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Marcy Paulson's Blog
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November
October
Nov 28, 2008
Posted by Marcy Paulson
So the cornet’s here, and in honor of the season, I’m working on the Christmas carol, “Joy to the World.” It’s a nice song to start with, because it’s really just a modified way to practice a few backwards scales
The song feels especially appropriate because, with a brass instrument, I’m sure I’m bringing joy to a few more people than just those in the near vicinity. My husband assures me he can’t hear the cornet outside the house, but that’s hard to believe. Is it just me, or is a cornet a difficult instrument to play self-consciously? A lot of my notes definitely have a hint of triumphant fanfare, but then there are the ones with the hint of wounded elephant. Am I just imagining those sideways glances from the neighbors? Come Christmas Eve, I won’t be at all surprised to find a mute in my stocking, or possibly even my mailbox.
Nov 19, 2008
Posted by Marcy Paulson
Before she passed away, my Great Aunt recounted a treasury of stories from her life on the prairie frontier. There was the tale of wolves stalking her four-year-old sister (my Grandma) as she went out to meet her older brothers on their way home from school. And then there was her account of the family’s perilous night-ride through a blizzard.
Maybe not quite so thrilling, but every bit as fascinating to me were her stories involving music. My Great Aunt recounted how she and her five siblings entertained themselves through long Montana evenings with musical instruments. As they got better, they performed as a kind of VonTrap act across the state. Two of my Great Uncles played their trumpets in a comical duet involving each blowing on the instrument the other was fingering. My Great Aunt’s summer job was playing chase scene or love theme music on the piano at some of the first silent movies. By the time they’d reached high school, two of her brothers had mastered just about every instrument in the orchestra. When I was a kid, I spouted this lineage proudly, figuring it was my genetic pass to a life of fame and talent. Since then, I’ve had to come to grips with the notion that their genes might have experienced a little watering down before they reached me. I’ve never cross-fingered a trumpet, but there is one aspect of their musical heritage I know wasn’t diluted in my DNA, and that’s their enjoyment in getting to know a new instrument. The thing is, that very enjoyment has begun to bother me the older I get. After all, my time now, is limited to say the least. Theoretically, even if I completely neglect all responsibilities, loved ones, meals and sleep I could be perfectly busy for the next decade mastering the instruments already under my roof. The practical side of my brain has been nagging at me. It says, “Okay, you’ve sown your oats, now pick the instrument you like best and focus on it.” But then there’s that spontaneous side of my brain I like so much better, though admittedly I’m glad it’s never quite enjoyed free rein. That side wants to know, “Why? Why can’t you learn a new instrument if it’s something you enjoy? It stretches your mind, introduces you to new people…” The rational side sneers back, “Because instruments aren’t like dirty socks you change out on a whim. An instrument demands time, dedication, and a commitment.” My spontaneous side is finding it more difficult to refute this last argument. Lately, I think it’s tried the ploy of pretending it didn’t hear it at all. It doesn’t really matter anyway, because thanks to that quirky musical gene from my ancestors, the practical side never holds out for long. I never really know when that spontaneous gene will kick in, but all of a sudden, there it is, without any rhyme or reason, an unshakable conviction that I need to try—well, the latest inspiration has been—the cornet. I haven’t taken on brass before. Frankly, the brashness of trumpets, trombones, and tubas has always been a little overwhelming. But, for some reason, the cornet suddenly strikes me as the perfect instrument for Christmas carols. I can’t get its conical bore and rich dark tone out of my mind. Even its name, cornet, suddenly seems so refined and full of tradition. Now, In self-analyzing this personality quirk, I’m at least removed enough to know how absurd it will seem to just about 99% of anyone who’ll read about it. But, for the 1% who understand the single mindedness that simply takes over, I’m trying to portray it in a way that sounds at least semi-rational. When I start the research, there’s no turning back. If I had a million dollars to feed this benign addiction, research wouldn’t be so crucial, but unfortunately, my budget isn’t bottomless. The problem is, I absolutely balk at buying a low-grade instrument. This isn’t purely musical snobbery. Student instruments are harder to play, don’t sound as nice, and--worst of all—are mass-produced. Maybe the mass-produced part is a little snobby, but I like to think of it more as musical idealism. Basically, for an instrument to draw me in, I like it to have some random uniqueness. I don’t know, somehow that little spark of individuality transforms the thing from a bunch of metal or wooden parts, into a whole that’s something else entirely. So, to find an instrument that fits the bill, I scour the web and classifieds in earnest. My requirements are basically these, an instrument with above average tone, working mechanical condition, it’s own unique story, and--of course—it has to be fairly cheap. These aren’t impossible to find, but if you attempt it, be prepared for hours of research. My cornet’s rumbling down the road on a UPS truck and should be here tomorrow. It’s an Olds Special which looks, in polite terms, vintage. The silvery lacquer is stripping away to reveal a brass body and copper bell, but to my knowledge, everything works and the horn sounds great. I like the copper bell particularly, because my research tells me it bodes for greater projection and darker tone. A bonus that didn’t cost me any more than my $100 is the fact that in some brass circles, I’m finding it’s apparently sort of cool to have a naturally worn looking horn. So, for not much money, I have my coveted cornet and am cool to boot--or at least, I will be once I can get a note out of the thing. My Great Aunt once told how a neighbor several farms away learned of her love for trying new musical instruments. This neighbor had a harp, which they generously offered to loan her for the summer. My Great Aunt recounts in terms I can understand so vividly how excited she was to see that neighbor’s wagon pull up to her family’s homestead. Strapped securely in the back of the buggy was the massive instrument with its ornate carvings and dozens of sparkling strings. As summer passed, she threw herself into learning all the harp’s intricacies. Before the first nip of autumn, she’d hurtled those awkward first practice sessions and her fingers danced across the strings in fluid melodies. Of course, she was more than a little disappointed when the neighbor’s wagon returned that fall to collect the treasured instrument, which I’m sure by then she looked at as something of a friend. Nearly a century later, I’m remembering her as I peek out the window each time a truck goes past. Believe it or not, I’m grateful for that musical heritage. When it strikes, that single minded drive can be difficult to explain, but learning a new instrument opens my mind and fingers to a puzzle that’s simultaneously fun and frustrating, familiar and foreign.
Oct 26, 2008
Posted by Marcy Paulson
As a musician, I’ve had glorious days when every note I played brought a smile to someone’s face. And then there were days when I wondered why I ever took my instrument out of its case.
A memorable example from those less pleasant days took place during my college career. This college, being a liberal arts university with a biblical foundation, naturally made a host of service projects available. That particular year, I was involved in weekly visits to a nursing home. Some time during the first or second month, our leader suggested that anyone in the group who played music should consider performing for the residents. We took stock and found that our talent consisted of myself on the flute and Diana on the clarinet. Not a promising beginning, and it only went downhill from there. A day before the fateful nursing home visit, Diana brought a hymnbook to my dorm to go over her selections. She riffled through the pages and said, “Okay, this one’s in the key of E flat.” I shook my head and told her, “That’s not going to work, let’s try another one.” Diana didn’t rush to turn the page. Instead, she asked a little too condescendingly for my taste, “Why?” “Because I’m playing by ear, and for some reason, I don’t hear the key of E flat very well,” I answered. “Can’t we play something in the key of C, D, or G? I’ll even throw in F if that’ll help.” After a lot of calculating on how to make Diana’s B flat clarinet work with my C flute, and a hymn book written in very odd key signatures, I lost the compromise and started feverish practice to add the keys of B flat and E flat to my repertoire. The next day, Diana and I met the group, instruments in hand. Now this may’ve been all in my head, but the others seemed particularly cheerful that morning. And why shouldn’t they be? Our concert was sparing them that week’s awkward hour of fumbling for conversation with someone convinced they were their long-lost son or daughter. Their good spirits only stirred my repressed resentment for skipping math homework in favor of cramming scales in B and E flat. Just so I don’t come across as completely cold-hearted, I should mention a few things about one of the residents of our particular nursing home. We were all warned about the ninety-pound woman on our first visit. “Completely senile,” the staff had informed us. The woman they were talking about went only by “Granny”. To give you an idea of just how ancient Granny was, another resident of the home happened to be her daughter. Her daughter, though more lucid by a long shot, was definitely no spring chicken. Granny spent every second muttering incoherently about—well, once I heard her rambling about the people she’d murdered and how she’d disposed of the bodies. Her gibberish was in a refined Georgian drawl. The dignified accent, bloody tales, and demeanor left me with the impression of a withered Scarlet O’Hara. You can imagine, Granny wasn’t first choice for a conversation buddy during our visits. Granny wasn’t just confused, she was downright mean. A girl named Joy had to purposely steer clear of her for safety reasons. Joy was a dwarf, and for some reason, whenever she came within reach of Granny, she got pinched—and not an “oh, you’re so cute, pinch.” No, Granny clamped on to the poor girl with a ferocity that said, “Just try to get away you little pipsqueak.” Granny was the savage beast everyone wanted to see soothed by our flute/clarinet duet. Usually an optimist by nature, I seemed to be the only one having trouble mustering any confidence in this plan. That morning, the residents gathered in the living room of the large home that had been renovated to serve as a nursing home. Every sofa cushion and wingback chair was occupied. Diana opened the hymnal and we started in on Amazing Grace. “We got through two bars before Granny added her commentary to the melody. “What is that tacky horn?” she demanded. I winced, but kept going. So did Granny. “If I played like that,” she continued, “I would take lessons in my home!” Mercifully, we made it through three verses of that tune. The residents rewarded us with a heartfelt applause. Naturally, I’d assumed given Granny’s response, one song was enough for the morning. But without even so much as a four count, Diana plowed right into the second hymn on our play list. There was nothing left to do but join in and hunker down under another barrage of Granny’s heckling. Only that time, something was different. Granny sat stock still, and I braced myself for the onslaught. It never came. In a wavering voice, Granny actually began singing. “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,” she sang. “Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.” Personally, I didn’t know which had been more disconcerting, Granny’s barrage of insults about my tacky horn, or her complete change of disposition. We reached the end of the first verse, and Diana started in on a second. Of course, no one was watching us. All eyes were fixed on Granny’s surprise solo performance. When Granny took a breath, an enthusiastic staffer at the nursing home said, “Oh, Granny that was lovely. You were singing about Jesus.” The spell was broken. Granny swore vehemently as if to wash the taste of holiness from her mouth and then turned her attention back to our instruments. “If I played a horn like that,” she insisted to anyone within earshot, “I would never take it out of my home. Who is that playing that tacky horn? Would someone please tell her to take that tacky horn out of her mouth.” Meanwhile, the other residents were becoming less and less tolerant of Granny’s rudeness. To put it mildly, the tension in the room was as tight as a piano string. What amazed me most was Diana’s absolute nonchalance under pressure. I stopped playing several times at opportune moments, but she never took my cue. I dropped out and let her play a verse on her own, but she never noticed. “Thank goodness she’s put down that tacky horn!” Granny shouted in mock relief. An elderly woman to Granny’s right growled, “I’ve never seen anything so rude.” For my part, I was perplexed about what to do next. Diana showed no signs of slowing down. I turned to the angry residents and offered a polite shrug as if to say, “Oh, no problem, just so long as she doesn’t start throwing tomatoes.” At the time, it seemed like the most diplomatic thing to do. In retrospect though, I see the wisdom of the musician’s time-honored adage, “No matter what, keep playing.” The seething residents took my polite shrug as a sign I was throwing in the towel and their entertainment was being cut short. Suddenly, what had been repressed rumblings of unrest, broke into an angry riot. The woman to Granny’s right hauled off and slapped Granny’s lap. Granny’s daughter retaliated by flailing at the resident who’d attacked her mother. Fortunately, we were spared any further violence by the staff who rushed in to subdue the senior citizen revolt. I packed up my flute awkwardly and made a hasty retreat to the van outside. As we drove back to the college, I asked Diana, “How on earth were you able to keep playing through all that?” “All what?” Diana responded in genuine ignorance. I filled her in with a play by play of the geriatric brawl, but couldn’t help wondering whether the focus sheet music had afforded her had been a pro or a con in this performance. Music is a powerful thing capable of stirring a wide range of emotions. If there’s any nugget of wisdom I take away from that day in the nursing home, it’s that musicians can’t please all the people all the time. So, enjoy the times when your music is greeted with applause, and for those other times, make sure you note the location of the back door.
Oct 17, 2008
Posted by Marcy Paulson
Two years ago, my husband let me open my Christmas present early. The gift was one of his most romantic ever: a beautiful guitar with a red cedar top, wild cherry back and sides, and a silver leaf maple neck. It’s strings sounded bell-like. I quickly learned how to contort my fingers into the correct shapes for several chords and began strumming out halting versions of “Away in a Manger”, “Bring a Torch Janette Isabella”, “O Come, O Come Emanuel”, “Good King Wenceslaus”, and “The Little Drummer Boy.”
The first day I began with vigor and remarked over and over about how the instrument almost seemed to play itself. The action was low and the strings virtually melted beneath my fingers. Naturally, I picked up the guitar on the next morning expecting similar results. That time though, the tips of my fingers screamed in revolt. Apparently, the day before had been a breaking in period, and after that, the fleshy tips were rendered as tender as rare filet mignon. The arduous process of developing rubbery skin on the tips of each finger was only beginning. In terms of hurdles to becoming a guitarist, this was only the first. I knew from experience that higher and more challenging obstacles lay on the track ahead, but the process of acquiring calluses certainly qualified as the most intense.
“You have to keep playing,” I told myself. “It’s bound to get better.” I’m sorry to say, I’d actually experienced the process of tender and hardening fingertips on several occasions. But calluses, as with many things in life, adhere to the time-honored mandate, “Use ‘em or lose ‘em.” How my throbbing fingertips were chastising me for the former calluses, which had once protected them and then been allowed to fade away with lack of practice.
There was the first time I owned a guitar way back in junior high. I’ll give you three guesses as to why I made that purchase. You got it. A boy in a garage band had slipped me a copy of their really pitiful album. He happened to be the lead singer, and I use the term singer loosely. Even back then when I was under the spell of infatuation, I had to admit that I couldn’t understand a word of his vocals and that any tune there was either very free or a bit strayed from on his part. But that was fine, he’d written the songs, and it was the 80’s after all, an era when half the songs coming out of the radio sounded pretty much the same.
I knew nothing about instruments and really didn’t have the funds to act on the knowledge had I known that all guitars are not created equal. As a result, I wound up with a piece of junk from China baring the general shape of a guitar and a high gloss finish. The instrument needed to be put out of its misery, but if I was ever going to try to get music from the oversized, plywood cigar box, it was in an even more desperate need of a set up. Set up? Of course, I had no idea what a set up was. I innocently assumed factories wouldn’t send out guitars that weren’t ready to be played. I really did give it a valiant effort, but the strings were at least three quarters of an inch from the fingerboard, and no amount of calluses can compensate for that. So in the end, my devotion to learning the guitar faded away as did my interest in the semi-talented rocker. By the time my first calluses had vanished, the dust was already collecting on the faux-leather case in my closet.
Much, much later, I traded that guitar in to fund a part of my future husband’s present. Have you ever tried to put wrapping paper around a banjo case? It’s not an easy feat, I assure you. Jeff loved the gift. Fortunately, he was still like myself in that oblivious state about the varying quality of instruments. Unlike the guitar that’d gone to fund the student five-string, his banjo was playable, but they did share similarities in the tones they could produce.
My next instrument purchase was at a yard sale and surprisingly it was here that I got the luckiest. It was standard practice for me to ask if there were any musical instruments for sale. Most of the time, people just gave me the weary “if it isn’t out here…” look, but one time it paid off. “I think I still have that old violin in the attic my dad forced me to play in high school,” the woman manning the sale told me bitterly. “I’d love to get rid of that thing.” Like ninety-nine percent of all the dusty violins in attics, this one had a faded label that read “Stradivarius,” and like all those other violins it was definitely a copy. The instrument however was a relatively decent violin made a quarter century ago in Mittenwald Germany and what it lacked in projection, it made up for in a warm and sweet tone. I took lessons and actually progressed on the fiddle. Fortunately for me, a violin’s strings don’t require much in the way of calluses. It’s cousin the mandolin however, which I decided to tackle next was another story.
I settled on the mandolin because its fingering is the same as the fiddle’s. Why not be able to play two instruments for the price of one? By this time however, I’d learned to do a little bit of research before purchasing an instrument. Good sound was of course a prerequisite, but to really interest me, an instrument had to be unique. The fiddle to which I had upgraded, for example, was number 103 handmade by Jean Ivy. Jeff and I had to travel past the point of all civilization to the very top of Sand Mountain, which is every bit as desolate as its name suggests, to try out the fiddles hanging in Mr. Ivey’s workshop, but the fiddle I brought home was well worth it. The mandolin I finally chose was a traditional, honey-gold A-style and sounded exquisite, but I soon found I’d need some perseverance if I wanted to enjoy its music. With its double steel strings, a mandolin feels something like a meet tenderizer on the tips of your fingers. Despite the grueling process, I’ve gone through several sets of calluses since my first painful weeks with the instrument.
I’m playing guitar now with a passion and am thoroughly enjoying every spare minute I can steal away to practice. My fingers are as tough as shoe leather and can bend a steel string under 150 pounds of pressure without even making me flinch. But, I’d be naïve to expect that if I die at a ripe old age, these calluses will be the ones accompanying me to the grave. I know myself far too well and can already see other interests and instruments like beautiful ivy vines winding themselves into the few moments of free time my days afford.
I’ve come to terms with my musical flightiness. I’ll never be a concert guitarist, because there are so many wonderful instruments to explore. I can however, play guitar tunes to my children, and even jam and perform with a host of interesting people. It’s true that the world needs virtuosos, but I for one, am happy that my genetics spared me the single-mindedness and unswerving dedication that this lot in life requires. There’s no telling how many instruments I’ll try to conquer during my lifetime, and how many will become a daily facet of my life as the fiddle has.
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