Let’s Ear it for a Song
I’ve been told that I have an ear for music. I guess it is true. We had a converted player piano growing up, meaning that the player part had been discarded and it was only useful as a manual piano. My sisters had taken lessons when they were young, but I was not to have lessons until much later. So I did what any earful musician does, I taught myself how to play melodies with one finger.
When I was eight years old I was given a harmonica as a gift. I didn’t know how to play it other than blow into it, until one day I inhaled and got a different note. Not knowing any particular notes I happened to play three notes in a row, E-D-C. It reminded me of the ending of a symphony. When I shared it with a friend of mine, Robby, he said that it sounded like the beginning of the song, ‘Three Blind Mice’. Now that was a real tune that I recognized. I spent the rest of the day figuring out how to play the whole tune. My parents were so impressed they sent me to one of those community programs to learn how to play the harmonica. The class was rather boring, as the teacher tried to teach us a song using the notes of a song I’d never heard of before, ‘Billy Boy’, when all I needed was to hear the tune and I would have figured it out myself.
When I entered junior high school I chose to play the trumpet. They gave us our instruments and showed us how to make a sound on our instruments. Before I had my first real lesson on trumpet, I had already figured out how to play a scale on my own. My band instructor was not impressed. I wasn’t really a great player. Because of my playing ability, I was always given 2nd and 3rd trumpet parts. That, of course, didn’t play into my strength. I was always playing harmonies and never had the melody tunes to play, so I actually had to learn how to read the notes, which I was and still am not very good at.
As time progressed harmonies have become things I enjoy playing and singing when I know a tune. In fact, whenever I’m given the opportunity to sing for events like birthdays or songs that groups are playing and singing where I know the words, I will inevitably break out into a harmony that I’ve created in my own head to add fullness to the song being played/sung.
This does cause problems with those people that are around me who know the melody of the song but get thrown off by my singing. Instead of a harmonious piece, we end up with a collection of notes that might resemble the song that everyone knows but in a rather discordant way. In turn, I get very frustrated when a group starts singing a song that I know, which I could harmonize very well with, but all the participants start singing their version of the song in different keys. I’m forced to sing the melody which adds nothing to the song at all.
Having an ear for music can be fun. Now if I ever take the time to actually learn how to read music and play at the same time who knows what wonderful sounds I’ll be able to produce and perform.
