What’s that tune?
When I was very young, music was not a very important part of my life. That ended when I reached the age of 7 and someone gave me a harmonica as a present. Harmonicas were cool, all one had to do was blow into them and music came out. Though music was not very important to me, I did have an ear for it. We had a piano at home and I would occasionally figure out tunes on it by pushing the different keys. Not much else.
But then I made a mistake that changed my life. It might have been a hiccup or me just forgetting to take the harmonica out of my mouth while I was breathing. I discovered by sucking in air, a different note came out of the harmonica. I then tried three notes in a row. They happened to be E-D-C. To me that sounded like the end of a symphony. da Da DA! I was so impressed that I went to my friend Robby and said he should listen to what I was playing and tell me what he thought it was. I expected him im
mediately to say, “It’s the end of a symphony.” I would have been disappointed, since he didn’t say that, however, he did recognize the notes and said, “It’s the beginning of ‘3 Blind Mice’.”
He was right. I went home and figured out that if the first three notes of 3 Blind Mice was on the harmonica, the rest of them were probably there too. if I tried really hard, I could probably find them…And I did.
From then on there was no stopping me. I started learning more songs. My parents were so impressed that they sent me to an adult education class to learn how to play the harmonica. It was pretty dull. Yes, I was introduced to new songs, but everyone was a beginner and they had to learn the notes and scales when all I wanted to do was hear the tune and figure it out myself.
As I grew older, my parents had me take piano lessons, and then in Junior High School I took up the trumpet. Again the difficulty was all those teachers wanted me to learn how to read notes and learn proper techniques. I just wanted to learn to play. I got no credit in Junior High School when I showed up the first day to trumpet lessons and had figured out how to play a C-scale.
When I was in college, my roommate taught me how to play the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” by rote. I followed how he played it by watching, not by reading notes.
So you could say, music became an important part of my life. Thank you, Robby. I wish that I had learned more. I used it in school as a teacher and now as a storyteller and performer. I’ve even written some of my own songs. If I only knew how to write down the notes.
I really enjoyed your piece about your discovery of music. I will try to sow this to my prof. in creative writing class. We also are given a suggested subject for our next month but since we often read our work aloud we sometimes are inspired by something else. The main thing is to keep writing and enjoying the memories. Keep it up !!!