Music Monday - Making rather than Playing (Part I)

Welcome back to Music Monday, after a week off for Memorial day... I actually had wanted to write this one then, but did fun outdoorsy stuff instead.

The last two columns were about my careers in the field of playing back music that's already been made.

I will fiercely defend the notion that a good DJ is - in a way - being a musician, especially when doing seamless mixing, weaving a musical tapestry from several different pre-made ingredients. But that still isn't quite the same as actually making music - as in playing an instrument that's more universally recognized and accepted as an instrument.

For me, my first taste of making music came with the piano downstairs when I was a kid. Like all kids, I'd bang on it, but unlike many kids, I recognized that the banging wasn't actually music. And I did something about it, teaching myself to play simple melodies, learning little songs, even somewhat learning to read music. My mom decided that I was a natural at the piano, and put me in piano lessons.

I hated piano lessons.

It was a combination of not getting along with the teacher, feeling like I already knew more than she was trying to teach me, and wanting to play outside with my friends instead of practicing and going to lessons. After a month or two, I quit the lessons and never went back.

Now, of course, I really wish I'd stuck with it! I can still muddle around on the piano, but I know that my personal satisfaction level would be much, much higher if I'd learned good strong fundamentals as a child.

There were also a few weeks in my childhood when my sister Janice (or maybe Karen, maybe Linda, or maybe all three) tried to teach me to play the violin. In that case, I liked the teacher just fine, but it still competed with friends and summer vacation for my time, and the violin was decidedly NOT cool for a boy to play...

Then in 5th grade everyone had the opportunity to take Band, which not only sounded like fun, it also got you out of the regular classroom for 45 minutes or so each day. And, since it was during school, it didn't have the impact on my playtime that the other musical endeavours had had.

The one instrument above all others that I really wanted to play, was The Drums.

My parents were rather emphatic in saying "NO WAY ARE YOU PLAYING THE DRUMS!!" There wasn't any of this touchy-feely crap that today's parents are screwing around with, it was flat-out, "NO DRUMS IN THIS HOUSE, MISTER!"

So I decided that a passable alternative would be to play the Saxophone.

My parents agreed to that, and found a used sax for me to learn on. The first time I slipped the strap around my neck I felt SO cool! Not as cool as I would have if I was learning to throw drumsticks high in the air and catch them on the beat, but still very cool. That is, until I actually tried to play my cool new saxophone... Then I was not so much cool, as I was anxious, to find out why it made such horrible noises instead of smooth saxy music.

Turned out it wasn't the sax, it was me. As 5th grade progressed, I learned sax basics, really learned to read music, and got my first taste of playing in an organized band. I also decided that it was a good thing I didn't get to play the drums, because the drummers had to do exercises that made my complaints about piano lessons look like nothing!

So I stuck with it, and played Alto Sax all the way up through 12th grade. Then my niece Feniffer ended up with my old sax, and as I recall it served her well too.

Interlake High School was a great place to be in band. We had this band director, Mr. Leo Dodd, who was about as close to a perfectionist as a high school band director could possibly be. Excellence was expected, and as is often the case with kids, we all rose to the expectation. We didn't go to a single band contest that we didn't place in, and more often than not, we'd come home with one of the major awards from the day. Interlake also had a good football team, which meant that the band did double-duty as Marching Band for the first few months of the school year. And Mr. Dodd being Mr. Dodd, we didn't just do marching band, we actually did formations on the football field while playing!

Looking back, I can't believe how much we learned each week! I guess we probably had two weeks between home games most of the time, but each home game would bring one or two new songs, and a new marching program with directions, distances and routines to memorize. And when Friday Night came, we'd all pile into the bleachers and play during every time out, every break, after scoring, really any time there was any break in the action. Then at halftime, we'd spill out on to the field, get to our starting marks, and make the magic happen. Those were SUCH good times!

We also did marching band in the spring, when we would march in the Victoria Day parade in Victoria, B.C. That didn't have any fancy routines, but we had to learn to march in strict formation, every row evenly spaced, everyone playing perfectly in tune, and NO SHEET MUSIC ALLOWED! For weeks leading up to the Victoria trip, everyone in the band would be tested and re-tested on their parts without reading the music. If you couldn't do it from memory, you couldn't march in the parade. And if you didn't march in the parade, your grade took an epic nosedive. Again, everyone always rose to the expectation and memorized their parts! To this day, I still turn my nose up at bands in parades who are reading from their little cheat sheet music...

My Senior year, I took an interesting fork on the band path, and played Sousaphone in marching band. (FYI, Sousaphone is the big, wrap-around Tuba that marching bands use for bass)

Almost all the tuba/sousaphone players from the year before had graduated, so on the first day of school, Mr. Dodd asked for volunteers to fill out the "Sousa Squad." He said you didn't even need to know how to play the instrument, he would teach you. But you did have to be a bit of a ham, and not be embarrassed to be the center of attention. By the end of his speech, most of the band was pointing at me... so I accepted the challenge and took half the sax section with me! Sousa Squad that year had 1 tuba player, a couple trombone players, a trumpet player, and four sax players who had never played any brass instrument. We may not have won awards for our sound, but we loved being the highlight of the halftime show! One night we did the classic tap-dancing song, "Tea For Two," with the Sousa Squad carrying the entire melody, and dancing on the football field. Pretty sure we got a standing ovation for that one!

It was also during high school that my uncle Richard was putting together a band for a church talent show. He invited me to play basslines on a keyboard, a sax solo or two, and also to sing. During rehearsals for this talent show, I finally got to play drums for the first time. The guy who was playing drums just COULD-NOT-GET a drum riff toward the end of "Desperado" by The Eagles. I tried verbally telling him how it should go, but it wasn't helping. Finally I asked if I could show him... He got up and handed me the sticks. Suddenly, I was VERY nervous! I had never actually played drums, not even one time. But I KNEW that I could! I had known it since I was in fifth grade! So I just did what I knew was right, and nailed it. He looked at me and said "well, why don't you just play drums on this one?" I ended up playing drums on a couple other songs too, and it felt so great to finally play what I felt I should have been playing all along...

Check back next week for Part II of this series, where I move beyond the School Band model and embrace the Rock Band one!