music and writing
(This is in response to a comment by a just-graduated senior who said he wants to learn how to play jazz piano this summer.)
Music theory is one of the things I was quite good at in college. In fact, it was quite flattering: I took a music lit course as a senior for a distribution requirement I hadn't yet been able to fill, and I was so good at it that the teacher, not knowing I was a senior, tried to get me to major in music! I don't know what I would have done, though--maybe be a composer? I couldn't play anything well enough to make a living at it. But the composition pieces we did (albeit mostly simple chord progressions and variations on themes with harmony) were challenging, fun, and (I suppose, based on the teacher's comment) ultimately successful. Of the many things I've wanted to do but haven't had the time to do well, composing music is one.
Interestingly, although I now want to write some as well, that urge isn't as strong (though more easily gratifiable since I have had many more years' practice writing than composing). On reflection, I think part of it is that I see writing as mostly for other people--something to publish, in other words, and I don't think most of what I want to say would be of interest to enough people to make it likely to be published. Whereas I see composing music, like writing poetry, as intensely personal--something I would do for me, with no intention of publishing it.
I took a number of years of piano lessons when I was young, but I didn't start getting really interested in playing until I stopped taking my incredibly boring lessons. I suppose they were useful in developing some rudimentary skills, but that advantage was in the intermediate term more than offset by the disadvantage that they deadened my interest in actually putting the skills to use. I played some on and off through high school, but I didn't get really interested again until around college, when one of my friends who'd continued lessons (and with a decent teacher, who let him play real music instead of mostly-made-up pieces or pieces no-one had ever heard of) inspired/encouraged me to take it up again. I got fairly good in college--for a non-music person: I could at one point sit down at a piano and read music in one key but play it a step or two lower. I also got to where I could also play with some facility (though scarcely flawlessly) different rhythms in the two hands. After graduate school, I gradually practiced less and less and so gradually lost facility. Today I play little, mostly because my family has whined for so long about how loud it [my playing] is. I have an electronic keyboard in the country that I used to play (here) with earphones on late at night, but there's not really room for it here any more. Sigh.
Music theory is one of the things I was quite good at in college. In fact, it was quite flattering: I took a music lit course as a senior for a distribution requirement I hadn't yet been able to fill, and I was so good at it that the teacher, not knowing I was a senior, tried to get me to major in music! I don't know what I would have done, though--maybe be a composer? I couldn't play anything well enough to make a living at it. But the composition pieces we did (albeit mostly simple chord progressions and variations on themes with harmony) were challenging, fun, and (I suppose, based on the teacher's comment) ultimately successful. Of the many things I've wanted to do but haven't had the time to do well, composing music is one.
Interestingly, although I now want to write some as well, that urge isn't as strong (though more easily gratifiable since I have had many more years' practice writing than composing). On reflection, I think part of it is that I see writing as mostly for other people--something to publish, in other words, and I don't think most of what I want to say would be of interest to enough people to make it likely to be published. Whereas I see composing music, like writing poetry, as intensely personal--something I would do for me, with no intention of publishing it.
I took a number of years of piano lessons when I was young, but I didn't start getting really interested in playing until I stopped taking my incredibly boring lessons. I suppose they were useful in developing some rudimentary skills, but that advantage was in the intermediate term more than offset by the disadvantage that they deadened my interest in actually putting the skills to use. I played some on and off through high school, but I didn't get really interested again until around college, when one of my friends who'd continued lessons (and with a decent teacher, who let him play real music instead of mostly-made-up pieces or pieces no-one had ever heard of) inspired/encouraged me to take it up again. I got fairly good in college--for a non-music person: I could at one point sit down at a piano and read music in one key but play it a step or two lower. I also got to where I could also play with some facility (though scarcely flawlessly) different rhythms in the two hands. After graduate school, I gradually practiced less and less and so gradually lost facility. Today I play little, mostly because my family has whined for so long about how loud it [my playing] is. I have an electronic keyboard in the country that I used to play (here) with earphones on late at night, but there's not really room for it here any more. Sigh.