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OPUS ONE
By Jim Walker
I just got a tape out of the library that will help you to play the piano
after you’ve given up doing so. It tells me stuff that I already knew, but
then I could always play by ear. I actually could not read music for years,
but if my mother or the piano teacher played a piece for me once, then I
could pretty much repeat the performance. The adults always thought I was
reading from the score.
Then, after a while, I figured out some basic chords, and, after a longer
time, I discovered that almost all songs are written around several basic
chords, and that these have names like tonic, dominant, subdominant, et
cetera. The problem was that the only one I could identify was tonic. I
couldn’t remember the others.
Well, back to the tape. This man is trying to get people back to playing the
piano after they’ve given up doing so. He says that people like Mozart and
his pals were taught how to improvise before they could read music. I can
believe this.
In my case, after a lot of fiddling around with chords, I finally came up
with a melody, and I even wrote some words. These go
Passion is the fashion,
But passion is not love.
A bikini is simply smashing,
But is it love you’re thinking of.
A love affair is surely misnamed,
For it’s love not pash staking its claim.
So lover, when you would woo,
Keep in mind, my friend, she may love you.
So Passion may be the fashion,
But Passion is not love.
(I have just had an insight: I have written a rather odd sonnet!)
This song has been my entire repertoire in many places. I have played it at
open mike performance. I sing it, too. Badly. I have to say it has been
admired, and it has a nice little bouncy rhythm. But because the music part
is all in my head, I can never repeat it exactly the same way. I have often
been asked for an encore but have had to confess that this was my only tune,
my sole opus.
However, a new tune has lately begun to crowd my consciousness and make its
way onto the keyboard. In fact this is such a strong tune that I have to go
back and play the Passion is the Fashion, fairly frequently, just to be sure
that I don’t forget it.
Words for the new tune have so far eluded me. I’ve come up with something
that begins “Voices from the next room,” but that is the problem. Both the
voices and the notion of the lyrics just have not really made themselves
known to me.
The result is that I have one tune that I can play and have the words for,
and the other for which I have the tune—well most of it—and am still
searching for the words. You might say, I am searching for the idea of the
words.
All of this composition has taken me about twenty-five years. I am not a
prolific composer, and it is doubtful I shall make my living from music.
On the plus side, I am now able to read music. Not very well, but I can pick
out the melody line at sight. Chords and timing confuse me, and I can never
remember the different kinds of rests.
Maybe I’ll be able to find the words for my second tune. And who knows, I
may even write a third tune—a few years from now!
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