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I've got a new hobby.
I fiddle with Kirsty.
No really, I do. We get out our instruments and...
Ok, I'll stop being smutty, especially given you knew it was nothing that interesting anyway.
It is interesting though, for me anyway, because I've done something I never thought I'd do. I've dusted off my violin, and every couple of weeks I go out and I play folk music.
And it's both utterly bizarre and utterly brilliant.
It's also both much, much easier than much of the music I've played before, and impossibly much harder.
There's no written music. They don't even call it music. Instead, very scathingly, they call it dots. We sit there, in someone's front room, or upstairs in a pub, and someone plays a tune, and then everyone else picks up their violins (which I am having to learn to call a fiddle, but it is, as I had to explain to a friend the other day, exactly the same instrument) and plays the same tune, while I struggle to work out what note they started on and maybe work it out by the time they've finished.
Eventually, someone says Who wants the dots? and I, sheepishly, stick up my hand and say Me!
I just wasn't taught that way. If you learnt music in school, or with a teacher at home, or whatever, you'll almost certainly have learned as I did. I was taught to read
music, and the music, like the text in literature, is the thing from which all else flows. A friend was recently telling me that she asked her daughter's piano teacher to teach her (the daughter) to play some tunes she already knew because she thought she'd enjoy it. He explained that he doesn't give his pupils pieces they know because then they play by ear, and don't learn to read the music.
This is the absolute opposite of how, I am discovering, folk music works. In classical, you play what you see; in folk, what you hear. So I find myself trying to
unlearn my years of training, and re-educate my ears so that I can reproduce what I hear
with my fingers.
But while sometimes that feels virtually impossible, parts of the folk are easier too. If the truth be told, I wasn't much of a classical violinist (and anyway I actually abandoned it and played viola from aged 15 to 24) but even allowing for that, and in my rusty state, the folk music (when I do get to see it) is technically easily playable, at least at the level I am at (there is some fiendishly difficult folk music out there, don't get me wrong - check out this from Fiddlers Bid at the Cambridge Folk Festival). That, though, isn't what makes it feel easy. That's the non-judgmentalism of it. Classical musicians are very snooty about folk, probably because the notes are, mostly, less technical, but for the rusty fiddler, the fact that if I get it right or I get it wrong no-one cares because we're all having too much fun just making the music is refreshing and welcoming and inspiring.
I loved playing classical music. I loved singing classical music (it's how I met B), and I'd love to do either or both again, but it's the folk that's getting my toes tapping on a Monday night.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, 18 November 2013
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Bad news for Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Well, yes. He's been dead for 120 years for a start.
Not to mention the fact that his mother died when he was 13; he was gay in 19th century Russia; he struggled financially throughout his life; he eventually married, only for the marriage to break down after only two and a half months, and he was so plagued by depression that he killed himself by deliberately (some historians believe) drinking a glass of water during a cholera epidemic.
With all that going on you'd suspect that dropping six places on the Classic fm Hall of Fame isn't going to bother him that much.
Whatever the presenters might think.
Not to mention the fact that his mother died when he was 13; he was gay in 19th century Russia; he struggled financially throughout his life; he eventually married, only for the marriage to break down after only two and a half months, and he was so plagued by depression that he killed himself by deliberately (some historians believe) drinking a glass of water during a cholera epidemic.
With all that going on you'd suspect that dropping six places on the Classic fm Hall of Fame isn't going to bother him that much.
Whatever the presenters might think.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Soundtrack to our Son.
Did you give birth to music?
I flatly refused the first time. B was keen on the idea. He would be. He likes a constant backdrop of anything from Charles Ives to Charles Aznavour, but I know myself and I realised that in the stress and pain of labour, the wrong song could be fatal to my irritation levels, and there was then a distinct possibility that the cd player might end up being used as an offensive weapon.
So L was born only to the melodious tones of her mother's voice. Apparently I swore. A lot.
When it came to A and S though, we were firmly told by the surgeon that we really ought to bring in a cd, as otherwise our daughters would be born to magic fm. Now I don't want to be rude about magic fm which has, after all, brought me hours of cheesy listening pleasure, but it is certainly true to say that it has the shortest playlist of any radio station I've ever listened to and Celine Dion is always on it. Even I wasn't prepared to have the girls' first auditory experience of the outside world be that horrendous.
So B made a playlist. Weeks of thought went into it, culminating a heated debate of the irrational sort that only a woman 35-weeks pregnant with twins can achieve. B wanted the Killers. I refused to have my babies born to the line, "Are we human?" I still maintain it was the right decision. The first song ended up being Here come the girls (Ernie K Doe, not the Sugababes, although EMI have taken it off YouTube so I can't link to it, sorry), which gave the anaesthetist the giggles, (not such a good thing given he was waving a large needle at my spine at the time) and they were actually born to Aretha (sorry Celine....)
Two and a bit years later, here we are again. And if baby T* has turned, which we will find out on Friday, then silence and swearing will once again hold sway. But if he hasn't, he'll be coming out of the sunroof, and, on the basis that Radio Borders is not much better than magic, we'll need a soundtrack. So far, it goes something like this...
My gut instinct (which isn't really in my gut so much as kicking at my ribs) is that he has turned, and so the chances are this list will never be required, but in the meantime I'm going to have fun adding to it...
*T. To follow on from L, A and S.
I flatly refused the first time. B was keen on the idea. He would be. He likes a constant backdrop of anything from Charles Ives to Charles Aznavour, but I know myself and I realised that in the stress and pain of labour, the wrong song could be fatal to my irritation levels, and there was then a distinct possibility that the cd player might end up being used as an offensive weapon.
So L was born only to the melodious tones of her mother's voice. Apparently I swore. A lot.
When it came to A and S though, we were firmly told by the surgeon that we really ought to bring in a cd, as otherwise our daughters would be born to magic fm. Now I don't want to be rude about magic fm which has, after all, brought me hours of cheesy listening pleasure, but it is certainly true to say that it has the shortest playlist of any radio station I've ever listened to and Celine Dion is always on it. Even I wasn't prepared to have the girls' first auditory experience of the outside world be that horrendous.
So B made a playlist. Weeks of thought went into it, culminating a heated debate of the irrational sort that only a woman 35-weeks pregnant with twins can achieve. B wanted the Killers. I refused to have my babies born to the line, "Are we human?" I still maintain it was the right decision. The first song ended up being Here come the girls (Ernie K Doe, not the Sugababes, although EMI have taken it off YouTube so I can't link to it, sorry), which gave the anaesthetist the giggles, (not such a good thing given he was waving a large needle at my spine at the time) and they were actually born to Aretha (sorry Celine....)
Two and a bit years later, here we are again. And if baby T* has turned, which we will find out on Friday, then silence and swearing will once again hold sway. But if he hasn't, he'll be coming out of the sunroof, and, on the basis that Radio Borders is not much better than magic, we'll need a soundtrack. So far, it goes something like this...
Here comes the "sun"And maybe, optimistically, a new dawn, a new day, a new life... Feeling Good.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother
Baby love
Boys, boys, boys (although actually I've just listened to it for the first time since about 1986 and it's awful, so maybe not. You have been warned).
Mad about the boy
My gut instinct (which isn't really in my gut so much as kicking at my ribs) is that he has turned, and so the chances are this list will never be required, but in the meantime I'm going to have fun adding to it...
*T. To follow on from L, A and S.
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Last time
The last time was last week. I know that much.
The thing is though, I don't know when last week. I wasn't watching. It happened, it passed and it'll never happen again.
It's not a big deal. Really it isn't. It's only that we've stopped lifting L for a wee before we go to bed. She is officially dry at night. Another step on the road to independence.
And I'm proud of that, and of her. But (and I never thought I'd miss anything about potty training), I sort of miss the lift. The sleepy sausage snuggling into me, barely waking. The relaxed heft of her in my arms.
But what's actually getting to me is that I didn't notice the last time. It's odd, isn't it, this parenting malarkey? They grow up without you noticing. There have been lots of last times, some good, some not so: the last breast feed, the last night feed, the last time in the baby bath, the last nappy, the last bowl of mush...
And it bothers me that they seem to happen without you noticing. I love watching my girls grow up, but I also loved having them small and dependent, and as each milestone is reached I want to mark it. To put a flag in the moment of change. To take a snapshot, mental or otherwise, so that I will notice and remember that this was the day I picked her up for the last time, or this was the day she stopped having a bedtime story, or this was the day she decided she could sleep without her "Friend".
There's a moment in (low-brow reference alert) Mamma Mia where Meryl Streep's character sits, on the morning of her daughter's wedding, looking at her childhood bedroom and sings "She keeps on growing, slipping through my fingers all the time". It made me cry, the first time I saw it, and I still can't listen to it, or indeed, it appears, type it out, without that pernicious lump forming in my throat.
Because that's it, isn't it? Each step they take, each milestone they reach, each moment I miss is another marker on the path away from me. A path that I set them on, and that I am doing everything I can to make sure they follow. But it still feels like they're slipping away, taking the moments themselves with them.
The thing is though, I don't know when last week. I wasn't watching. It happened, it passed and it'll never happen again.
It's not a big deal. Really it isn't. It's only that we've stopped lifting L for a wee before we go to bed. She is officially dry at night. Another step on the road to independence.
And I'm proud of that, and of her. But (and I never thought I'd miss anything about potty training), I sort of miss the lift. The sleepy sausage snuggling into me, barely waking. The relaxed heft of her in my arms.
But what's actually getting to me is that I didn't notice the last time. It's odd, isn't it, this parenting malarkey? They grow up without you noticing. There have been lots of last times, some good, some not so: the last breast feed, the last night feed, the last time in the baby bath, the last nappy, the last bowl of mush...
And it bothers me that they seem to happen without you noticing. I love watching my girls grow up, but I also loved having them small and dependent, and as each milestone is reached I want to mark it. To put a flag in the moment of change. To take a snapshot, mental or otherwise, so that I will notice and remember that this was the day I picked her up for the last time, or this was the day she stopped having a bedtime story, or this was the day she decided she could sleep without her "Friend".
There's a moment in (low-brow reference alert) Mamma Mia where Meryl Streep's character sits, on the morning of her daughter's wedding, looking at her childhood bedroom and sings "She keeps on growing, slipping through my fingers all the time". It made me cry, the first time I saw it, and I still can't listen to it, or indeed, it appears, type it out, without that pernicious lump forming in my throat.
Because that's it, isn't it? Each step they take, each milestone they reach, each moment I miss is another marker on the path away from me. A path that I set them on, and that I am doing everything I can to make sure they follow. But it still feels like they're slipping away, taking the moments themselves with them.
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Songs and Stories (and Haiti)
Firstly, thanks to Brit in Bosnia for tagging me for this one. I love your story and you've certainly got me thinking...
The thing is, I'm not one of those people who has a soundtrack to my life. Words are more my thing; B does the music. I do the words. Ironic really that we met singing, but it's true to say that I can only remember a tune if I remember the words first. No words, no tune. When B and I were first going out he gave me some cds of music that he loved, among them Beethoven Violin Concerto and Rachmaninov Second Symphony. Despite coming from a classical, rather than pop-loving, family, I'd never heard either of them before.
Apart from the time I played them in a concert series in Cambridge and Paris about four years previously. A fact I only remembered when B found the concert programme a month or so after he gave me the cds. Oops.
So you'll see, I don't have a soundtrack to my life. I don't associate particular songs or pieces of music with particular events. So thinking about this meme has really got me racking my brains.
Should it be the first song I remember hearing on the radio - Super Trouper. As I say, my parents are classical music people (why did they think you had to be one or the other? I'm certainly not) and we just didn't have pop music at home. So I heard this in someone else's car on the school run. Our dog at the time was called Trooper. Aged 7 that was all it took to be my favourite song. The dog must have died about 20 years ago, but Abba still reminds me.
Or perhaps the first album I bought. Kylie. Before she was cool. Or maybe not. Or Take on me, which is just an awesome song and reminds me of my brother and the time I went to see him sing at a concert in Egham and got on a train to Esher instead. It turns out they're not the same place.
Or the songs that plot my relationship with B. We met in 2002. The first piece of music we sang together as a couple was Bach's St John Passion. We had the chorale, In Meines Herzens Grunde, at our wedding. But that was years into the future. In 2002 we went out for about six months and I fell irrevocably in love, before he had a moment of madness and dumped me. Fool. Have forgiven him now, just, but at the time it felt like my life was over. I remember days of weeping; the only time in my life I genuinely couldn't eat. It was the Summer of 2003 and anyone reading this will be thinking "Oh yes, that was really hot". Was it? I don't remember. There is a blank in my memory of about five months. The only thing I do remember is this song. B had bought the album just before we split up, and I played this obsessively; sitting in the dark by the stereo. Me and Nina, crying. Love me or leave me and let me be lonely. I'd rather be lonely than happy with somebody else. I meant it.
Fortunately I didn't have to. He came to his senses, did the necessary grovelling and we got back together. During the interregnum I'd bought my own flat and B came and helped me warm it. I remember a long night of sex, drugs (if alcohol counts) and renaissance polyphony...Oh, and the Proclaimers.
Reader, I married him. And the songs that go with the stories now are mostly to do with my girls. Build me up Buttercup, because it's a happy song and I can't not smile when I hear it. And because Buttercup's a happy name that we gave to our firstborn. Yes, she really is L K Buttercup C...
Or more baby-related songs: A&S were born by elective (consultant enforced) c-section. We were firmly told that we needed to bring in our own cd if we didn't want the girls to be born to Magic fm (could have been fine, could have been Celine Dion (not linking that one on a point of principle)). The last two weeks of my pregnancy, while I fussed about whether the builders would be finished in time, B was composing the perfect playlist. I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or scared when the anaesthetist got the giggles when our cd opened with Here Come the Girls... They were actually born to (You make me feel like a) Natural Woman, but it's Here Come the Girls that I'll always associate with their arrival.
But maybe it should be the song, with no story, that for me sums up B and me, and our family and how I feel about it all. And it's the Proclaimers. B is Scottish and it's a legal requirement that you can't be born north of Berwick and not be a Proclaimers fan. I'm not Scottish and before I met him I'd have gone "yeah, yeah, 500 hundred miles, whatever". But the thing is after nearly five years of marriage and three children,the sleep deprivation has got to me and I've realised he's right. They're good. Very good. And if we got married again, I'd have this as our first dance...
That's it. Over to you:
Potty Mummy (and/or Footballers Knees) - to give you something else to think about other than whether your stuff is all going to arrive in one piece (or not, if it's the last thing you feel like doing!)
I'm a Mommy get me out of here
And three bloggers who were new to me this week and whose writings I have very much enjoyed reading
Crystal Jigsaw
Naomi de la Torre
Notes to Self, plus two (and the need for Red Shoes)
******************************************************
It feels all wrong to be going from recounting the ease and comfort that is (and has been) my life (in which the most difficult thing I've done in the last few hours is to find all those links on YouTube) to talking about Haiti, but then that's precisely why we must talk about Haiti. The people there need us not to forget them. You know why. Please help, either through the Bloggers for Haiti justgiving page, or through the DEC.
Thank you.
The thing is, I'm not one of those people who has a soundtrack to my life. Words are more my thing; B does the music. I do the words. Ironic really that we met singing, but it's true to say that I can only remember a tune if I remember the words first. No words, no tune. When B and I were first going out he gave me some cds of music that he loved, among them Beethoven Violin Concerto and Rachmaninov Second Symphony. Despite coming from a classical, rather than pop-loving, family, I'd never heard either of them before.
Apart from the time I played them in a concert series in Cambridge and Paris about four years previously. A fact I only remembered when B found the concert programme a month or so after he gave me the cds. Oops.
So you'll see, I don't have a soundtrack to my life. I don't associate particular songs or pieces of music with particular events. So thinking about this meme has really got me racking my brains.
Should it be the first song I remember hearing on the radio - Super Trouper. As I say, my parents are classical music people (why did they think you had to be one or the other? I'm certainly not) and we just didn't have pop music at home. So I heard this in someone else's car on the school run. Our dog at the time was called Trooper. Aged 7 that was all it took to be my favourite song. The dog must have died about 20 years ago, but Abba still reminds me.
Or perhaps the first album I bought. Kylie. Before she was cool. Or maybe not. Or Take on me, which is just an awesome song and reminds me of my brother and the time I went to see him sing at a concert in Egham and got on a train to Esher instead. It turns out they're not the same place.
Or the songs that plot my relationship with B. We met in 2002. The first piece of music we sang together as a couple was Bach's St John Passion. We had the chorale, In Meines Herzens Grunde, at our wedding. But that was years into the future. In 2002 we went out for about six months and I fell irrevocably in love, before he had a moment of madness and dumped me. Fool. Have forgiven him now, just, but at the time it felt like my life was over. I remember days of weeping; the only time in my life I genuinely couldn't eat. It was the Summer of 2003 and anyone reading this will be thinking "Oh yes, that was really hot". Was it? I don't remember. There is a blank in my memory of about five months. The only thing I do remember is this song. B had bought the album just before we split up, and I played this obsessively; sitting in the dark by the stereo. Me and Nina, crying. Love me or leave me and let me be lonely. I'd rather be lonely than happy with somebody else. I meant it.
Fortunately I didn't have to. He came to his senses, did the necessary grovelling and we got back together. During the interregnum I'd bought my own flat and B came and helped me warm it. I remember a long night of sex, drugs (if alcohol counts) and renaissance polyphony...Oh, and the Proclaimers.
Reader, I married him. And the songs that go with the stories now are mostly to do with my girls. Build me up Buttercup, because it's a happy song and I can't not smile when I hear it. And because Buttercup's a happy name that we gave to our firstborn. Yes, she really is L K Buttercup C...
Or more baby-related songs: A&S were born by elective (consultant enforced) c-section. We were firmly told that we needed to bring in our own cd if we didn't want the girls to be born to Magic fm (could have been fine, could have been Celine Dion (not linking that one on a point of principle)). The last two weeks of my pregnancy, while I fussed about whether the builders would be finished in time, B was composing the perfect playlist. I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or scared when the anaesthetist got the giggles when our cd opened with Here Come the Girls... They were actually born to (You make me feel like a) Natural Woman, but it's Here Come the Girls that I'll always associate with their arrival.
But maybe it should be the song, with no story, that for me sums up B and me, and our family and how I feel about it all. And it's the Proclaimers. B is Scottish and it's a legal requirement that you can't be born north of Berwick and not be a Proclaimers fan. I'm not Scottish and before I met him I'd have gone "yeah, yeah, 500 hundred miles, whatever". But the thing is after nearly five years of marriage and three children,
That's it. Over to you:
Potty Mummy (and/or Footballers Knees) - to give you something else to think about other than whether your stuff is all going to arrive in one piece (or not, if it's the last thing you feel like doing!)
I'm a Mommy get me out of here
And three bloggers who were new to me this week and whose writings I have very much enjoyed reading
Crystal Jigsaw
Naomi de la Torre
Notes to Self, plus two (and the need for Red Shoes)
******************************************************
It feels all wrong to be going from recounting the ease and comfort that is (and has been) my life (in which the most difficult thing I've done in the last few hours is to find all those links on YouTube) to talking about Haiti, but then that's precisely why we must talk about Haiti. The people there need us not to forget them. You know why. Please help, either through the Bloggers for Haiti justgiving page, or through the DEC.
Thank you.
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