I’m so excited today I can hardly restrain myself from jumping up and down. I love to learn things and last night, when I should have been in bed, something about music finally clicked. That was Mum’s word, “One of these days it will click,” she would assure me. Some of you will read this and say, “Ya, big deal. I’ve known that forever,” and some of you will read it and not know what I’m talking about. I understand because I’ve been in both those places.
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t sing. When I was little and we had huge family gatherings at my grandparents’ house Mum played the grand piano, I sat on the bench beside her and we sang. As soon as I was old enough I joined the junior choir at church and when I was about 11 Dad bought me accordion lessons for Christmas. That’s when I learned to read music. Well, more correctly, I learned to read treble clef since the bass clef in accordion is a kind of shorthand which uses a single low note to indicate the bass note and a single high note to indicate the entire chord which is then delineated by M major chord, m minor chord, or 7 for 7th chord. I didn’t progress far enough to need more information than that so I don’t know what happens to accordion notation as the pieces get more complex.
But I’m getting side-tracked. I kept singing in the junior church choir and when I got into junior high I signed up for music vocal as one of my options. The talk around the community was that there was a hot shot music teacher named Marilyn Perkins who taught the choral program at Viscount Bennet, the school I attended for junior and senior high. Each year there was a band and choral concert at the Jubilee Auditorium and that was a very big deal. Being in Miss Perkins’ choir was THE thing to do. In grade 7 we didn’t get Miss Perkins but if we registered for music vocal again in grade 8 we got her.
I was awe struck from the first moment she walked into the room. There were two of my friends in the class with me and I remember “Perky” giving us some music and suggesting that the 3 of us take it to the organist at church and sing it as a trio during the service. We did that and having Perky for music in school made me increasingly dissatisfied with the music at the church. Miss Perkins was the choir director at a neighbouring United Church and, much to my father’s chagrin, I jumped ship and began attending that church so I could sing with Miss Perkins.
Along with choral music, I joined the folk club at school and learned to play the ukulele. I thought of it as just a guitar with training wheels and figured I could more easily sell my parents on the instrument because it didn’t cost as much as a guitar. At some point I ‘graduated’ to guitar and with the help of the other kids and the teacher sponsor, Barry Luft, I learned to play chords and sing along. I loved the folk club. We had Hootenannies and met once a week before school to learn new songs. I started a song binder consisting of lyrics and chord names which I still have. I couldn’t read standard musical notation for the guitar but I didn’t need to because everyone played chords. There were a lot of nights with guitars around campfires that have stayed with me.
Sometime around grade 9 I saw that some of the other kids, the high flyers in the choral class were taking voice lessons so I thought that would be a good idea for me too. Most of those high flyers were also taking piano lessons which gave them an advantage in sight reading. I took voice lessons all the way through high school, quit when I went to university, and then found a teacher at the university when I went back to do my BEd. I continued with the church choir under Marilyn Perkins and, when I got a job in Banff after university, I drove back and forth from Banff to Calgary so I could attend rehearsals on Thursday nights and services on Sunday.
During those years Marilyn coached me in singing until she became ill with her second bout of cancer. She died 2003. When I retired in 2008 I had the idea that I would finally devote myself to singing. I’d learn to sight sing and hone my technique and skills so that I could sing in more choirs. I started taking piano lessons with the express purpose of improving my reading. I was never particularly attracted to the piano as an instrument and after 7 years, never having gone beyond grade 3. I decided that there were certain things in life I no longer had to do if I didn’t want to. At first piano was fun because it was new and the learning curve was steep but I realized that I simply wasn’t committed enough to put in the work it would require to accomplish one of my goals: to be able to sit down and play for my own enjoyment. Since I quit lessons I have only sat down to pick out a soprano line in some of the choral music we sing. Clearly giving it up was the right thing to do.
Another thing I did when I retired was to start voice lessons again, this time with Elaine Case, daughter of my first voice teacher. Elaine is a knowledgeable, kind, and patient teacher and my technique improved quite a bit in the years I studied with her. I lasted longer with her than with piano, about 10 years I think. Again, it became a question of my commitment. I was singing at her recitals and I was progressing but I hadn’t found a singing niche that really suited me. I have a “big” voice which is not always suitable for small ensemble or chamber choir work and I still wasn’t able to read and sing my line reliably without a lot of help from others who could read better than I or from the piano.
I might have tried for the opera chorus but I’d kind of been there and done that as a member of the stage management staff at the Banff Centre and with the Calgary Opera for its first few seasons. I’m not fond of memorizing songs in other languages, learning blocking or wearing costumes, and my lack of ability to read would probably have gotten me into trouble as well. It seemed like it would be a huge amount of work, a lot of which I didn't like.
While I was teaching I took up classical guitar. I very much like the sound of the instrument and I enjoyed playing for a number of years. By now you can probably see a pattern. I’m not sure how many years I played and I didn’t take any examinations but I think I was probably playing at about a grade 4 level. As with my other musical undertakings, I got to a place where I simply didn’t want to do the work it would have taken to improve beyond the level I was at. It’s useful at a certain point in life to admit to yourself that you just don’t want to put in the effort. Luckily by this point I’m not depending on the amount of effort I put in to hold down a job or get a degree. I can simply stop.
By the time I stopped taking classical guitar, I had 4 guitars, 2 classical, 1 folk, (the second guitar I ever bought) and an acoustic electric that I bought just because I liked it. I own two of those guitars now, the other two having found homes with people who will play and appreciate them more than I do.
In 2015 Richard and I took a trip to the Canadian Arctic with Adventure Canada. The host and musician on board was David Newland. He played guitar, sang, and occasionally played ukulele. I stayed up late singing with the handful of people who wanted to keep the music going long after most of the others on the ship had gone to bed. It took me back to the hootenanny days and I had a blast.
When I got home I decided that I would buy myself a ukulele for my birthday. I knew the chord shapes from guitar but it really messed with my brain that a G chord in the first position on the guitar was a C chord in the first position on the ukulele. One of the attractions of the uke was its size. I have some arthritis in my thumbs and that made playing barre chords on the guitar, which I had never gotten very good at, even more difficult. The uke was smaller with a narrower neck and the strings are not under so much tension so it was easier for me to play. I also discovered something that I have never been able to do on any other instrument before except the harmonica: I can play the melodies of songs by ear, and sing the words in my head. This is an important stress reliever and I can do it for hours without noticing how much time has passed.
The disadvantage of studying something in reasonable depth is that you always have the teaching voice in your head. When I sing it is almost impossible for me not to think about whether I’m supporting the sound correctly, when and how I need to switch from one register to another, whether my vowels are placed well, and where I should take a breath. Those are all important considerations for a singer but it’s hard sometimes to get out of my own way. When I play one of my ukes by ear all of that falls away.
This year two official musicians were onboard the Adventure Canada trip to Greenland and Labrador. Tony Oxford plays and composes his own songs and he knows a whole catalogue of songs by other artists. Adam Ruzzo is trained in classical guitar and can switch from playing complex classical repertoire to playing folk, popular, and his own compositions at the drop of the hat. Shortly after the trip started Tony and Adam hosted a kitchen party. A kitchen party is a Newfoundland and Labrador tradition where “friends, family, and sometimes even strangers come together to share music, stories, food, and dance.” [
https://newfoundlandbuzz.ca/]
I always travel with my ukulele now and I showed up to the first kitchen party with it in tow. I was sitting on the side when Tony approached me and asked if I would like to do a song. I said I would. The kitchen party began and after a while Tony called on me. I played my favourite “The Logdriver’s Waltz” with which Canadians of a certain age will be familiar because of the National Film Board short cartoon of the same name. I played the melody twice through and by the second time some of the audience were singing. I need more practice in front of people because while thinking how cool that was my fingers got all fumbly and I missed some notes. Nevertheless, people clapped at the end and I sat down.
I continued to play from the sidelines as much as I could and soon Tony invited me up to stand with the musicians. I played as many of the chords as I could and sang with great gusto. Adam encouraged me by telling me quietly what chords to play and Tony invited me to sing a verse of a song by myself. I felt as if I completely belonged.
At the second kitchen party I became part of the onstage gang and stayed to sing and play after the audience had left. It was a great workout for my head because I’m able to watch a guitar player’s left hand and read what the chord is so that I can play it. That’s when I’m playing guitar. What I was trying to do that night was to recognize the guitar chord and translate it to the ukulele chord. I missed a ton of chords and some I left out completely but it was fun and nobody paid any attention when I played a wrong chord. I think that’s part of the spirit of a kitchen party.
Unfortunately I missed the last kitchen party. I’m not as young as I once was. The cruise was drawing to a close and I knew that if I went, I would love it, stay up way too late, and be a total wreck in the morning. I stayed in my cabin and packed instead. When I saw Adam later at the hotel he gave me a hug and complimented me on my singing.
I don’t often play ukulele and/or sing in public by myself and Jake has been gently nudging me for years to work up a couple of party pieces. I’ve started a few times but haven’t gotten anything polished. Last night I was noodling away on my uke and I remembered two choral pieces I particularly liked. I looked up the words to one, listened a few times to YouTube versions, and then picked out the melody in C. If I could play the melody in C, I reasoned, I could sing the melody with chords in that key. I found most of the chords I needed with the help of various cheat sheets. A couple of chords didn’t sound right and I couldn't find ones that did, so I asked Richard. He dropped what he was doing and came to my rescue. He asked if the key of C was a bit low for me.
I spread out all the info I had on ukulele chords, and the Nashville number system which had never really made sense before. I decided to try playing the song in D. I know some of you can transpose with your eyes closed but for me this is a very big and complex step. The basic chords were easy enough but when I got the the others I figured them out by looking at what they were in C and then moving up a tone to give me the minor and the 7th chord I needed. I tried that key a few times and it worked. I very smugly announced to Richard that I had figured the song out in D. He listened and suggested it was still kind of low for me and that I could probably do it in F.
I wrote down the Nashville numbers beside the chords I had for the key of C, and then tried playing the song in F using the Dial a Ukulele Chord chart that Jake gave me. I kept getting the shape for two fo the chords so I drew the chord diagrams of them on the side of the page. I palyed the song several times beginning to end using my diagrams and the Dial a Chord wheel. By then it was past 1:00 a.m. and I figured I’d better go to bed. So much for keeping up with the time advantage I got by moving from NL time to MST when I came home. I have been going to bed before midnight and getting up around 8:00.
Today I got up (later than 8) and tried the chords again. I now know I’ll be able to learn the words and chords in order to sing and accompany myself. This morning I looked up the second song and I’m planning to learn that one as well. I think a good key for it will be D, but if not I'll pick a different key.
If I learn to play in C, F, D, and G, I can probably handle most of the songs that show up at kitchen parties or their equivalent. I don’t care if I have the spotlight or not. I love being part of the energy that happens when people sing and play together. I’m hoping to find other opportunities to be part of such gatherings and there’s a little voice in the back of my head saying, 'Maybe you can learn to play melody and chords in the same song. I have no idea whether I'll accomplish that or whether I'll poop out somewhere on the way. I do love new projects. You and I will have to wait and see.
Thanks for persevering to the end of this story, and by the way, I have maintained my motivation for a couple of things: writing and woodworking. I can be pleased with that.
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