A Boat Missed

I wish I knew how to write music. So much of it I hear on the radio these days speaks to me, and I wish I could express myself in the medium. To convey a thought with such an economy of words, constrained to rhythm and meter, and in a string of notes and note blends that appeal to the ear is a talent that eludes my grasp. I have played with a musical keyboard and dabbled with a few notes, and found an appealing blend, but only in a very few instances, and never in a complete song structure. Never have I been able to put words to the music I've made.

When I was a kid, my family couldn't afford lessons for even one kid, let alone seven. My oldest brother, Jim, back when he had only two or three siblings (all sisters at that point), had accordion lessons, which he ...yes, accordion lessons. He recalls hating the lessons. Not long after that my parents were no longer able to continue paying for the lessons, and Jim reached the point of independence where he decided he didn't want to continue with them, either. Today he states that he wishes he had continued with the lessons, not for any latent passion for the accordion, but for the understanding of music that he has lost since quitting.

It seems to be a theme with many people I have known: "tedious" instrument and music lessons in childhood, to the point of a demonstrated lack of interest, or an out and out refusal to continue, and a consequent regret later in life of letting go of the lessons.

But I have my parents to thank for their acquisition of accordion lessons for my big brother because long after Jim had ventured off into his life, his accordion remained in our home. Brother #2, Dan, occasionally hauled out the accordion and played a few notes, pecking out the melody of a song here and there. His exploration of music piqued my interest, but I was still too small to heave the thing up onto my chest, and the straps over my shoulders to play with it. Fortunately, though, my parents had also one Christmas bought a cheapo Magnus chord organ, a plastic encased chamber with a feeble plastic fan inside that blew air across plastic reeds, resulting in a plastic tone. The organ allowed for unlimited polyphonics from the black and white keys as well as ten-button bank of preset chords in major and minor, but the more keys you pressed at one time, the less volume you got from the organ, as the pathetic fan couldn't blow enough air across all the open reeds, resulting in a sound not much unlike that from an emphysemic harmonica player.

The organ had come with a complement of music books that, despite bars of treble clef with the appropriate notes present, led this music novice through the songs via numbered notes corresponding to numbered keys, along with chord tabs in the pertinent places. Brother #2 inspired me here also, as he would tinker on it as well as with the accordion, which challenged me to imitate and reproduce the sounds he made. And as I had easy access to it, with none of the heavy lifting that the accordion required, I could at a pretty early age indulge my curiosity freely.

My parents — for reasons of their sanity, I think — made a permanent place for the organ in our basement, where anyone's tinkering with it wouldn't disturb anyone else in the house trying to do homework, watch TV or sleep. Yes, the organ at its loudest was so feeble that its sound carried not much further than the next room.

Eventually my frame grew big and strong enough that I could handle the weight and girth of the accordion. But since I couldn't read music, the accordion required me to use my imagination. I was never quite able to figure out the maze of the left-hand side chord pad, but the melodies I recalled from the Magnus Chord Organ books kept me occupied trying to find those damn chords, and, losing interest there, I experimented with chords and melodies with my right hand.

Thus began my love for keyboards. From that time forward no piano or electronic keyboard left unattended escaped my attention. If I could get away with tinkering on it, I would. That still lasts to this day as when I run across a keyboard in a department store electronics department, or I find myself in the home of someone who owns a piano, I quite seriously itch to play with it.

As an adult I find myself wishing my parents had "subjected" me to music lessons. I wonder how differently the few brief musical expressions I have created in my tinkering would have come out, how much more I may have been able to develop them had I some real depth to my musical knowledge.