I often wonder how musicians come to find their particular instruments. What motivates a person to take up bassoon or the sackbut? Many musicians can give you a story of instrumental epiphany–the day they realized that the C-Flat Double-valved, Bent-Bell Piccolo Trumpet was their soul mate for life. They heard it first at age five and swooned as disembodied violins swelled to a Tchaikovskian crescendo–it was love at first hearing.
It’s an emotional calling–musicians don’t choose their instruments based on cost-benefit analysis or by reading user reviews. “Seventy-eight percent of flute players are highly satisfied with their choice of instrument! Trumpet players, one hundred percent!” (Trumpet players–often wrong, never in doubt.) (I’m making up these statistics.) (And I do like trumpet players, on balance.)
So, yes, an emotional calling, often starting with an aha moment. But still, is there anything we can say about it beyond being a nebulous emotional calling?
Funny I should ask, because I have an opinion on that.
Most people, I’m guessing, would say that the sound of the instrument is a primary attractor. Oboe players like the sound of the oboe, indeed never get tired of the nasally, schmaltzy, grating sound that…oops, my bad. I have no beef with oboes. Really. Oboes do have their own legitimate place, and I don’t mean out in the parking lot.
You see, it isn’t just the sound of the instrument–it’s the sound combined with the physicality of the instrument. And the physicality means just how the instrument becomes an extension of your body and how your body uses the instrument to create sound.
I play recorders. I love how they look and that they’re portable. They have a whiff of antiquity about them–when I play one, I feel transported back five hundred years to an age of courtly chivalry, Gregorian chanting and Celtic knotwork. And the plague and no chocolate. An no air conditioning. And gross social injustices. But never mind that–I love the range of size in the recorder family and what differences that brings–the tenor is wonderfully deep and resonant, both calming and powerful in an elephantic way. The soprano recorder gets your attention in a hurry. It’s fickle. You must treat it gingerly. At its worst, it’s shrill, but that same shrillness can be turned into a skull-buzzing, penetrating presence that lights up like a thousand-watt bulb.
Some of my happier musical moments have been spent playing Bach flute sonatas on my recorder. Just me and the music of JSB coming to life through a zipping, hummingbird recorder. And it’s agile–you can play lickety-split as needed, which is the forte of the soprano–it’s not quite so suited for slow, sustained tones. One of my most exhilarating musical experiences was playing in a recorder trio–talk about living on the edge. We played a piece by Benjamin Britten called “Alpine Suite” which musically narrates a ski trip to the Alps. One of the movements is a skiing descent down the “piste–” an avalanche of recorders racing to the finish line at the bottom. We usually finished the piece together, though sometimes one of us would go tumbling out on a hairpin turn.
I also play harmonica. I appreciate its portability and quick learning curve. Like the recorder, it’s a wind instrument, and wind instruments are a special case. Wind instruments require intimacy–the instrument becomes part of your respiratory system, and there’s nothing more corporally connected than that. With winds, your breath is your sound–as you breathe, you make music. Winds are akin to singing in this way–the degree of intimate physicality is high, and…let’s just say that Freud would and probably did have plenty to say about the oral attractions of these prodigiously spit-producing instruments.
A relative latecomer in my life is the guitar. I’m not much of a guitarist, but I appreciate its relative portability and how it fits against the body when sitting. I love the polyphony of the guitar. I work a lot with children, so it’s a useful instrument–I can sing and accompany myself. I have never been so attracted to the overall physicality of the instrument, mostly because I’ve never put enough effort into it to get fully past the beginner’s bane of razor-sharp steel strings and the contorted mess of the left hand on the neck. However, it’s a highly forgiving instrument in other ways–it’s quick work to learn a few chords and strumming techniques and be performance-ready. At least for a group of kindergartners. And that’s gratifying.
Mostly I play piano, one of the great loves of my life. I didn’t start playing until age eighteen, and not seriously until thirty. There was never an aha moment for me–the piano began beckoning me from an early age, though. Softly but insistently. Playing was inevitable.
The piano is a complete instrument, astonishing in its stylistic and expressive range, suitable for solo playing or any group configuration. The technical requirements are seemingly endless, so there’s no lack of challenge in that department.
Pianos are big and bold and aloof–you get close, but not too close. You sit next to it and get to touch only the keys, and those only so long as you want a sound. (A footnote on piano pedals, a powerfully strong siren call for the uninitiated, used judiciously by the experienced. They’re like MSG–you can get by without it way more than you think, and if you do need it, you probably actually need something different and a little more real.)
But I digress. The pianoforte graciously relieves you of all responsibility for tone production. Sax and trumpet players do a fair amount of squawking and honking in their early years; young violinists fill their families’ houses with screeching and scraping–there’s a reason why the Russians call it the ‘screepka.’ But with piano, strike a note, get a nice sound. Anyone can do it.
The Faustian deal here is that in exchange for a guaranteed tone (hopefully in tune and beautiful), the only variable you control is that of volume. Hence, ‘pianoforte’–the ‘soft-loud’ instrument. That’s all the access you get to the strings–volume control. From that physically-distanced perspective, you are challenged to create beauty. But wait, the devilish deal is even deeper.
The piano tricks you into thinking it’s a visual instrument. You sit freely next to the piano–your body and hands in particular are not locked into one position as is true for many instruments. You have to look to know where the keys are, right? At first, yes. But it’s not a visual instrument. At all. Blind pianists deal with this from the start. Over time you build an arm/finger/hand mental map of how to move across the keyboard without looking. You come to play chords automatically, and if you’re learning jazz, that first chord will be D minor seven–I can almost guarantee it–your left hand goes there like a magnet. You learn to take deep bass notes in stride without looking–and when the mental map is super-detailed, you can do it at a fast tempo. To release yourself from the visual trap of the piano is a marvelous thing–(It just takes practice!)–and at that point you’ve answered the Faustian challenge and can reap the rewards.
I could go on and on and on about pianos. Some of you already think I have, I’m sure. So let’s cut to the chase.
What I love most about playing piano is the simple act of pressing a key and getting back a lovely sound. Again, it’s the sound plus the touch–they are inextricably linked. Every piano is different in this regard, though. Some pianos have a heavy, clunky touch. Others are so light they make me say, “SERIOUSLY?” in a sarcastic tone. There has to be some resistance, and getting the right degree of resistance is the grail. It isn’t something you can control yourself. It is what it is, and it can cost a lot of money to substantially alter that touch and sound, and sometimes you still don’t get what you’re looking for.
My grand piano was beyond marvelous when I brought her home new, a blushing bride of a piano. Sharp, bright, smooth, silky, pure–ultimately words fail–you would have to have been there to hear it. Today it needs major work amounting to a slew of subtle adjustments–it has lost that magical quality, quite possibly never to return to its pristine state, no matter how much money I threw at it. My electronic piano, though about the same age as her big sister out in the living room, never goes out of tune and has a fabulous touch. It doesn’t matter what I play–just playing anything–a single chord over and over–lights up my soul–I can’t get enough of it and can easily play for hours without tiring.
I figure it’s like crack cocaine for the fingers–there’s some kind of chemical change that happens in my brain–not only psychotropic, but dactylotropic as well. We’ll call it “psychodactylotropic–” “That which draws the mind and the fingers.” I just made that up. I’m rather pleased with it.
And now if you’ll excuse me, enough of this verbiage. My piano awaits.
K-blog 