The Minuet in G Major.
Around 35 years ago I decided to take a Class Piano class at my local community college. I had just bought a piano and wanted to learn how to play it. Class Piano is a class for music majors where they learn the rudiments of the piano: scales, chords, and basic sight reading. About two weeks into the class the teacher noticed that I already knew the major and minor chords and was picking up scales quickly and asked if I had any experience with the piano. I told her I had dinked around a bit and I played guitar and had used that knowledge to figger out the chords on the piano. I said I liked Bach for his mathematical precision and Mozart for his virtuosity. She opened up our music book to the Minuet In G Major and asked if I read music. I told her very slowly. She told me she wanted me to learn this Minuet. OK. I immediately recognized the melody from an early sixties Motown song, The Lover’s Concerto. She made periodic checks on my progress. At one point I told her I had the right hand down and was working on the left hand. “Show me”, she commanded. OK. She sat down next to me and as I played the right hand she played the left hand.
Anyway, long story short, we had to learn one piece for our final exam and naturally, the Minuet, was mine. I nailed it! In fact, I played it so well she wanted me to play it at a recital. I turned her down, because I knew I would blow it if I had to play it in front of a lot of people.
The next semester we had a different teacher. This time I had to learn three pieces. I cheated and used the Minuet In G Major as one of them and added the Minuet in G Minor as another one. Here it is on guitar.
I also learned a march by Bach.
I’m relating this story because thanks to an episode of The Mentalist where they had a blind lady playing Bach’s Prelude in C Major (which I had for a Saturday Bach a few months back), I decided to start playing the piano again after a hiatus of over 25 years. The first thing I learned was the Prelude in G Major. It didn’t look that hard. Two notes with the left hand followed by three notes with the right hand played twice. Claudia said she could teach it to me in two weeks if I lived near her. I didn’t think so but I was wrong since I learned it by myself in three weeks. The next thing I learned was the intro to Come Sail Away by Styx. That’s where I was introduced to the Alberti bass. So, I decided it was high time to get out my music book from Class Piano and relearn the Minuet in G Major. As per usual, I picked up the right hand in no time flat. The left hand? Took me a little over a week but I can now play it. My next job is to relearn it on guitar since I do have the tab for it, which I can read, and I had learned to play before.
I think my next piano project will be to relearn the Minuet in G Minor. Then, it will be time to slog through the Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition which I had learned to play about a year before my accident. After my accident, I devoted all of my energy into learning how to walk again and then, upon returning to work, outworking all of my peers so that no one could say that the only reason I had my job was because of Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) This was about 8 years before they renamed Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity to Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) since those programs had gotten a bad rap by providing jobs for unqualified blacks. Most of the blacks I worked with at IBM were hardworking and conscientious employees, but there were a few bad apples who blamed their poor performances on racism when in fact it was simple incompetence.
I remember when I crossed over from the Mattel Office Products Division of IBM into the Field Engineering Division. I went from fixing typewriters to fixing the top of the line mainframe computers. Little did I know that 35 years later two hours on the internet would trump that training. That’s a joke I’ll explain in a future post. Some of my readers already know what I’m talking about as it relates to an argument as to whether an iPhone is a computer. Because of the fact that there were not enough women and minorities in the IT field it had to be due to discrimination since so many women and minorities were incapable of passing the aptitude test IBM gave to prospective employees. Therefore, IBM had to quit giving the test. As could be expected by anyone with the intelligence level greater than that of a third grade pissant, IBM hired many unqualified employees and then flunked them out of training. In my class we had a black dude who was dumb as a stump. Hell of a nice guy. We all liked him but he had absolutely no aptitude for computer training. In the first four weeks of school we had four performance problems to pass. He missed every single one and he flunked every single test. An aptitude test would have weeded him out but aptitude tests are discriminatory.
We had a female who didn’t even know Ohm’s Law and was gonna be working on electronic equipment. She had no electronic or no mechanical knowledge. An aptitude test would have weeded her out. Instead, IBM had to hire her, pay to send her to school in Chicago, flunk her out, send her home and either find sumpin’ else for her to do or fire her. An aptitude test would have weeded her out but aptitude tests are discriminatory.
We had a Vietnamese dude who had language problems. I was his lab partner for the first two weeks. He couldn’t get the concept of symbolics in programming instructions. He insisting in taking them literally. I tried to drive home this concept to no avail. As such, I got a week behind everyone else. They finally had to assign an instructor to catch me up, which didn’t take long, (I passed every test and got every performance problem) and someone to tutor him. It was hopeless. He had problems with English and he was trying to learn a new language, computer channel programming. There was no way. Once again, IBM had to hire him, pay to send him to school in Chicago, flunk him out, and do sumpin’ with him when he got back to his branch. Turns out they fired him and he sued IBM. I don’t know what the results of that were. An aptitude test would have weeded him out, but aptitude tests are discriminatory.
But I digress. The crux of the matter was that I didn’t want people to think of me the way many of us felt about incompetent Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) employees. The job was number one. No piano. My guitar playing even suffered. I hardly ever picked it up anymore. It wasn’t until I started going to blog meets that I started playing it again. I’ve forgoten more songs than I can play now. I used to be able to play for two hours straight without ever repeating a song. I can’t do that now.
Anyway, I’m so glad that I saw that Mentalist rerun and it has me playing the piano again. Who knows? I might even spring for some private lessons. I wish I lived close to Claudia.
A good ear is the worst thing for someone who wants to learn to sight read music. My piano teachers and professors would assign music and scales, etc., to learn, and after ciphering out the notes by stepping out ACEG, GBDFA, FACE and EGBDF, and hearing what it sounded like, it was easier just to memorize it. And of course, if I happened to count wrong, or forget a key signature, I would memorize it wrong, whereas the people who could sight read would just read it right the next time. Sux. To this day, I can’t sight read music, and so I can’t really play anything, ’cause it’s too much work.
I have a similar problem. I learn a measure or a phrase at a time and memorize it. Like you say, that leads to memorizing it wrong. That’s why I am considering private lessons so someone will pound sight reading into me. I have the same problem with typing. I learned touch typing, but I type better and faster by looking at the keyboard while I type.
This is a good post to hear and to read. It sent me back to Anna Magdalena’s Notebook. J.S. Bach wrote such charming, interesting pieces for his young wife. A lot of fun to learn and to play. It’s great that you’re interested in the piano again. I can see that you had an excellent first teacher. I truly wish you would get a few more lessons and do scales. You would love it. Denny. The technical exercises would help very much with any piece you want to learn. Any teacher would be happy to have you. You’re so motivated and you like to do things well. Let me know when you’re redoing the Promenade. If I would be there, I probably would ask you to teach me how to hold a guitar and stream a chord. I always wanted to play guitar.
Claudia – I have started working on scales again. I’m practicing the G minor scale since that is what I need for the Minuet in G Minor. I pulled the Promenade out from the piano bench and it is in G Minor as well. Back when I previously played, I always practiced the scale for the key the music was written in so I automatically knew which notes were sharps and which notes were flats.
I know a lady from Poland that earned a PhD. in music from a major University in her homeland. She can play any song you have ever heard and many that you haven’t. She plays and teaches piano. She amazes me with the ease with which she plays. She is a master, but I guess you would expect that from a PhD in piano.
There’s no time like the present! Lucky you now have the time to practice and get good again, both piano and guitar. How I envy you.
As for the 35 years vs 2 hours thing, as much as it makes me laugh, it’s clearly a case of stupidly painting oneself into a corner through stubborn pride and ego.
Yep! You nailed it. He actually emailed me that he had just spen two hours on the internet and knew withougt a doubt that an iPhone was not a computer and I needed to “let it go”. At which time I told him to go fuck himself and thus ended our friendship. As Ron White said, “You can’t fix stupid.”