Perfect Pitch
I can already tell this is going to be a long one. Sorry about that.
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I had been taking piano lessons for about 3 years, and my mom took me to see a movie about Franz Liszt starring Cornell Wilde called "A Song To Remember." Terrible movie. Anyway, later at home, I remarked to my mom that the lady in the movie sure held that high B-flat for a long time. She asked me how I knew it was a B-flat. Whaddaya mean how'd I know it was a B-flat? That was like asking me how I knew my shirt was blue. So mom ran to the piano in the other room and played some notes and some chords and asked me what they were, and I told her. She asked me to sing some notes, and I did. Shnooky, she said, you have perfect pitch. I never heard of perfect pitch. I honestly didn't know that not everyone could hear pitch the way I did. Apparently I was born with it.
From that day forward, my fate was sealed. When I was a kid, the last thing I wanted to be was different from everyone else. I already hated the piano because I got home from school at about 3:30 and dinner was always at 5:00 sharp, and I had to practice the piano immediately after school. My friends had already been out playing for half an hour or 45 minutes before I could go out, and I always felt left out. None of my neighborhood friends were musicians. Somewhere along the line after I really understood what this perfect pitch thing implied, I decided that okay, I'll do this music thing. I'll take the piano lessons. I'll sing in every school choir and church choir. I'll play in the band and the orchestra. But I'll put forth the minimal amount of effort required. And I'll show zero enthusiasm. You can make me take lessons, but you can't make me like it. And whenever I wanted to do something or go somewhere that I thought everyone else was allowed to do and my parents didn't let me, I always figured it was because I was Music Boy, because that was the only thing I could see that made me different from everyone else. More reason to hate being Music Boy.
Our school system had a good music program with free summer instrumental lessons, so when the summer after fourth grade came around, it was decided that Shnooky would learn THE VIOLIN. THE VIOLIN. So while my friends were riding bikes and squirting each other with hoses, I took VIOLIN LESSONS along with piano lessons. Later, I took clarinet lessons and finally saxophone lessons. Oh yeah. I also learned to play the bassoon. I played in all the school orchestras and all the school bands. I went to district band and state band. I sang in all the choirs. I went to district choir and state choir. And I put forth an absolute minimum amount of effort, because I didn't like being Music Boy. There was no payoff for me. I never discovered music on my own. It was thrust upon me. I didn't ask for it. I didn't get off on it. And I had this damn perfect pitch.
Here's the thing. When I was in elementary school and the teacher would tell us to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up, other kids would say I wanna be a fireman or I wanna be a policeman or I wanna be a cowboy or I wanna be a veterinarian. I always said, "Well, I'll probably be a public school music teacher/band director/choir director and be a church organist/choir director and piano teacher." Because that was all I knew. That's what you did when you were into music and grew up where I did. I had it all figured out by about third grade. And even that young, I probably realized that I would never have the kind of talent for anything else in life that I had for music, like it or not. So I knew all along that my fate in life was to do this thing I hated.
All along, I've known people who bought the whole music package. They loved music and everything about it. It brought them joy and happiness and fulfillment. They loved to sing and play and talk about singing and playing. When I played rock and roll, I knew people who lived every minute for their music, listened to music when they weren't playing it or writing it, surrounded themselves with music. I never bought the whole package. I always resisted it. I always wanted to do other stuff, try other things, be good at something I wasn't born with, something at which I had to put forth more than a minimal effort. I got pretty damn good at basketball, and there was a time I would have traded all of my musical talent to be 6' 8" and be known as a basketball player and not as Music Boy.
I hear pitch everywhere. I can walk into a bathroom and speak a few words and hear what the resonant frequency of the room is and hum it until the walls shake. I used to do that in my high school auditorium until they told me to cut it out. I used to be able to tell how fast my dad was driving over the Market Street Bridge by the pitch of the tires against the metal roadway grating. I know the key of every song I hear on the radio, and I know what every note is that they're singing. You can play a random cluster of notes on a piano that's in tune, and I can tell you what every note is. I can tell you which string on your guitar is out of tune. I can tell you what notes your doorbell plays.
To be successful in the music business, I've always felt that you need three things: love, luck, and talent, in that order. You have to buy the whole package. You have to love what you're doing so much that you'd do it all day for free. You also need to have a bit of luck and/or connections, whether it's your brother-in-law who works at Universal or Bruce Springsteen was in your first rock and roll band or something like that. Sometimes the love can determine the luck. Third on the list is talent. I've always had talent to spare, but I never had the love, and my connections and luck have always been few and far between.
So here I am with a gift I never asked for. It's like I was given an amazing wood shop at the age of 4 with the most modern and sophisticated woodworking tools imaginable, and I don't like carpentry. Damn perfect pitch.
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I had been taking piano lessons for about 3 years, and my mom took me to see a movie about Franz Liszt starring Cornell Wilde called "A Song To Remember." Terrible movie. Anyway, later at home, I remarked to my mom that the lady in the movie sure held that high B-flat for a long time. She asked me how I knew it was a B-flat. Whaddaya mean how'd I know it was a B-flat? That was like asking me how I knew my shirt was blue. So mom ran to the piano in the other room and played some notes and some chords and asked me what they were, and I told her. She asked me to sing some notes, and I did. Shnooky, she said, you have perfect pitch. I never heard of perfect pitch. I honestly didn't know that not everyone could hear pitch the way I did. Apparently I was born with it.
From that day forward, my fate was sealed. When I was a kid, the last thing I wanted to be was different from everyone else. I already hated the piano because I got home from school at about 3:30 and dinner was always at 5:00 sharp, and I had to practice the piano immediately after school. My friends had already been out playing for half an hour or 45 minutes before I could go out, and I always felt left out. None of my neighborhood friends were musicians. Somewhere along the line after I really understood what this perfect pitch thing implied, I decided that okay, I'll do this music thing. I'll take the piano lessons. I'll sing in every school choir and church choir. I'll play in the band and the orchestra. But I'll put forth the minimal amount of effort required. And I'll show zero enthusiasm. You can make me take lessons, but you can't make me like it. And whenever I wanted to do something or go somewhere that I thought everyone else was allowed to do and my parents didn't let me, I always figured it was because I was Music Boy, because that was the only thing I could see that made me different from everyone else. More reason to hate being Music Boy.
Our school system had a good music program with free summer instrumental lessons, so when the summer after fourth grade came around, it was decided that Shnooky would learn THE VIOLIN. THE VIOLIN. So while my friends were riding bikes and squirting each other with hoses, I took VIOLIN LESSONS along with piano lessons. Later, I took clarinet lessons and finally saxophone lessons. Oh yeah. I also learned to play the bassoon. I played in all the school orchestras and all the school bands. I went to district band and state band. I sang in all the choirs. I went to district choir and state choir. And I put forth an absolute minimum amount of effort, because I didn't like being Music Boy. There was no payoff for me. I never discovered music on my own. It was thrust upon me. I didn't ask for it. I didn't get off on it. And I had this damn perfect pitch.
Here's the thing. When I was in elementary school and the teacher would tell us to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up, other kids would say I wanna be a fireman or I wanna be a policeman or I wanna be a cowboy or I wanna be a veterinarian. I always said, "Well, I'll probably be a public school music teacher/band director/choir director and be a church organist/choir director and piano teacher." Because that was all I knew. That's what you did when you were into music and grew up where I did. I had it all figured out by about third grade. And even that young, I probably realized that I would never have the kind of talent for anything else in life that I had for music, like it or not. So I knew all along that my fate in life was to do this thing I hated.
All along, I've known people who bought the whole music package. They loved music and everything about it. It brought them joy and happiness and fulfillment. They loved to sing and play and talk about singing and playing. When I played rock and roll, I knew people who lived every minute for their music, listened to music when they weren't playing it or writing it, surrounded themselves with music. I never bought the whole package. I always resisted it. I always wanted to do other stuff, try other things, be good at something I wasn't born with, something at which I had to put forth more than a minimal effort. I got pretty damn good at basketball, and there was a time I would have traded all of my musical talent to be 6' 8" and be known as a basketball player and not as Music Boy.
I hear pitch everywhere. I can walk into a bathroom and speak a few words and hear what the resonant frequency of the room is and hum it until the walls shake. I used to do that in my high school auditorium until they told me to cut it out. I used to be able to tell how fast my dad was driving over the Market Street Bridge by the pitch of the tires against the metal roadway grating. I know the key of every song I hear on the radio, and I know what every note is that they're singing. You can play a random cluster of notes on a piano that's in tune, and I can tell you what every note is. I can tell you which string on your guitar is out of tune. I can tell you what notes your doorbell plays.
To be successful in the music business, I've always felt that you need three things: love, luck, and talent, in that order. You have to buy the whole package. You have to love what you're doing so much that you'd do it all day for free. You also need to have a bit of luck and/or connections, whether it's your brother-in-law who works at Universal or Bruce Springsteen was in your first rock and roll band or something like that. Sometimes the love can determine the luck. Third on the list is talent. I've always had talent to spare, but I never had the love, and my connections and luck have always been few and far between.
So here I am with a gift I never asked for. It's like I was given an amazing wood shop at the age of 4 with the most modern and sophisticated woodworking tools imaginable, and I don't like carpentry. Damn perfect pitch.
posted by Shnookylangston at 8:16 PM
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