Musicality

Am I musical? No, not really. Intermittently. But mostly, nah. I enjoy music, have eclectic tastes, as a matter of fact. But I don't crave it. Aside from having the radio or CD player active in my car while I drive, I can go for weeks at home without feeling a need to have background music playing.

Growing up, I wasn't the musical one. That was my older brother, who, as Mother never failed to mention, was always picked for the vocal lead in school musicals. He was the one with multiple eight-foot-long shelves of LPs of opera and ballet and other classical music. He should have been introducing me to rock-and-roll, but no, I developed a tolerance for tenors at a tender age. (Parental legacy? Big band/swing, Spike Jones, and Herb Alpert. Like I said, eclectic.)

My childhood wasn't a complete vacuum: I got infusions of popular culture from girlfriends and neighbors and some of the younger teachers at school or councilors at day camp--stuff like "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds", "Puff the Magic Dragon", "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog" and "The Yellow Submarine". I wanted to learn to play guitar, but my enthusiasm waned when my dad borrowed a guitar and signed me up at the "Y". It was a lot more complicated than it looked on "The Partridge Family"!

It wasn't until I got sent to summer camp when I was 12 that I started listening to the radio. That is, someone else in the bunk had a radio and left it on continually. When I got home, I began paying attention to current music, circa 1973.

For me, high school=DISCO. *grin* I remember KISS back in the day. Likewise, the Village People, KC and the Sunshine Band, and Gloria-I-Will-Survive-Gaynor. Making music? Nah. I wrote. Constantly. Often with WDIZ in the background as I put words on a page, but I wasn't musical.

In the summer before my senior year of high school, I saw a movie with a guy playing a sax...and I had a yen to try it. Now, I knew darned well that *I* couldn't afford a saxophone, and after the guitar incident, I wasn't about to tag my dad for it, so I went out and bought a cheap soprano recorder. I could read music (thanks to general music lessons in grade school), so I picked up a few books of pop tunes and spent my spare time doing that--also self-taught on harmonica for a while. Tried accordion (inherited from big brother, also rather complicated) and guitar again a couple of times, including bass, which I hoped would be simpler by virtue of having fewer strings. (Hmph. Not really.)

A couple of years ago, I became interested in Native American flute, through an Abenaki friend of mine. Got a bamboo flute, which is somewhat similar to the long-ago recorder (which I still have), and I tootle that from time to time. I'm not ever going to be a musician--R. Carlos Nakai is safe from me!--but it's nice to make a little noise once in a while.

Which brings me to the drum...a few years ago--yikes, seven or eight years, if I pin it down, I was somewhat active in the local SCA, and I went to an event where there was an Intro to Drumming. I didn't have a drum, but I semi-knew the guy teaching the workshop, who let me use one of his, and I liked it. Felt horribly clumsy and self-conscious--that sense of, "I ought to be able to do better than this!" that I always experience when I pick up an instrument--but I've always had a tendency to keep tapping the rhythm of whatever song I'm listening to...so I picked up a cheap doumbek a couple of years ago.

I've made peace with the idea that I'm not going to be a rock star, blues harmonica legend, or the like. I may not be a great writer, either, but I have slightly higher hopes there. Because that's what I've practiced. And yeah, it's complicated, but that's what I crave. That's the background noise I can't live without. Music is nice, but the words are a necessity.

Musicality

Am I musical? No, not really. Intermittently. But mostly, nah. I enjoy music, have eclectic tastes, as a matter of fact. But I don't crave it. Aside from having the radio or CD player active in my car while I drive, I can go for weeks at home without feeling a need to have background music playing.

Growing up, I wasn't the musical one. That was my older brother, who, as Mother never failed to mention, was always picked for the vocal lead in school musicals. He was the one with multiple eight-foot-long shelves of LPs of opera and ballet and other classical music. He should have been introducing me to rock-and-roll, but no, I developed a tolerance for tenors at a tender age. (Parental legacy? Big band/swing, Spike Jones, and Herb Alpert. Like I said, eclectic.)

My childhood wasn't a complete vacuum: I got infusions of popular culture from girlfriends and neighbors and some of the younger teachers at school or councilors at day camp--stuff like "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds", "Puff the Magic Dragon", "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog" and "The Yellow Submarine". I wanted to learn to play guitar, but my enthusiasm waned when my dad borrowed a guitar and signed me up at the "Y". It was a lot more complicated than it looked on "The Partridge Family"!

It wasn't until I got sent to summer camp when I was 12 that I started listening to the radio. That is, someone else in the bunk had a radio and left it on continually. When I got home, I began paying attention to current music, circa 1973.

For me, high school=DISCO. *grin* I remember KISS back in the day. Likewise, the Village People, KC and the Sunshine Band, and Gloria-I-Will-Survive-Gaynor. Making music? Nah. I wrote. Constantly. Often with WDIZ in the background as I put words on a page, but I wasn't musical.

In the summer before my senior year of high school, I saw a movie with a guy playing a sax...and I had a yen to try it. Now, I knew darned well that *I* couldn't afford a saxophone, and after the guitar incident, I wasn't about to tag my dad for it, so I went out and bought a cheap soprano recorder. I could read music (thanks to general music lessons in grade school), so I picked up a few books of pop tunes and spent my spare time doing that--also self-taught on harmonica for a while. Tried accordion (inherited from big brother, also rather complicated) and guitar again a couple of times, including bass, which I hoped would be simpler by virtue of having fewer strings. (Hmph. Not really.)

A couple of years ago, I became interested in Native American flute, through an Abenaki friend of mine. Got a bamboo flute, which is somewhat similar to the long-ago recorder (which I still have), and I tootle that from time to time. I'm not ever going to be a musician--R. Carlos Nakai is safe from me!--but it's nice to make a little noise once in a while.

Which brings me to the drum...a few years ago--yikes, seven or eight years, if I pin it down, I was somewhat active in the local SCA, and I went to an event where there was an Intro to Drumming. I didn't have a drum, but I semi-knew the guy teaching the workshop, who let me use one of his, and I liked it. Felt horribly clumsy and self-conscious--that sense of, "I ought to be able to do better than this!" that I always experience when I pick up an instrument--but I've always had a tendency to keep tapping the rhythm of whatever song I'm listening to...so I picked up a cheap doumbek a couple of years ago.

I've made peace with the idea that I'm not going to be a rock star, blues harmonica legend, or the like. I may not be a great writer, either, but I have slightly higher hopes there. Because that's what I've practiced. And yeah, it's complicated, but that's what I crave. That's the background noise I can't live without. Music is nice, but the words are a necessity.