Once when I was like 12 years old my mom let me take piano lessons. I was super excited for about 2 weeks and then I got bored. I was the oldest student my teacher had and I think she just didn't know how to think outside the box. She just moved to slow-made my go page by page through the baby books- and after a few years I finally quit. I never practiced, I just memorized my songs about 20 min before my lesson and then on to the next- never really LEARNING anything. Piano started taking time away from the rest of my life- I had church callings to fulfill grades to maintain, and money to earn. So piano lessons and I went our separate ways. To be honest I have never really regretted that decision. Its not now, nor will it ever be, a passion of mine. I respect and admire people who play but diversity makes the world great right?!
Because I don't play anything I'm not super great at reading music. I took piano long enough to know the difference between a quarter note and a whole note. I know what a measure is and the time signature. I know how to read dynamics and basically follow along. What I can't do is look at music and tell you what key its written in or what note falls on which line (unless its middle C) and I can't look at a note and sing it right off the page. I have to hear it played and then I usually just memorize pretty quick. But I'm not completely clueless. Where is this going? let me tell you.
So tonight I was at my ward choir practice for our Christmas program. There weren't very many people there and we started 2 new songs I've never heard before. I asked the pianist to play my part a few times and made the mistake of saying "I can't read music" Big mistake. The obnoxious boy- and yes I deliberately use the word boy even though he is at least 21-decided he was going to take that information and show how much smarter he is than me as far as music goes. Seriously, I don't even know this kid's name but I want to punch him in the face every week. He talks incessantly and distracts the rest of the tenors so that the choir director has to repeat herself and it takes twice as long to get through anything. He makes the most irrelevant comments and well, he is basically a train wreck. The sad part is he has a pretty nice voice...he just needs to use it for more singing and less talking.
So tonight, remember this is the first time we've ever heard the song, he starts nit picking about ending words together and what dynamics we should be singing. "is it MF or MP?" "We should be pronouncing it like this blah blah blah"...really kid. The reason we aren't holding it is because we are still figuring out what notes we are supposed to be singing...we haven't even started working on timing and dynamics. Then when he wasn't doing that, he was saying things like, "this is a dumb song. I don't want to sing this. can't we sing a normal Christmas song." so if this wasn't reason enough for a person like me to get irritated and kick him, he starts talking down to me like I'm retarded and have no idea what's going on. Yes, its true, I can't pick a note out of thin air but I'm not totally retarded...I have been taking private lessons for almost two years...I can manage my way through a choir piece without his help! ahh...I might have told him that we didn't need his attitude and that if he didn't have anything positive to say he didn't need to come back next week...he thought I was kidding...but kind of I wasn't. I predict he will be single for a very very long time.
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