A Walker in the Suburbs

I guess the notes were flowing a little better during my practice session last night (a guarantee that they won’t flow well today!). Whatever the reason, I found myself wondering this morning if there is a community orchestra in the area.

And lo and behold … there is! Not only that, but they have summer “reading sessions” where they invite members of the community to come and play with them. I will be in town for every one.

And so …

I’m remembering what a big part music used to play in my life, how it’s taken a back seat to schooling, working, child rearing and how … it may not have to anymore.

First, I have to get through the Verdi and the Stravinsky. And then, we’ll see …

My daughters may disagree with me, but I don’t recall bugging them too much about practicing when they were studying cello, clarinet and voice. I think I know why. I don’t like practicing either, never have.

Now is no different. I wish I could say that practicing the string bass is stirring my soul and enriching my life. But truth to tell, I sandwich in the minutes around everything else, often in the evening when I’m exhausted. Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m holding the bass or the bass is holding me.

This is good news, though. It confirms, for one, that I made the right career choice. I can immerse myself in writing or editing and the hours fly by. The minutes I spend practicing the bass do not.

But all the minutes will be worth it when I’m part of an orchestra again, contributing my own (I hope in-tune) notes to that swelling symphonic sound.

A few months ago a high school friend called to tell me that the Central Kentucky Youth Symphony Orchestra was celebrating its 70th anniversary with a reunion concert May 20 and all alumni were invited to play. I knew in an instant that I would do everything I could to be there. The CKYSO made adolescence bearable. It introduced me to a group of people whose idea of a good time was listening to Wagner’s Liebestod on a Saturday night.

The only problem: I haven’t played a the string bass since I was in high school. I had to find one (actually two, because I’ll be flying to Kentucky for the concert), then … I had to start practicing.

I accomplished one of those missions before I went to Asia and the other 10 days ago when I found a bass to rent here and somehow got it home in a small sedan. Since then I’ve been practicing whenever I can, trying to get the notes in my fingers again.

To relearn an instrument after decades away from it is a humbling experience. I forgot how much effort it takes to stretch my left hand into position and still hold up the instrument. To give you an idea just how remedial a bass student I am: I had to Google the string intervals. (The string bass is unique among stringed instruments; it’s tuned in fourths — E, A, D and G — instead of fifths.)

But after more than a week at it, the positions and scales are coming back and I’m learning how much to tighten the bow (not as much as I was the first few days — the poor thing was starting to pop some hairs).

Now I just have to learn the bass parts for Stravinsky’s Firebird and Verdi’s Aida. To be continued …

Beethoven is not part of my daily musical diet. His symphonies are rich fare, and my tastes tend toward lighter chamber works these days. Which means that yesterday’s radio bounty was music to my ears. (Because my radio station celebrated Beethoven’s birthday yesterday — no doubt due to the Saturday afternoon opera and other weekend programming restrictions — I can write about his sublime music today with the benefit of recent inundation!)

I didn’t listen to a whole symphony (I’ll do that today), but the snatch of his Ninth Symphony I heard was powerful enough to keep me sitting in the car until the last triumphant notes.

Many would consider the Fifth and the Ninth symphonies — heck, maybe all Beethoven symphonies — old warhorses. But when you listen with fresh ears you realize why they became warhorses in the first place.

A missing headphone set means that when I listen to music through my phone lately, I do it in the open — not through earbuds. This is a strange yet strangely familiar activity.

It’s strange because for years now the tunes I listen to are only for my ears. A feedback loop of one, a solitary bubble, like all the solitary bubbles around me.

But it’s familiar because I grew up pre i-Pod and pre-Walkman. When I think of summer afternoons at the pool it’s not my playlist I remember (there were no personal playlists in those days!), but Top 40 hits piped through someone else’s portable radio. You could always hold a transistor up to your ear or use those early earbuds (there was only ever one, which was just fine since these radios produced no stereophonic sound), but for the most part, music was out in the open.

In fact, it was a musical free-for-all, and you got what was got. You adjusted. I tapped my feet to soft rock, cringed at country crooners. But I came to enjoy tunes I would never have heard otherwise — and I learned that listening can be a communal experience.

Now when I walk past a neighbor I quickly mute my Bach or Rachmaninoff. I don’t want to impose my choices on them. For all I know they wouldn’t mind. But it’s different now. Dogs don’t run free and neither does music. These are small changes, true, but put enough of them together and you have another world.