When my mom was a teenager, she decided she wanted to play in the high school orchestra. She went to the music director and asked if she could join. He said, "What do you play?"
She, bright and chipper, replied, "What do you need?"
He paused, looked at her, and told her they needed a bass player.
"Amazing!" she said. "That's exactly what I play!"
The man showed her the school's string bass and said she could take it home to practice. He also told her the names of the strings, pointing to each one as he did. I'm thinking he probably did not entirely buy her story.
In practice, she watched the other bass player (a real one), and figured out where to put her fingers, more or less. As the school year wore on, though, it got harder and harder to get anything out of that bass. Soon she was sawing like mad and making no sound at all. Finally her stand partner took pity on her and explained that you have to apply rosin to the bow hair every time you play, so pulling the bow back and forth will create friction on the strings. No rosin, no friction; no friction, no sound.
After that semester she left the bass behind and returned to the piano, on which she was actually pretty decent (and which required no rosin). But she could always say this: for a season, she played string bass.
At about the same time my mother's bass career was flourishing, my father, a recent immigrant from war-torn Europe, was drafted into the U.S. Army. (This was long before the two met; he was quite a few years older than she.) Not too keen on joining the infantry and being sent to the front lines, he managed to wangle a position in the Army band. There was, he learned, an opening for a piccolo player.
Amazing! as he explained to the presiding officer at his initial conscription meeting. Piccolo was exactly what he played!
"Oh, that reminds me," said the officer as my father was about to leave. "We just got in a shipment of instruments. Would you like to check out the piccolos?"
My father was in a bit of a tight spot. He could play a very credible violin, and viola, and (unlike his future wife) string bass. He had never in his life played a piccolo. He'd probably never even touched one.
He did, however, play a mean recorder. (He gave lessons to the Von Trapp family, who he reports were not quite as delightful in person as Julie Andrews and her film brood.) Recorder, piccolo ... how different could it be? In fact, the two are as different as driving a stick shift is from riding a skateboard. But he wasn't in much of a position to quibble.
They walked out back to the newly arrived shipment. The officer opened a crate, pulled out a brand new piccolo, and handed it to my father.
My father took the thing, looked it over, sighted down the bore, tapped a few keys -- kicking the tires, so to speak. Finally, seeing no way to delay further, he put it to his lips, doing his best to imitate every flute player he had ever seen ... and managed to get some sort of breathy note out of thing.
Messing with the keys as he blew, he found one note he could trill on, and he did so for a good few seconds with casual expertise.
He then took the terrifying little beast down from his lips, nearly passing out from the expended breath, and gave it the El Exigente thumbs up. And then dashed off to beg a few emergency lessons from a friend, who was principal flutist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, in the two weeks before he had to report for duty.
Alas, his piccolo career didn't last. Once command realized he spoke German like a native (because he was one), they yanked him from the band, transferred him to Intelligence, and stuck him out in the field as an interpreter. Not only on the front lines, but often ahead of the front lines.
Still, for a season, he did play the piccolo. And quite enjoyed it, too, because its notes cut so sharply through the instrumental texture that he found he could control the tempo of the entire band. If the conductor in him didn't care for the way the band leader was conducting this particular piece, he could hijack it and mold it more to his taste.
My point in these two stories is not that they happened, but that my parents told them to me, often enough and with so much evident delight that they became an embedded part of how I came to see the world.
In my world -- the world according to the stories I heard growing up -- you can become whatever you want to become and do whatever you set out to do. From bass to piccolo, the world is your oyster.
When I was thirteen, my mother was taking a group of her middle school students to Greece to perform Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, and she needed someone to set the choruses to music.
She, bright and chipper, replied, "What do you need?"
He paused, looked at her, and told her they needed a bass player.
"Amazing!" she said. "That's exactly what I play!"
The man showed her the school's string bass and said she could take it home to practice. He also told her the names of the strings, pointing to each one as he did. I'm thinking he probably did not entirely buy her story.
In practice, she watched the other bass player (a real one), and figured out where to put her fingers, more or less. As the school year wore on, though, it got harder and harder to get anything out of that bass. Soon she was sawing like mad and making no sound at all. Finally her stand partner took pity on her and explained that you have to apply rosin to the bow hair every time you play, so pulling the bow back and forth will create friction on the strings. No rosin, no friction; no friction, no sound.
After that semester she left the bass behind and returned to the piano, on which she was actually pretty decent (and which required no rosin). But she could always say this: for a season, she played string bass.
At about the same time my mother's bass career was flourishing, my father, a recent immigrant from war-torn Europe, was drafted into the U.S. Army. (This was long before the two met; he was quite a few years older than she.) Not too keen on joining the infantry and being sent to the front lines, he managed to wangle a position in the Army band. There was, he learned, an opening for a piccolo player.
Amazing! as he explained to the presiding officer at his initial conscription meeting. Piccolo was exactly what he played!
"Oh, that reminds me," said the officer as my father was about to leave. "We just got in a shipment of instruments. Would you like to check out the piccolos?"
My father was in a bit of a tight spot. He could play a very credible violin, and viola, and (unlike his future wife) string bass. He had never in his life played a piccolo. He'd probably never even touched one.
He did, however, play a mean recorder. (He gave lessons to the Von Trapp family, who he reports were not quite as delightful in person as Julie Andrews and her film brood.) Recorder, piccolo ... how different could it be? In fact, the two are as different as driving a stick shift is from riding a skateboard. But he wasn't in much of a position to quibble.
They walked out back to the newly arrived shipment. The officer opened a crate, pulled out a brand new piccolo, and handed it to my father.
My father took the thing, looked it over, sighted down the bore, tapped a few keys -- kicking the tires, so to speak. Finally, seeing no way to delay further, he put it to his lips, doing his best to imitate every flute player he had ever seen ... and managed to get some sort of breathy note out of thing.
Messing with the keys as he blew, he found one note he could trill on, and he did so for a good few seconds with casual expertise.
He then took the terrifying little beast down from his lips, nearly passing out from the expended breath, and gave it the El Exigente thumbs up. And then dashed off to beg a few emergency lessons from a friend, who was principal flutist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, in the two weeks before he had to report for duty.
Alas, his piccolo career didn't last. Once command realized he spoke German like a native (because he was one), they yanked him from the band, transferred him to Intelligence, and stuck him out in the field as an interpreter. Not only on the front lines, but often ahead of the front lines.
Still, for a season, he did play the piccolo. And quite enjoyed it, too, because its notes cut so sharply through the instrumental texture that he found he could control the tempo of the entire band. If the conductor in him didn't care for the way the band leader was conducting this particular piece, he could hijack it and mold it more to his taste.
My point in these two stories is not that they happened, but that my parents told them to me, often enough and with so much evident delight that they became an embedded part of how I came to see the world.
In my world -- the world according to the stories I heard growing up -- you can become whatever you want to become and do whatever you set out to do. From bass to piccolo, the world is your oyster.
When I was thirteen, my mother was taking a group of her middle school students to Greece to perform Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, and she needed someone to set the choruses to music.