My Aspiration

I witnessed something truly amazing this morning. Okay, not so amazing, but really, really cool. Cognitively, I was aware that such an task could be completed, but it was the first time I got to see the process from beginning to end, firsthand.

Jeff, the choir director at my school is also an amazing pianist. Why, oh why, I am teaching class piano and not he, is a completely different story. For 21 years (yes, it's really been that long) I've played clarinet. I read single-line music. I read it very well, but it's a single line. In High School and College I took Music Theory classes that taught me all about chords and chordal structures and texture and musical form. Give me a musical score, a little bit of study time, and I can point these things out to you. As I've taught class piano this year I've learned that piano players think differently than us band-folk. They do not think in terms of single-line music because they are rarely ever playing single-line music.

Jeff leads music at his church on Wednesday evenings. Tonight he wanted to teach the congregation a new song that he'd just heard. This morning he came to school and put the song on the CD player. He sat down at the piano. The music started. He played 1, 2, 3 notes. The third note was the winner. He was looking for the key and found it. That note turned into a few chords. Now that he was in the right key, it was a matter of seconds before he caught on to the chord progressions. Then he started picking up the melody. Now he's on a roll. Now he starts throwing in embellishments. Now he's playing music on the piano that sounds cooler than the actual music coming out of the CD player. I am watching all of this with my mouth open.

We all know those annoying people who can play by ear. They know nothing about music but have this amazing gift to sit down and "hear" the music. This is not what he was doing. He was translating the music. In his head was a small music theory factory calculating chords, inversions, rhythms and notes. I know this because I made him tell me exactly what he was thinking while he went through that process. And I understood what he was telling me. It made sense. I got it. My clarinet-playing self couldn't actually do it - but I get it. And I aspire to be there one day. And I also want to run a full marathon. Unfortunately, both take immense amounts of training.