Count Me In
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practise — with a metronome
You can read the first part of this story here
When I lived in Madrid, the accommodation options for foreign males were limited. One apartment I lived in was a dismal concrete pre-fab in the misnamed Casa de Campo. Paper thin walls exposed me to my next door neigbour’s one-single-juke-box. It played Soft Cell’s What! — all day every day.
Then a new flat-mate was foisted upon me. ‘Un estudiante chinesa,’ my landlord announced, with a burst of air drumming. ‘El toca el tambor’
A drummer? Time to return to the rooms for rent small ads.
But Wei Lee did not move in with a full set of high hats and clashing cymbals. His luggage consisted of a single sports bag, packed with pasta. The only equipment he had with him was a small metronome.
With this he would practice quietly, hour after hour, breaking only to cook his macaroni. It didn’t disturb me — in fact, it was a soothing distraction from the open-all-hours Soft-Cellathon.
But what was the deal with the metronome? I got that Wei was a post-grad, living on a very tight budget. Couldn’t it at least stretch to some sticks or a tambourine?
‘El metronome es importante por las musica?’ I asked tentatively
‘Fundamental,’ he replied with a smile.
Many years later a scribbled note appeared in my daughter’s piano practice book ‘metronome would be useful’.
I was keen to oblige. ‘You use it to help keep time,’ I said, proudly unveiling one I had ordered from ebay. ‘To make sure you’re not playing too fast or too slowly. You’ve been taught about tempo, right?’
She shrugged but I could hear she grasped the concept in her playing. From the start she had displayed natural musical attributes: a good voice, hand eye coordination, accuracy. The only thing I trumped her on was enthusiasm.
‘I’ve read that even the best musicians have to work on keeping time accurately. You see there are different — ’
‘What number?’ she interrupted.
I was as usual, straying beyond the strict confines of Mrs Deynes homework. This was always completed in full and on time — but was never the basis for further improvisation. Nor did practice-time ever knowingly extend beyond the twenty minute minimum suggested by Mrs D.
I slowly realised that she thought of music as like any other school subject. They gave you things to do and you did them. Then you went back on your phone. She would no more play piano for fun than she would while away her down time exploring the periodic table.
Fair enough. I never obliged her to complete levels or take exams in tiger-dad fashion. It thrilled me that she had sang in choirs and on big stages — and that she had overcome her intense shyness enough to take part in regular piano recitals at school. I loved these and listening to her practise.
Eventually, though, her contract to study music reached its expiration point. At sixteen she moved from school to college and away from the piano.
I still insisted on carols at Christmas but that apart her musical journey was now exclusively via YouTube, TikTock and her Spotify playlist.
As the strains of the Facetime piano recitals faded away, a void opened. I needed music in my life, not just listening — I’d always done that — but making it. Was it too late to have another go? To step up to the stool myself. I would never be any good but so what? I only had myself to please and I was an indulgent judge.
I dusted down a clunky old keyboard and went looking online for a Mr or Ms Miyagi, a maestro with the time and patience to teach me the ropes. I found one, Mr H, who ran a music academy in Portland Oregon. I couldn’t go there but I could watch take his classes via YouTube.
The mission was to learn and pressing the right notes in (roughly) the right order, as Andre Previn advised. Within weeks I had requisitioned my daughter’s piano and was practising every day. For the first time in my musical life, I made progress
My teacher was not a grumpy handyman down on his luck. Mr H’s simple secret sauce was that every beginner is a keen seven-year-old. His mantra was and is ‘experience before explanation’. Start with the songs, only introducing theory when it practically aids learning. So the notes on the page started as do-rei-me which I learned was called solfege which linked to the dots which ….
It worked for me. At the end of ten videos Mr H spoke to all the students in his online classroom. ‘You have reached the end of Unit One. Great job! Give me a high five.’
I confess that my palms briefly shot up to touch the screen.
Six months after starting piano, I saw a notice for a local community choir. It invited ‘all voices’ and promised that no experience was necessary. Emboldened by modest gains at the keyboard — I could now manage Let Us Chase the Squirrel in C!— I went along to a practice. As the creaky church door swung open, I felt that old sinking feeling. Who do you think you are? They’ll bounce you out onto the pavement
We did a few vocal exercises. During one of the change overs, the conductor approached me with the sheet music. ‘What kind of voice are you?’
A very bad one. I’ll get my coat
‘High or low?’
‘I think I’m high,’ I found myself saying. What was that based on? No idea. Musical instinct? A vague sense that the one song anyone had asked me to sing had high notes?
To my amazement this was the right answer. ‘Yes, I thought so,’ she said. ‘Good. Go and stand with the sops.’
And that was that. I was one of two tenors on Team Soprano. She called out ‘starting note’.
1–2–3–4–1. I started to sing. I’m singing still.
You can read the first part of this story here
