Wanna Buy a Trombone, Kid?

It has been almost a month since I last wrote a post. This happens every year at this time. With the start of school, and thus, for me, working three jobs, I get a little bit overwhelmed and simply hang on, until I get re-acquainted with the swinging of a crazy schedule.

And I think I am there. Therefore, I have booted up the computer, opened the word processing software, put in ear phones, and begun to listen to the music that is most likely to get my creative juices flowing.

For me, that is classical music.

You see, one summer, my uncle offered to sell me his trombone. I mentioned that possible purchase to my mother. Immediately she thought of all the noise, and the disruption, and the noise, and loud wailing of a brash brass instrument being played. She quickly responded, “Tell him you don’t want to play the trombone, you want to play the violin.”

I am sure she thought to herself, “I dodged a bullet there. Now there will be no noisy brass instruments in my house.” Her frame of reference was listening to the local classical music station and hearing the soft melodies from the strings of a world-class symphony as they were played over the radio.

That September, I signed up to play the violin.

My poor mother was in for a rude awakening, because every student, no matter how good they become, starts at the same place; a place full of squeaks, squawks, and scratches.

Over the years, with a little practice, as little as I could get away with, the squeaks, squawks, and scratches became less, and what I played sounded more and more like a reasonable imitation of music. In fact, when I was in college, I was even able to play with the college orchestra. If memory serves me correctly, I think they were quite desperate for string players.

None of my daughters played violin, however each of my three daughters took piano lessons when they were little. Eldest still plays, and plays quite well. In addition, Eldest and Littlest played the clarinet and Middlest played...well, I will keep that surprise for a moment.

As you can imagine, with three little ones who had to practice piano, in addition to the other instruments, our home was full of music most of the day.

Middlest, for her second instrument, decided on playing the French horn. I remembered my mother’s consternation over the noises that came during the early months of violin playing, I decided that I could live with listening to Middlest play the French horn. Besides, of all the brass instruments, I find the sound of the French horn to be most rich and lovely.

Middlest worked hard at playing and I enjoyed the sound of her practicing. Except for that one day, when everything she played sounded flat and blah. There was an odd feeling that crept over me as I listened to her practice. I decided to check to see if she was feeling ill. When I entered the room where she was practicing, I immediately saw why her sound was so flat, she decided to do her practicing while lying on the floor.

I took pictures on my phone of her practice method, but somehow they all got deleted. I discovered they were deleted after she used my phone to make a call.

Well, now that I have spent all of this time discussing the musical leanings of me and my family, I still have to write a blog post, unless you have already tuned me out.

The problem with classical music

There are several problems with classical music. I know this because I am a self proclaimed classical music afficionado. As I sit here writing this piece I am looking over at the piano, with a large classical music score opened on it. I can tell it’s classical music because there are no words between the line-thingys where the notes live. On the bookshelf next to me is a pocket sized Dictionary of Musical Terms, I think there is an old violin lurking in an upstairs closet, and at various places throughout the house we have four recorders, a couple of harmonicas, and a penny whistle.

I don’t think the harmonica and penny whistle are classical instruments. I wasn’t sure if recorders were, so I attempted to call an actual expert on classical music. I looked in the phone book and found no entries under the “Classical Music Expert” categories. So I did the next best thing and found someone listening to classical music on their MP3 player. I did this by going to a public place and randomly pulling ear pieces out of peoples ears and then listening to what they were listening. This endeavor proved to be fraught with peril as apparently some people thought I was trying to actually steal their music, and I apologize to the elderly gentleman whose hearing aid I accidently broke. Thankfully, before the police came to haul me away, I found a young man listening to classical music. “Young man,” I asked, “is this recorder a classical instrument?” showing him the recorder I had brought for illustration purposes only. He replied cautiously, looking around for hidden cameras, in case this was Candid Camera or some other show of that ilk, “Well, no, I think its baroque.”

“Umm, no, I think it works perfectly fine.” I replied, giving a couple of healthy toots on it to demonstrate its playability.

“No sir, not broke, baroque, b-a-r-o-q-u-e.”

That nailed it, recorders have to be classical music instruments, because everything about classical music is fancy, and if this young man insisted on misspelling broke in such a fancy manner then it only confirmed my theory.

That brings me to my second point about classical music; most classical music is old. My children say I am old, and classical music is even older than I am. Some of it was written before America’s revolutionary war. This is problematic for two reasons. I have noticed that as I mature and collect more birthdays, that I get forgetful; so does classical music. I have noticed in listening to an orchestral piece, that at times it seems to totally forget the melody and just keeps wandering around aimlessly looking for it. “Hmmm, now where did I put that melody, is it under the violins? Nope, its not there. Hmm, maybe in one of the big kettle drums.” Even when the man standing up front with the pointer keeps waving it around and pointing at where the melody is hidden, the music never seems to find it. On and on, it keeps wandering, until finally the melody is discovered. The second reason that it is problematic is (urgh, I forgot second reason, note to self: when you remember second reason, put it here before posting this).

Now most classical music was written by non-English speaking persons, making the titles hard to spell and pronounce. For instance my eldest daughter is playing a piece by D. Busy, entitled, “Clare the Loon”. I am certain that something has been lost in the translation of the title of this beautiful piece of music. It seems that the title would be more fitting for a piece composed by Mr. Yankovic, rather than the proper D. Busy. Some of classical’s composers were proactive enough to eliminate translation troubles that have brought irreparable psychological trauma to Clare, who by all accounts is definitely not a Loon, by simply using numbers. Beethoven is the most admirable example as he has all his works listed as numbers: Symphony #5; Piano Concerto #4; and Love Potion #9.

The last, and most certainly biggest problem with classical music, is that most of the men and women who compose it are dead. Not only does this mean they are no longer composing any great music, but as is proven scientifically, they now are decomposing. This writer has uncovered the horrifying truth that this is actually the reason for so many composers having unfinished symphonies. As soon as they died, they immediately began to decompose rendering once finished symphonies--unfinished. This has lead to the formation of the Society to Conserve, Restore, And Preserve Classical Music or also known as SCRAP Classical Music.