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music

Treble Clef

Wednesday 2 December 2020

Today the Boy had music for his related art class in school. They’re working on the treble clef.

“I took the after-lesson quiz,” he explained, “and I got 3 out of 20 right! I took it again and only got 4 out of 20 correct!” His frustration was mounting to the level I’m sure it achieved when he was struggling with the material in class.

Checking school lunch. “Daddy, this is what I’m having tomorrow! It’s delicious!”

After dinner, I printed out the old methods of memorizing the treble clef: “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge” and “FACE.”

We went through his work together, and he made a perfect score. “That was easy,” he decided.

He noticed, though, that there are two D notes on the treble clef: one just beside middle C, and one almost up at the top of the clef.

“Two Ds?!”

So we went to the piano and started poking around. We talked about the patterns of the black keys and used that as a way to show which keys corresponded to which note.

“This is D,” I said. “See how it’s between the two black keys? Now show me another D.”

Day 71: Playing and Counting

Monday 25 May 2020

Games We Play

This morning, E and I decided to play a game we hadn’t played in ages: Pentago. It’s a simple concept: Get five marbles of your color in a row. But the challenge is that each of the four nine-by-nine quadrants can be rotated. It’s a great game for the mental manipulate of objects because players have to turn those quadrants in their heads and make plans to try to surprise their opponent with an unseen 5-row connection.

At first, the Boy just tried to connect five in a row. I showed him quickly how easily stopped that could be, and how I could simply build on my efforts to stop him and create my own row with a twist here or there. Then he got it.

Did I “let him win”? Well, not so much. Once he figured out the importance of the twist, I played a while without really paying attention to anything other than his obvious efforts and he sneaked one or two by me.

After each game: “Can we play again?”

Snack

In the afternoon, the kids brought the old Rummikub satchel out: “Can you teach us how to play this?” they asked.

Indeed — I could barely remember myself. Something about runs and threes- and fours-of-a-kind. That was about all I could remember, and there were no instructions in the game.

It’s moments like that which make me really appreciate YouTube. A quick search, three minutes of watching the video, and off we went, playing a game I hadn’t played in decades.

I last remember playing it in Nashville with Uncle N and Aunt L over the Thanksgiving weekend. We might have played it the last time we were there for Thanksgiving, which would have been 2005. Though we could have just played dominoes and Uno — that’s all I have photographic evidence for:

Uncle N passed away less than a year later from ALS, and we never went back there for Thanksgiving. So it might have been even longer since I played Rummikub. At any rate, the kids loved it. The Boy, less so because he couldn’t see all the combinations and such. L, however, fit into the game perfectly: that type of kombinowanie is just what she does best.

Yesterday

We watched last night the 2019 film Yesterday, in which a failing musician somehow enters an alternate reality in which only he knows anything about the Beatles. He subsequently recreates their catalog as his own. As expected, there are lots of Beatles songs in the film.

“Is that a Beatles song?” L asked as one started.

“Is that a Beatles song?” E asked with the next one.

“Yes, they’re almost all Beatles songs,” I explained.

“How many songs did they write?!” the Boy asked incredulously.

As a result, we listened to a lot of Beatles music this afternoon. They kind of liked it — we kind of encouraged them.

It did inspire some musicality from them. The Boy has a little guitar that he suddenly became interested in. However, it is missing strings, so I suggested he play my mandolin, which I bought in high school because R.E.M. had released Green, which featured the mandolin on a number of tunes. It’s a $100 plywood job that’s a perfect size for him.

Tonight, I worked with him on some basic ideas: pressing down strings just behind a fret to change the pitch. Chords? They’re a long way off. (Besides, I can only remember four or five chords on a mandolin.)

The Girl, who has been toying with a ukelele from time to time, gave it a try only to be shocked at how very different it was tuned from her uke. (When she first got the uke, I was surprised to find that, like a five-string banjo, the highest string is actually in the position where the lowest string is for most other instruments. They both just have that one out-of-place string that always gives me fits.)

We’ll see how this develops, but hopefully, the interest will remain.

When do I stop counting?

When is this quarantine officially over? When do I stop prefacing every post with “Day X”? I started the first day we were supposed to go to school and yet didn’t — March 16.

Day 1: Achievement Gap

Yet because we don’t have any coordinated national approach and since every state is easing restrictions step-by-step, there’s really no firm date for me to stop doing that. When we head back to school on a normal routine? (Will we do that in the fall?) I’ve decided that the most logical date to stop doing that is June 4, which would have been the last day of school were this a normal year.

On the other hand, I’m fairly certain that we will see an enormous uptick in cases after states have eased these restrictions. Just look at Cocoa Beach in Florida this weekend:

florida beach memorial day coronavirus

It’s concerning, to say the least:

On the Sunday talk shows, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said she was “very concerned” about scenes of people crowding together over the weekend.

“We really want to be clear all the time that social distancing is absolutely critical. And if you can’t social distance and you’re outside, you must wear a mask,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” (Source)

If we have an explosion of cases, the very thing we were trying to avoid, then this entire 70+ lockdown will have been for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Are we smarter than that as a species? Most days I have my doubts.

Counting

I’m on a run: I’ve never posted so many consecutive days on this site. Not even close. I’ve posted daily since December 21, 2019. Counting roughly, that’s 130+ consecutive days. Why? Why not?

Not only that, but for the month of May, I’ve written an average of 1,047 words a day. That’s like my journal writing when I first arrived in Poland and everything — everything — fascinated me endlessly.

Of course, I have cheated a few times: I included long quotes from books I’m reading, in part because I was honestly interested in writing a little something about them, in part (at least once) because I just wanted to reach that arbitrary number (like I just did in this paragraph). One thousand words. At least. Every day.

I can’t possibly keep that up. The quarantine is helping with that. But daily posts? Could I make it a full year? Probably. Will I? No idea.

Soundtrack

Tuesday 4 February 2020

The kids and I stumbled into a new little game this evening. The Boy and I were playing cars, and I’d taken my phone with us to listen to some music. He made a request for “Kid A,” a Radiohead song that he finds amusing.

As the music played, I asked him, “Which of these cars goes with that music?” He picked one out, and we talked about why it seemed to fit.

And that was the game…

The Girl heard us and came into E’s room to join us. Some of the choices were obvious: a Billie Holiday song led to fingers straight to the ’40s roadster in the collection; Creedence Clearwater Revival pulled everyone to the pickup truck; a Gorecki string quartet led to the oddest car in the collection.

The real blessing of it all was not only that we were encouraging the use of musical and visual imagination but also that we were spending that time together — the three of us. It’s a rare thing these days with our crazy schedules.

Concert

Wednesday 11 December 2019

Ms. R was the children’s choir director for our parish for a long time. Most of L’s time in the choir was under her direction, and like all the other (mostly) girls, she loved Ms. R. When she had her third child, she decided it was time to call it quits.

Shortly after that, L decided to call it quits with the choir.

Now Ms. R is back to help the girls prepare some Christmas music. This evening, they were hired to give a concert in a swanky downtown hotel…

The Swan

Tuesday 24 September 2019

Written in seventh period.

A just made my day — “The Swan!” she cried, recognizing the music playing. Everyone around her looked at her as if she were crazy. “The Swan! Camille Saint-Saëns!” Still, everyone looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language, which in a way, she was. How many eighth graders in 2019 even know who Camille Saint-Saëns is, let alone could recognize his work.

I find that, like poetry, classical music requires too much thinking for the modern ear. Motifs appear and then don’t reappear for many measures. Motifs are so long sometimes that it’s difficult to determine that they’re even part of a repeating pattern. The modern attention span is just not long enough to handle it.

Interruption

Wednesday 24 July 2019

One of the things I miss about living in Boston is walking down a street or emerging from a subway car to hear someone busking. Granted, there were enough buskers with little enough talent to make them a nuisance more than anything else, but every now and then, someone would make me stop, take a little time out of my day, and immerse myself in their world.

These guys, who sadly play in NYC and never ventured into Boston’s subway system (and probably didn’t even exist when I lived there — the sax player would probably have been a toddler then), have perfected busking: ten-minute sets filled with energy, dynamism, and a touch of humor.

It makes me wish that our family lived in a place with more of this type of thing going on.

Saturday in the Yard

Saturday 12 May 2018

The bushes in front of the house had just gotten out of hand: they shaded almost 3/4 of the height of the windows in E’s and L’s rooms. Every time I trimmed them, K suggested that I didn’t do enough, so today was the day: the bushes were getting violently trimmed.

That was to take only a couple of hours. I’d planned on mowing the backyard, trimming the bushes, mowing the front, and finishing before four. Two things slowed me down: E and the difficulty of radically trimming the bushes.

The Boy always loves helping me mow, which usually entails slipping between me and the upper bar of the lawnmower, resulting in an awkward position for me and generally slow mowing. Today it struck me: our lawnmower has rear-wheel drive, and so theoretically, the Boy could mow all by himself, with me just walking along beside to help control it.

When we got to the flattest portions of the front yard, I let him mow without my hand on the bar to guide it.

“I’ll just let you mow,” I said, “and then the spots you miss, you’ll have to go back and get.”

He loved the idea and promptly went zig-zagging across the yard. He tended to pull to the left, so he made strange arching patterns instead of the regular straight lines I obsessively put into our yard.

The period of time between the first bit of mowing and the second bit (the “flattest portions of the front yard” mentioned above) was approximately six hours, evidenced by the changing shadows in the pictures above.

In the intervening hours, we worked on the bushes. I trimmed; he loaded the cuttings into the wheelbarrow.

When we started, the foliage was so dense that it blocked most of the light and all of the sky.

When we finished, nothing was really blocked. I worried as I cut back the branches that it might be too late for such work, that I might damage the bushes by doing this. In the end, I thought that that might, in fact, be a blessing.

In between the first and the second bushes — lunch and a concert.

K and L spent most of the day inside, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Cleaning clothes, floors, bathrooms, and anything else that would sit still long enough. In the end, though, K had to come out: her garden beckoned.

“When will we ever have a relaxed Saturday?” K asked as we sat on the front steps watching the kids, who still had energy, play in the front yard.

“A relaxed Saturday? What’s that?”

Up and Down

Tuesday 24 April 2018

In the morning, we had the school talent show.

A time for the Girl to shine, a time that brought applause and high fives.

The evening brought the second and final round of the Battle of the Books. The girls got in on a wildcard, and they were terribly excited about the prospect of being able to win the whole thing.

They were asked to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the competition, and everyone laughed that it was definitely a good sign.

They were up against the school that, in their minds, was the favorite to win the whole thing. The first round went quickly: seven questions to each, no mistakes from anyone. But these were the easy questions — they questions they’d been given before. “The practice questions” the judge called them. And it showed: very little consultation for each question from either side.

Round two featured questions that they’d never heard. Gone were the immediate answers. The teams sat huddled talking about each question, and after our girls gave their answer, the tension immediately increased as we waited for the magical words: “That is correct.” Everyone trying to read into the judge’s body language, tone, facial expression. A slight pause from the judge and everyone thinks, “No! We got it wrong!” only to have that assumption mercifully shattered: “That is correct.”

And then it happens: we get a question wrong. The other team swoops in for the bonus points (3 instead of 5) for answering it correctly.

“Now team B will get their next question.” Everyone knows what this means: there’s only one way for our girls to continue. The other team has to get this question wrong, and they have to get it right to get the bonus points to tie the match. But they get it right. And the girls’ faces all drop.

The winning team comes over and shows perfect sportsmanship:

But that does little to take the sting out.

Afterward, the girls talk about the answer and they’re sure their answer was just as correct as the other team’s, but it’s for naught.

Or is it?

There’s much to gain from losing, and perhaps even more from losing unfairly. If losing builds character, as they say, unfairly losing builds even more.

Stabat Mater

Sunday 8 October 2017

The Girl has been singing in the youth choir for about a year now, and she was recently chosen to participate in a small ensemble to learn some more challenging pieces. Last night, she and the other seven members (ages 10-16) sang “Stabat Mater,” an a cappella, three-voice piece in Latin.

Two Concerts

Tuesday 16 May 2017

The Girl sang in her school’s talent show this morning. She sang “Dziś idę walczyć, Mamo!” which is a song about the Warsaw Uprising. She’s been practicing it for weeks. I’ve found myself humming it as I walk down the corridor at school. E sings snippets of it every now and then. K sings it as she’s working around the house. It’s infected our whole family, but what a wonderful infection.

After dinner, we got another concert, a performance of a music that’s thousands and thousands of years old, a music that both calms and excites.

The owls have nested in our neighbors’ backyard, and they came down for a visit today. The would sing and hoot, caterwaul and even almost purr. It was hypnotic.

Columbia

Saturday 4 February 2017

The Girl has loved performing for years. She doesn’t often have an audience, but she really doesn’t need one.

Rehearsal on Friday

On a weekend trip, she can entertain herself in the hotel room dancing about as if she were on the biggest stage in the world.

The performers

She can dance a little reel on the way from the table to retrieve a spoon for little brother’s soup as if she were part of a touring dance troupe.

The Boy
The Boy takes a picture

A hairbrush can be a microphone and the hardwood floors throughout our house make every space a recital hall.

Standing ovation

This weekend, though, it was a little different. It wasn’t the improvised routines that fill her week with little joys as she imagines herself on this or that stage. It wasn’t plunking away with her piano teacher. It was an auditioned role. A practiced and prepared role. And it wasn’t just her: it was almost three hundred kids across the state, all practicing with their music teacher after school, learning the same songs in big city schools and small rural schools. Students of multiple ethnicities, races, religions, and mental aptitudes with one thing in common: an ability to sing. A gift in common. A gift they are willing to share.

And in the midst of all this, like magnets to a pole, two Polish families found each other and the girls made friends instantly.

Upward

Tuesday 17 January 2017

The great Gothic cathedrals of Europe were designed with their thin walls, long windows, and unbelievably high ceilings to do one thing: make parishioners look upward. When visiting one as a tourist, one finds that all the other tourists are doing just that: looking up. Wondering at the marvels of creating such seemingly impossibly structures out of stone, structures that look delicate and immortal at the same time.

I can only imagine the learning curve involved in developing such a style of architecture. How many times did buildings come crashing down because of some hitherto unforeseen flaw?

In the eighteenth century, there was a revival of Gothic architecture, and this seems somehow appropriate as that was the age of Bach, who could compose music that even when it was descending in tones sounds like it’s ascending, like his Toccata and Fugue in F-major, BWV 540.

Tree Lighting

Friday 2 December 2016

The Girl sings in her school chorus, and this year they were invited to sing at the city’s Christmas tree lighting.

American Tune

Thursday 10 November 2016

Four years ago, I marveled at how some of these lines mirrored what I was feeling after a disappointing election. I still feel this way after the election in 2016, but for different reasons.

With an untried, inexperienced, president-elect of questionable integrity, surely these are, in many ways, America’s most uncertain hours, both for Republicans and Democrats.