a song I was six or seven (it was a short song about cats, but it still counts). The creativity has always been there, but it changes and improves as you harness it and get it out, so that’s a big part of my life now.