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Columns
Music, melodies and memories I love music. In a like measure, I also love to sing. My mother used to say that I could sing almost as soon as I could talk, lisping out any song I heard that I then memorized. I like all kinds of music except maybe for that really high brow classical stuff. I prefer gospel music, as long as it has a nice melody and lyrics that tell the story of Jesus. I also like, as a secondary preference, that down home foot tapping kind of county music that I grew up with. Music has always played an very important part in my life. When I began school at the Charles Russell Grade School in Ashland, my classmates and I learned how to sing by means of the daily repetition of songs we were taught in music class: Songs like Flow Sweetly Sweet Afton, John Jacob Jingle Hiram Smith, Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet, Grandfather’s Clock. These songs became as familiar to us as was the ABC’s of reading or all of those dreaded mathematical tables we were required to learn. I’m sure though, that if we’d had our druthers, we’d have had music class all day. In a fringe benefit of those we did have, my fellow students and I learned how to sing any song in harmony. I have always been thankful that when I started school there was still room for such things in the schools systems, and I deplore the way finances have caused so many programs in art and music to fall by the wayside. Looking backwards down the years, I realize that mostly, those in my age group learned to sing the same way our mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles did. It was the same way in which they played the guitar, the piano, banjo, mandolin or violin, playing by ear rather than by note. I’ve always thought this was the best way, and for me at least, it was not all that hard a thing to be grasped. I have always said that some people are born with an ability to sing and to keep time with the rhythm of a song. Kentuckians in particular can recognize patterns in music, patterns which serve to carry a piece of music forward from one phrase to the next. And though they are for the most part self taught, Kentucky musicians are blessed with some God given instinct which lets them anticipate the chord changes in a song even before they fall into place. My family could always do this. I remember how they would gather of an evening to pick and grin and sing the old songs. Even Aunt Lydia, now almost 87, (nearly 7 years older than I) can still blend her voice and join in when we gather around her to sing the old songs: Precious Memories, In the Sweet By and By, Further Along, etc. And we usually do this in four part harmony. I’ve had people ask me how to sing harmony. I always tell them that except for some technical involvement with whole steps and half steps, you sing tenor by singing two notes above the melody, sing alto two notes below melody, sing the base part two notes lower than the alto. I play piano by ear. I have to fight myself all the time not to play too loudly. For this is a mark of most people who play by ear. I can spot them every time, for they always play so loud that you can’t hear the words of whatever song is being sung. To me this is worse than a singer that does not enunciate the lyrics of a song so that the words all seem to run together. As I say, I try my best not to fall into either of these habits. My daughter Deb has had several years of music lessons, plays the piano so beautifully that most of the time you can hear the music singing the words of a song she plays, for her touch is Pianissimo ( soft) where so written, Forte (loud) and Andante (stately, vigorously) only where it is required. I would like to play like Deb, but it is hard for me, for I play by ear like so many Kentuckians; Forte, Andante all the way. ©2010 Johnson County Newspapers, Inc. |
