Music
in
my
life:
Music was important to my parents: my mother was an
accomplished singer, and music was an integral part of church
life so it was literally part of my father's job. He'd grown up
singing hymns in the village churches of Angola, in an age when
families also sang popular music together around the campfire and the
parlour piano.
They began training me early - not with a musical
career in
mind, but as a way to round out the development of a child. I had piano
lessons from Mom, and then had other piano teachers at an early
age. When we went to Africa they bought me an accordion to stand
in for a piano - a good choice, because I continued to develop my
understanding of scale and melodic structure through the keyboard, but
I also began to hear full-blown chords and progressions by employing
the chord buttons. I was exposed to African rhythms during those
formative years, too.
Back
in Toronto for a year in grade nine, I was
assigned the trombone in the high school band, and later
I picked up the trumpet - it was more portable. I continued my
piano studies off and on, also studying theory rudiments and
composition, and taking
exams. I practiced the classics to a grade eight conservatory
level and then spent a year at a jazz college in Edmonton, learning to
improvise and analyze jazz chord structures. In my late teens and early
twenties I was able to parlay that effort into income, playing five
nights a week on the
bar circuit with a country rock band, and a jazz trio in a local
lounge, for
about three years - until I got sick of being on the road and going
"home"
at night to cheap hotel rooms, often joined by drunken bar patrons who
somehow got invited back to party after we closed down the bar.
When I was at home, I taught music to
beginners. In my early thirties, when I got home from teaching in
Austria and in Japan, I extended that concept and made
a
living self-employed in my own music teaching studio. I'd worked
as
a hired teacher in several music schools belonging to other people, and
realized that I'd rather pocket the whole lesson fee than just a cut
of it. It was a successful little growing business and I had fun
with it. I had visions of continuing to grow until my little
teaching studio became a music store of my own, but after the second
year of operation, I applied and got accepted into teacher's college,
so I sold off my instruments, invested the money in a single stock, and
lost my investment that very fall, in the '87 crash. That was the
start of my education as a stock market investor.
While I
was working as a teacher, I ran a few elementary school bands and could
teach the kids
to play all the notes on their various instruments, but I didn't play
much at all myself, for a whole decade; then I got involved with the Scarborough Concert
Band
because they rehearsed one evening a week at my school, and I stayed
with them for seven years. After that, I spent three years with
a neighbourhood
garage
band
of "mature" musicians. The rock band practiced weekly and did a couple
of school fundraisers, 50th birthday
parties, and
casino gigs once in a blue moon - three gigs a year, we averaged. Not
much performing for all
that rehearsing. Mind you, the concert band had never booked more than
seven
concerts a year, and some of those would get cancelled for weather or
other reasons.
Now,
in retirement, I occasionally sit down at the piano or pick up the
trumpet and play alone, at
home. When I'm in Toronto I get out to a weekly living room jam,
described
below. I sight-read piano and trumpet arrangements
(pop and
jazz standards), play arrangements by ear, sometimes by listening to
youtube recordings, or
playing along to Jamie Aebersold, or Band-in-a-Box
backing tracks. BIAB gives you a consistent beat and control over
the
tempo, volume and progressions, with real sampled instrument
sounds. It sounds and feels like playing along with my own band,
right in my living room.
I'm no
longer a
serious or a well-practiced musician. Once I got deeply involved in
my teaching
career I abandoned my piano and trumpet for a couple of decades, so
that when I play now I'm riding on the ghost of skills acquired and
then left behind as a younger man.
I'll play with anyone, at least once. There
are enough music
snobs around, in all genres - I'm not one of them. I'm a knowledgeable teacher with a good ear for
pitch, progressions and harmonies, and a mediocre performer; but I
always did enjoy singing or playing
music with other people.
Maybe that urge has roots in the campfire singing we did as a family
when I was a child. I
have a clear voice with good range - hear the sound sample below -
but
not a powerful one.
I
avoided
joining
any
new
musical
groups
in
retirement in order to have no commitments when I
want
to travel, or go cruising in our sailboat. I was invited to rehearse with a big band, part of the
Sheraton
Cadwell Orchestra Group, and I was really tempted, but I had to let
that go - my week is just
too full with other interests to accommodate the daily practice I would
need to keep up with their
repertoire.
I'd
love
to
connect with a small group of brass players close to home,
or a small vocal group doing what a friend called "cocktail sets".
Nature
vs. Nurture?
I described my early musical training, and ascribed
my "talent" to that, but I often wonder if there isn't also something
more innate involved. My immediate family can all sing on key,
every last one of them - not a tin ear in the bunch. Furthermore,
they can meet up once a year for a family camp-out and
improvise multiple blended and balanced harmonies around the campfire,
completely a capella, without any rehearsal
in between those rare occasions. Growing up with that, I never
realized
how singular the phenomenon was, and expected to find those skills with
every group of musicians I tried to work with, but after decades of
working with other musicians, I now recognise how unusual it is.
To find individuals who can not only sing,
but harmonize songs like the samples below, first time through, with no
score to read, is rare. To find a whole family in which every
individual from ages 8 to 80 can do it is rarer still. The
following samples were recorded on a little handheld cassette player
with a tiny condenser mic in the family room of my parents' home one
day:
Quartermaster's
Store
Wimoweh
Ilkley Moor Bar T'at
Amazing
Grace
Here's a sample of my own voice, recorded one day
while I was home from work medicating a cold with a few glasses of red
wine, and entertaining myself with a microphone and a borrowed analog
4-track recorder. This short stuffed-up-nose-sounding bit
demonstrates the same harmonic abilities, on an old Golden Gate Quartet
song that I've loved since childhood: Swing
Low,
Sweet
Chariot
I
can "fake" the melody, chord progression and bass line of any song I've
heard, on the piano - a skill that is technically referred to as
"vamping" - well enough to play along with other dance band musicians,
even without rehearsal (although my fluency with any piece improves
with repetition). I know that there is a
sub-group of autistic individuals who have this happy gift, some to an
astonishing performance level; and perfect pitch is not unusual among
people with Aspergers. On the other hand, I can't easily remember
lyrics, and sometimes can't even remember the titles of songs I can
play; Deborah can often supply these for me. I remember faces
forever, even in dreams, but often forget names. Daniel Tammet,
an author and famous savant with Aspergers, can learn languages easily
and do high level mental mathematics, but can't remember faces - he has
to study still photos of friends and family before he gets together
with them. I find it fascinating that we each appear to have
different gifts and fall somewhere along several different continuums
of talent and ability, and that those on the extreme edges can often be
diagnosed as falling within some part of the autism spectrum.
"Parlour Music": In the summer
and fall leading up to retirement, I played "pick-up" with various musical groups, and sang in
a teachers' choir, with
Deborah. Since
returning from Florida this spring I've found a few
new informal groups to get out and play with, including a
once-a-week
living-room band - the modern 21st century version of the 19th century
practice of "parlour music". The weekly gathering attracts seven
to nine participants in any given week, out of a pool of twice as many
musicians on the contact list. I improvize
keyboard
bass for them, in the absence of a guitar bass player; that's
simple and stress-free for me because I have a good ear for
progressions and I know my chords and scales - but I can also come and
go as I please, since the membership is
fluid. I can also sing, play trumpet, and contribute keyboard
sounds like organ, piano, strings, etc. I think I enjoy this
approach to music making more than anything else, at this stage in my
life. Maybe I always did.
The parlour music tradition is alive and well across
the continent, and some groups, such as the Harlem Parlour
Music Club
(interesting that they spell "parlour" the Canadian way...), are
accomplished enough to have made recordings. Related concepts are
the
down-east ceilidh
kitchen party, the singalong, and the "song circle".
The
musicians
aren't
there
to
get
paid
to
play
for
an
audience
-
they
are
the audience, as well as the
participants. It's
fun and laid-back;
the creativity and improvizational freedom of a group like
this is a joy, and because it isn't limited like a gigging
group that stays small on purpose so that they don't have to divide
their pay too many
ways, you often have interesting new combinations of instruments and
players. Sometimes the song falls apart and you laugh it off;
but it often comes together really well and you soar, musically
and
emotionally. Four hours flies by for me, every time I'm able to
join in.
Here's something I wrote recently
to the friend who organized the weekly Thursday parlour music
group. I want to call it the "Beaches Parlour Music Club", but
his wife's name is Luanne and she is the main singer, so he refers to
it instead as "Lu and the Living Room Louts":
"Did
you
know
that
that
you
are
part
of
a
two
hundred
year
old tradition called "parlour music"? As soon as
North Americans could afford to buy pianos for their homes and pay for
piano lessons, the sheet music industry exploded - back in the days of
Scott Joplin and earlier. "Parlour Music" clubs sprang up in
peoples' homes. There was harmony singing, and other instruments
were brought in - banjos, ukes, guitars, etc. In New Orlean's,
where U.S. Army units used to disband, brass instruments became part of
the tradition, especially snare drums and cymbals, muted trumpets and
saxes. Fifty years later, rock'n'roll developed out of the loud
stompin' and shakin' gospel music tradition, radios were widespread and
mobile, there was a booming market for vinyl records, music clubs that
were any good became limited-personnel bands and moved out of the
parlours, into studios and onto stages. In small venues,
jukeboxes replaced live musicians. Somehow by the 60's,
intimidated by all the top talent that they could hear on the airwaves,
and not as keen to invest in electric guitars and amps as furniture for
their living rooms, people just weren't as interested in making their
own music anymore.
"One of the cool
things about parlour music is that
you can do all kinds of ballads and interesting "listening" tunes,
because there's no pressure to keep a dance floor filled all the
time. Plus you can take breaks when you feel like it, even while
the other musicians are playing; enjoy a
beverage while playing, stray from the charts and try some interesting
improvizational changes without freaking out the band leader...I prefer
jam sessions and parlour music to treating music like a job, playing in
a band."
Concert-going: For years, our
friends Pat and Clare
Taplin
have invited us several times a year to Tafelmusik
concerts, where they have the four best seats in the house, and we go
to a variety of other random concerts that strike our fancy, including
the monthly Acoustic Harvest series, which takes place in a local
church basement. The last group we heard was terrific, and
representative of the talent and type of music to expect - folk
and bluegrass, as often as not. There are sound samples on their
website: Moo'd Swing. Another
example is the duo-led group My Sweet
Patootie, who also have sound samples on their site. And we
heard James Taylor and Carol King this summer at the Air Canada
Centre.