IT ALL STARTED WITH A PIANO IN A SNOWBANK... ...and ended up in the vast attitude/aptitude conondium...
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It all started last night on a website I visit frequently ("Huckleberries"), a blogsite that's part of the larger site of The Spokesman-Review newspaper (located in Spokane, WA). It's the sort of site where people chime in and others respond, and the contents of that blog are more-or-less dictated by what's happening in that area. (
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/, if you're curious. It's a fun place to be, and some of us have been visiting that site for years). It turns out someone who lives up that way actually moved an old Piano out of the house and deposited the thing in a SNOWBANK. A poor old piano. Instruments have character, you know. I think it's tragic. It's also a terrible way to keep a piano in tune, but whoever threw it out probably wasn't thinking about that.
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Alas, there are compassionate people out there, who offset the goofballs who deposit Pianos in Snowbanks. And someone picked it up and took it home. Good thing, too, since Animal Control doesn't pick up pianos. And certainly the Department of Sanitation wouldn't try to stuff a large wooden musical instrument into one of their gas-guzzling ever-rumbling garbage trucks. This is the kind of stuff that would make Billy Joel shudder. A Piano in a Snowbank, for cryin' out loud.
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One of those who posts on the above-mentioned website plays the organ; his actions are very smooth as his hands roam unguardedly over the keyboards (I use the plural because the big organ he plays is an old three-tiered model). I know this because I've played drums in a square-dance band while he led the way. One of my comments on the blog revolved around how amazed I am when I see people walk up to a keyboard and can play anything by ear. My Mom could do that, too. Another blogger replied that to get that good, you have to practice, practice, practice. Implying that if I wanted to be any good at playing the piano, all I had to do was live, sleep and breathe keyboards. But the keyboard player commented that it's not just Attitude, it's also Aptitude that determines good musicianship.
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So I've been thinking about that all day. Attitude, Aptitude. Aptitude, Attitude. My parents always thought that I was going to be some kind of a great musician. Why did they care if I took violin? It didn't mean that much to me; besides, I got beaten up and called a sissy for lugging a violin case to school. For three years, I had to miss valuable classes and go play the violin instead. My first violin teacher, Miss Mary Ann Torrence, was a wonderful teacher, and under her tutelage, there I was, in the "first chair" week after week. That was in 5th grade. In 6th grade, Mr. Terris took over the violin class and he was hard-driving and mean. I mentioned that to him a few decades later, and he told me that he was a new teacher with a lot to prove. I can understand that. Trying to teach a class of young kids to skree-skraw semi-accurately week after week. It's gotta be exasperating. I lost "first chair" when Mr. Terris took over.
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Finally, my last violin teacher was Mr. Gilbert Burns. He made Ebenezer Scrooge look like a Welcome Wagon representative. During Mr. Terris' class a year earlier, we all had to learn a thing called "The Lilliput Symphony". And I thought I had it down pretty well; we all played it a number of times, culminating in a city-wide band/orchestra performance which is as close as I'll ever get to stardom. A year later, Mr. Burns had us play "Lilliput", so I played it the same way I'd played it the year before, and I got yelled at, Mr. Burns saying I was playing it all wrong, a song I could play without having to read the sheet music. And that's kinda when I lost my interest in the orchestra. Besides, violin class made me miss a lot of Math classes, and I'm no good in math at all. On top of that, my Dad joked, in front of me, to the rest of the family, "Dave plays violin while Gilbert BURNS". That was a cheap shot I wasn't expecting, and I was embarrassed in front of the family, you know, those who are supposed to be at least A LITTLE BIT SUPPORTIVE, f''cryin' out loud!!!!! I still remember that vividly, although it happened in 1967.
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Strangely, magically, my parents didn't seem to care when, in 8th grade, I wasn't playing Violin anymore. Conversely, though, they made my little sister take violin. I have no idea how good she was; maybe she achieved "first chair"; I don't know. What I do know is that she took the violin by the neck one fine day and SMASHED IT INTO THE WALL!!!!!!! I find it quite satisfying, somehow, that I remember that. So where am I going with all this? Well, my parents then forced me to take Piano Lessons. The layout of the piano dictates that both hands navigate the fingers over different notes and chords simultaneously, and I just never felt "natural" playing piano. I literally could feel both halves of my brain grinding against each other as I struggled to plink-plunk my way through whatever song I was trying to play. It was painful. I remember one song, "Little Spring Song", a waltz that I can still play. But let's face it, I would never have been able to give Bob Ralston (Lawrence Welk's Keyboardist) a run for his money. So I abandoned piano too.
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One Christmas, I found a guitar under the Christmas Tree. I had never shown any inclination to play the guitar. I didn't ask for a guitar. But, this time around, I WANTED to take lessons. Boy, was I excited! Maybe someday I could also be a Beatle! And again I was a total washout. I had a hard time, because the guitar fingers differently than the violin, so I'd end up trying to play violin notes on guitar, which doesn't work, and I couldn't forget one instrument while trying to play another. This time I quit. I wasn't getting anywhere, and I knew it. I'd sit at home, trying to play bass notes of whatever record I had on the player. I didn't know any guitar chords; I was just fumbling around. The years went by...I quit playing guitar in 1970. My Dad show me a few guitar chords, but I didn't know what to do with chords, how they related to music, and for 4 years, my guitar went unplayed.
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Later on, I ran across some fellow college students playing popular songs on guitars, using the chords my Dad taught me. And I put two and two together, and that's how I ended up playing to this very day. I hit the chords and work off them. Chords are basically the cornerstones of music, and if you know those, then you, too, can play. I know a couple hundred songs. But ya know, I can't play a musical scale to save my life; something within my brain bucks me if things get too technical or complicated. I also have coordination problems, trying to pick one of the middle strings independently of the other strings. With chords, you can pretty much bash your guitar rhythmically and make a lot of noise, and that's what I do. Although in later years, quieter music has increasingly found its way inside my brain. I practice finger-picking on a classical (nylon-string) guitar, although I can only use my thumb and first two fingers of my picking hand; so again, those ol' complexities have taken hold.
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Maurice Minnifield, one of the characters on the old "Northern Exposure" TV show, was a rich guy who had more money than he knew what to do with; in one of the episodes, he bought an ultra-expensive violin. And then he found a violinist who could come up and play the violin. After each playing, Maurice would take the violin and put it back in his airtight safe, which exasperated the violinist who said, "the violin must be allowed to Breathe". The violinist went so crazy over Maurice's violin that he ended up becoming a basket case and was taken to a psychiatric-sort of hospital. Maurice would go once a week and check the violinist out of the looney-bin so the Violin could be played. Bizarre story, yeah. But something Maurice said stuck in my head when I started thinking about this whole attitude/aptitude thing. Maurice said that he himself didn't have the ability to play, but wanted the violinist to play the notes that Maurice himself couldn't, to revel in the experience of enjoying music. And that's why I find good keyboard players so fascinating. I can't do what they do. But I can enjoy them creating their music, their fingers dancing on the keys.
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One night, I was playing guitar at a jam session. I was doing the vocals and playing rhythm guitar, although I played a few lead notes occasionally. One night, a really good guitarist got up on stage with me, and we began doing "All Along The Watchtower", a fairly easy song based in E-minor, and after a couple of verses, I nodded to him, and he began playing sheets and sheets of machine-gun-style guitar leads, and it was fantastic to hear what he was playing, so fantastic in fact, that I just wanted him to play and play. I was keeping the rhythm, I could've taken a few lead passages but didn't want to; that would've interrupted his creativity. In that case, I was content playing a supportive rhythm. I am a very good rhythm player, and in that case, I knew my place. I stayed on rhythm, and we ended up playing a 15-minute version of that song. Talk about Far Out!
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In anything I've ever done, I start fast out of the gate, then hit a "wall" which keeps me from progressing any further. I've got tapes of my guitar playing from 20 and 30 years ago, and I haven't progressed that much since then. I'm no genius at anything. I guess I lack the aptitude. While I sometimes feel like a smart guy, when push comes to shove, I'm not. I still haven't found anything that I'm Really, Really good at. Except for rhythm guitar. And even then, I have a tendency to play fast, or accidentally increase the tempo as the song progresses. And this is where attitude and aptitude come together. Maybe if I'd practiced scales all of these years (attitude), maybe that would've made me a very good guitarist (aptitude). But some people are given more talent than others. I ran into a blues guitarist who'd only been playing six months. Six Months! And he was good! Some things I just don't understand.
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So how do I deal with my limitations and yet come away feeling fairly positive? I think playing music is like anything else; if you operate within the boundaries of your limitations, then you'll not overreach. It's hard to fight the tendency to "push it" just a little bit...walking a musical tight-rope, I guess. And to the organist (referred to in this post), keep on playing, Sir; you have a real gift.
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