The Gift of Music

Taken out of context, the title I've chosen for this post can be interpreted in several ways: a gift certificate from Amazon.com? A CD wrapped in pretty paper and given at a birthday? An innate talent for creating sounds pleasing to the ear? Yeah. That's it. That last one's close.

I would love to say that I'm talking about me, but I'm not. Musical ability is an untapped undercurrent in our family. My paternal grandfather was a professional musician back in the Italian immigrant heyday of the early 1900s. To say he was a professional does not mean he made his living at it, rather, he toiled in a steel mill by day in order to support his passion. I don't really know much about the man; he died at age 42 when my father was a tender age 4...in 1928. What I do know is that he was a talented musician, and he played the accordion. I have photos. This talent was evident in my oldest brother who took accordion lessons and was able to play quite well on an instrument which was dying with the immigrant culture it rode in on.

I, too, have a talent for creating music, but it was a talent I discovered late. When I was a kid we had this cheap chord organ, basically a toy, but it was my first access to a musical keyboard. My older brother introduced me to "Chopsticks," and a love was born. In the 36 years hence I have dabbled with keyboards - the chord organ; pianos at schools, churches, community theatre auditoriums; and, yes, my oldest brother's old accordion - never creating anything terribly sophisticated, yet still creating. I never learned to write, so the things I created were committed to, and played back from, memory. Most have also been lost. Music has never been my number one passion, and with no training and no sophisticated outlet, the talent I possess has remained nascent. My love has remained the keyboard, and I purchased an expensive cheap one about ten years ago. It's a Casio I purchased as a demo model from some electronics and appliance store. It came with no instruction manual, no box, not even a power supply. It features an array of buttons that can create a bazillion sounds and rhythms. With it I have created my most sophisticated tunes, but, don't be mistaken, they are far from sophisticated.

As possessor of a new iMac G5, I discovered a little program that comes installed on it called "Garage Band." I haven't yet delved deeply into the program, but basically it enables anyone from an accomplished musician to someone like, say, ME to compose music. Shortly after I discovered "Garage Band," I discovered a Mac compatible, Plug-N-Play USB MIDI Controller musical keyboard. I won't go into the laundry list of its features, but I will simply say that its purchase rendered my old Casio obsolete.

My older brother, the one who taught me how to play "Chopsticks," now has two boys of his own, ages 12 and 9. Among their endless sponsored sports and activities they are each studying music, the older trumpet, the younger clarinet. With my recently obsoleted keyboard I thought maybe the boys' musical training would benefit if they had another instument at their disposal. My brother was receptive to the idea, and since I was giving it away there was no obstacle to block the idea.

The boys were typical kids at a keyboard: they simply banged on the keys with open hands just to hear it make noise. As I showed them the features I understand, their interest became more focused. I played a few of the tunes I made up, and I played "Heart and Soul," recording the left-hand, chord progression part, then played it back as accompaniment so I could play the right-hand part. Now the boys were hooked! The older boy was interested in how the keyboard worked, how to access each different sound and rhythm. I spent a long time showing him these things while he repeatedly slapped away the hand of his younger brother who really wanted to get at the keys himself. Their mother retrieved one of their musical instrument lesson books and we tried to show the older boy where the notes on the scale were located on the keyboard...the blind leading the blind!

After a while my brother told his older son that it was his brother's turn on the keyboard. They traded places and, after a few minutes of exploring the more annoying sounds the instrument can make, the boy started poking at individual keys. Suddenly I heard the melody of "Heart and Soul" being plunked out slowly! While the older boy had focused on the mechanics of getting the instrument to make sounds, the younger had focused on how to use it to make music. He had studied his inept uncle's pathetic rendition of "Heart and Soul," and he was able to play it back almost perfectly (as his uncles example!) the first time! He is the more expressive boy, as enthusiastic about doing plays and singing in choir as he is about playing baseball and basketball and soccer and volleyball, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But I am fascinated by how quickly he seized upon a melody, how he studied what he had seen and heard, and then duplicated it. I didn't bestow upon him the talent to play music, I just simply gave an old electronic keyboard. But I gave him a new outlet. I gave him a true gift of music.

His parents have the money and the circumstance to provide the boys with the music and instrument lessons that our parents could not afford. I wish now that I could have had lessons then, even if they had to force me to do them. I hope my brother and his wife will keep their boys on the path to music. I'd like to know that I had something to do with that.


dassall