We started off the day at 10am in the Combo venue. My boyfriend sat bored and gazed with envy at my brother's active DS. I suggested he focus on the different musicians or close his eyes or tap his foot to get into it but he just remained looking sad and bored while i nodded my head and grinned at the talented performers. It was worrying to me that the entire day would be a bad experience for him but I thought maybe he would find the big bands more engaging and understandable.
At the big band venue, he liked a few slow balled songs. But whenever the tempo or dynamics increased, he would clench his hands to the arm rest and his leg would shake uneasily. It was quite extreme also, I was amazed and concerned but somehow not insulted. Big band isn't my favorite part of jazz, but it doesn't make me tense up. I was astonished. I couldn't really wrap my mind around the fact that jazz, of all things, was making my boyfriend extremely edgy. I had noticed before that all his favorite music is low key and mid to slow tempo, but I didn't think fast and exciting music would be this disturbing to him.
I stroked his arm and took deep breaths to instruct him to relax, but it was not helping him that much. I think he really dislikes the sound of trumpets, for whenever they would play he would tense his entire body. I admit that jazz is a little offsetting sometimes with it's sometimes unpredictable patterns and turns, but I associate that feeling of being on the verge of something else with a feeling of peace, not noises that you can't control which are scary and threatening.
I started to realize that the reason someone would feel edgy was because they don't understand the music. They don't understand how to tap their foot to it or count it or what chord progression will obviously happen or what noises are coming from which instruments.
I was softly tapping my hand with the music on his leg to help him get into it but he didn't understand that's what I was doing. At a song which had a rhythm resembling a heartbeat, I tapped on his chest. He asked "That's my heartbeat?" as if I had felt it and I was showing him. I looked at him and realized he couldn't tell that I was tapping to the music. He has trouble clapping with music and he can't really tap his foot without watching someone else do it first to a song.
It mystified me. I had always been able to dance and do musical things intuitively. And with musical training I have gotten to the next levels of understanding.
We left the venue and I was relived to see him relax a bit. We headed to the vocal jazz venue because I hoped that would feel more soothing to him. On the way there, I starting teaching him about simple music theory. I told him about counting, and that if a song is in 4/4, that you will count from 1 to 4 and then over and over again. And that in jazz, and also reggae, the emphasis of the count is on 2 and 4. This confused him a lot, so I demonstrated with the song "Mary had a little lamb." Once, while snapping 1 and 3 and singing normally. And again, while snapping 2 and 4 and singing with those emphasis. He didn't understand it, but he did say that he could tell there was a difference. I had him snap and say "1, 2!, 3, 4!" He got the hang of that.
In the vocal venue I took out a little (very little) composition notebook. I wrote a few things down for him, distinguishing the difference between a beat, and a rhythm. A woman next to me asked "ooh what's that? A composition?" It was a whole note and then two half notes on a staff with no lines with 1, 2, 3, 4 written above it. Crappy composition if you ask me. But the funny thing was that it was in a composition notebook, which she did not know and I realized the hilarity of later. I suppose it was a composition.
I once again tapped my hand on his leg, and this time I said "2, 4, 2, 4" once in awhile to him if he looked over. He said he liked the vocal a lot better than the other two styles. He started tapping his foot on tempo, on beat. I was so proud.
We headed to the combo venue again after a bit, and I told him more about music. And the more I told him, the more he asked. He is a quick learner, and he asks good questions, so it went along well and he learned a lot. Outside the building we sat on a bench instead of going inside, he didn't feel like listening more yet. I took out my trusty tiny composition notebook and started scribbling staffs and pianos and note names and definitions while I explained everything.
In the lesson he learned the applied definition and definition of beat, rhythm, percussion, measure, note, tone, clef, time signature, chord, key, interval, and tempo. I didn't have time to tell him about harmony, which is quite fundamental when listening to a band or choir. But impressive, huh? He asked me very good questions, like "how many notes are there in a beat?" To which I demonstrated the different note values and their notations, and explained that you can have between 0 and as many as humanly possible. I drew a piano to show him a chord and how to make a chord major or minor. And I showed him the three clefs and what this means. I feel quite proud of myself, but he really is a quick learner. I taught him how to read the wine blessing in Hebrew 10 minutes before Seder on Passover.
When we went into the combo venue again, and he didn't seem as bored anymore. And without my help, I saw him mouthing counts. Yay!
1 comment:
In this world there are slow balled songs. There are also fast balled songs. I prefer high speed cubular songs.
Some jazz makes me tense. Some jazz is insufficiently melodic. Some jazz is like a needlework sampler. It shows all of the possibilities of an instrument just like a sampler shows all of the stitches and letters and thread colors, but stands alone in a little square frame never coming together into a useful coat or coverlet.
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