Tag: Music

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Parade Notes

ellenparkerwrites

Trombones go in the front row.

Our director moves among us checking positions, moving a confused band member, re-considering our placement. Then last minute instructions.

Left foot first. Keep distance from person in front. Glance right to keep row straight. Listen to the drum section for the beat. (How could you miss them from their center row?)

The Majorette blows her whistle, raises and lowers the big baton. Off we go.

Left. Right. Left. Boom. Boom. Boom. Listen to the bass drum among the clatter of the snares. A corner, remember the spacing, oh….that was ragged. Stop. Listen. Again. Down the football field, turn, again and again.

Then the street. Parking lot gravel under our white Keds turns to asphalt. Stay in the right lane. Drums on the rim past the hospital. Practice, practice, practice.

Football halftime entertainment. Memorial Day ceremonies. A parade invitation.

We march in heat, cold, and a fine misty rain. After the parade in warm, August rain we pack our instruments and climb into the school bus for the fifteen mile trip home. Wool uniforms scent the air as if we were a flock of damp sheep.

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Brass Note

ellenparkerwrites

One, two, three, four tap your foot to keep the time.

Time to adjust from piano lesson where a beginning player counts aloud to give each note the proper length. Mental messages go to all the fingers, training them to follow the note on the paper, eye to brain, to finger with aid of mouth.

This is trumpet lesson time. Route the message from paper, to eye, to brain, to lips, lungs, and fingers while the foot taps, taps, taps the steady time.

Wonder of wonders! The dog didn’t go howling away from the early practices.

Over and over, with uneven progress, a simple scale yields to an easy march. Then, a little more as we add a waltz and easy arrangment of a show tune. Ready for beginning band. Playing together. Learning when to keep notes in the background and when to surge to the front. Stay together. Keep the rythmn of the foot the same as the director’s baton.

Cooperation and sportsmanship in music.

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Moving Notes

ellenparkerwrites

Moving Day!!!   A new experience as we sort and decide which items will move from the village to the farm four miles away.

The big old upright piano gets special care. (And a few words from the men loading and unloading.)

The piano finds a home in the living room. The new dog, a German Shephard, finds a comfy place curled under the keyboard whenever mother sits down to play.

Piano lessons for two begin. My brother stays with it a year. Reasons abound for me to continue. So every Tuesday after supper mother (only rarely father) drives me across the top of the hill, down to the lake, and along the shore to the teacher they selected. Scales, simple arrangements of old standards, and hymns are assigned and mastered in varying degrees.

Life gets busy. The lessons are discontinuted for other music and church activities. Some of the playing continues. The music is still fun to play when I can select the tune.

Then one day we purchase a book of simple duets. The brother dusts off his music reading and works on the bass part. I repeat and repeat and repeat the top. We play for fun. And one day reach a pinnicale of sorts.

We’ve just started the long piece. Mother insists I run upstairs to fetch something. Off I go as quick as long, teen legs will take me. The thump, thump, tump of the piece continue in my absence. I slip back into my chair, catch the spot in the melody, and we continue the piece.