Promise

I think I am about to break a promise. YEARS ago I got through the required “music” portion of my teacher education by promising that I would absolutely NEVER EVER teach music. I am sitting here counting how many years ago that was… almost forty years ago, 1973. Basically this has not been a difficult promise to keep. It has been quite a relief: no, I promised I would never do it and I will not.

What is it with me and music? I do not know. Certainly I like music, especially happy music. I can tell if something is off key – well I can tell as long as it isn’t me! For noises I make I cannot tell if I do them the same way twice (I have been told that I don’t). In third or fourth grade our class was to compete in the annual Christmas inter-school competition. As we began training in November, the teacher quickly located the person singing off key: me. I was instructed to mouth the words but not to let a single sound escape my lips. I was so stunned I didn’t see my best friend glaring at the teacher. Judy, who had one of the best voices in our class, came home with me after school that day and taught me to sing, two days later she took me to choir practice and the director had no complaints. I had a wonderful Christmas singing in the church choir but I never sang in class, nor did I bother going to the inter-school competition.

I have since sung in a few other situations, even in choirs. Generally I try to be as close to someone with a strong voice, or in such a crowd that I won’t upset the song. I’m best as far away from the typical women’s voices as a choir will allow me to get. When the last choir I sang in gave our only performance at Helsinki’s Finlandia talo I was the only tenor in a skirt… the fact that I managed to lose my shoes under my chair also made me the only barefoot member of the choir, but I don’t think anyone even noticed.

-So there are the challenges and some of the successes. But now I have a song which is part of the curriculum… I can ignore it easily – all too easily – or we can learn it. Now the easiest way for us to learn it is to play it on the recorder.
-What?!
-Yes.
-Why, you said it was a song?!
-Yes, I did and yes it is a song.
-Well then why not sing it?
-Which is more important? Shall it be learned on key, or shall it be learned in about 20 keys?
-What 20 keys?
-Ah well the 20 keys that I sing in when I sing.
-You can’t sing one song in 20 keys!
-Wanna bet? I have it on good authority that I never sing the same song in the same key, nor do I stay in key within the song…

Yeah, I see your exasperation. The problem is that everyone is expected to sing in the same key. We don’t expect things in “the key of me” or the fact that my key might just happen to change in less than the blink of an eye, not to mention within a song or from singing a song once and singing it again. So ya see, if we learn the song with the recorder, then bit by bit drop the recorder and sing instead, we just MIGHT possibly learn to sing the song.

Do I sound like someone who defines “going swimming” as putting their big toe in the water and claiming that as swimming?