Sorry!

Y’all, I apologize for being out of touch. I didn’t forget. Not really. But, I also didn’t remember. Not really. I am sorry for having been out of touch these past three months.

Over the past six months, I have been taking classes at Berklee College of Music. I started with Music for Beginners and then moved to Ear Training Fundamentals. Now, I am enrolled in Music Theory for Beginners. Each class has forced me to think about the importance of going slowly and being consistent as the way to learn new information, and work on a project.

Since I have no music training on an instrument (other than voice), I do not have the repertoire to understand and differentiate the sounds I hear. Musicians, this means I do not hear chords well – unless the bass is featured prominently. I also struggle to hear the distances between notes. I cannot think of a metaphor to “translate” this for non-musicians. Suffice it to say, I struggle with hearing the differences between notes and their relationship to each other. To be clear, these are the most basic things every musician should know.

In my struggle (and, quite frankly, my complaint), other folks have given me several different rationales for why I struggle to hear anew. One said, there is nothing wrong with your ear. Your ear is simply trained on Black music, which has a different set of sonic preoccupations. Another said, I think you might just need a tutor to sit with you and show you on the piano. A third said, I don’t think you’re being taught well. It might be helpful to watch You Tube for how singers do this.

Each explanation tries to account for my lack of understanding in different ways. First, we have the paradigm shift. My ear is trained on a lifetime of Black musicians and music styles. The major scale is Western music. Though we might find similarities between Black music and European styles, that relationship is more of a Venn Diagram than a set of concentric circles with Black music vocabularies inside European ones. Second, we have the temporal shift. Needing a tutor is about slowing down and personalizing the learning process so that someone can take me through a lesson, show me what is feasible for me to learn in one sitting or one week, and then help me understand it through repetitive exercise and consistent testing. Third, we have the pedagogical shift. I am being taught music lessons from folks who play piano or guitar or the vibraphone. Their tactile understanding allows them to read sheet music or lead sheets and follow along whereas I am constrained by voice: what capacity my voice has on any given day, whether I’ve slept enough, what my natural range is, whether I am hydrated, et cetera. In addition, the third person’s complaint was that I was not taught specifically how to practice new information as someone who is a vocalist. For instance, how does one practice hearing chords if you do not know the song and cannot play along on an instrument?

My solution to this particular issue is to slow everything down. Rather than practice all the intervals, I have decided to focus my efforts on hearing thirds. I do not know how long it will take for me to hear minor and major thirds well. Rather than practice all the major scales, I will focus on C, F, & G Major. I could keep going, but I am sure you see a pattern emerging. Rather than focus on all the topics I know are relevant, I have chosen the ones most relevant for what I do before I build on that knowledge.

There is a parallel to writing. In your writing life, it is tempting to focus on all aspects of the writing at once. But, each stage requires a specific relevant task before you build with other relevant tasks. For instance, if you are drafting: draft. Just write the analyses or the scenes. During the drafting stage, it can be tempting to edit or think about through-line or consider argumentation. That is not as crucial as getting the new words on the page. If you have a draft, then it is likely time to think about structural concerns. At that point, it is tempting to revise for clarity at the sentence level. That’s not helpful because some of those sentences will change. Instead, focus on rearranging and adding necessary portions to ensure clarity at the structural level.

In other words, the old advice rings true: keep the main thing the main thing.

I’ll be back in May. I promise.