The Trouble with Transposition
For a few years in elementary school, I spent about an hour a week in the basement studio of a grand antique house, learning the mystical art of the piano. Even before I started taking lessons, I was familiar with the instrument’s potential. I was treated to complex organ anthems at church every Sunday, and at home, my father had a small, electric metronome, a fat stack of Sheet Music Magazine, and a color-coded chord wheel. But for some reason, when I tried to work the thing, only noise came out. I stuck with plunking out a rhythm on a single key and improvising around that with my voice. No doubt my parents saw this as sign enough that some lessons were in order.
My piano lessons (first with the kind, diminutive Mrs. DeMass1, and then with the sterner2, much taller Mr. DeMass) were an excellent and essential primer on how to read music, knowledge which has served me very well all my life. I was now able to decode even those complex jazzy numbers in Sheet Music, even if they were far beyond my ability to actually play. My playing ability remained firmly in John W. Schaum territory.
Alas, eventually, my piano teachers retired to Florida or something. I was left with the knowledge of this musical code and a stack of easy-ish music books, but my skill level never really increased. To this day, if the subject arises and someone asks, “do you play the piano?” my answer is always the same: “I know how to operate a piano.”
I spent much of my young adult life without easy access to a keyboard; if I did find myself seated at one (and out of earshot of anyone whom my poor playing might bother) I would inevitably break into the one piece of music that I had, unaccountably, memorized as a middle schooler: The Theme From Masterpiece Theater. It had been in a book of TV theme songs Mr. DeMass had given me, between the original Star Trek theme (complete with lyrics) and a long-form version of the Family Ties theme. PBS was enough of a staple of my youth that I knew the Masterpiece Theater theme well from advertisements alone. But why I committed it to memory, I have no idea.
More recently, a series of friends’ moves out of and into and out of Los Angeles left me in possession of a lovely keyboard and a few books of somewhat playable sheet music. This windfall rekindled in me a desire to be able to transcend “operation” of the piano and graduate into honest-to-god pianist territory. I tried to pick up where I left off with John W. Schaum, but the colorful drawings and cute song names that charmed me as a girl left adult-me feeling a little silly and demoralized. Luckily, I was able to find some music books aimed at adult learners. The music is better, and the books are cleverly structured around learning to master new key signatures and chord progressions.
After I make my way passably through any given song, I reward myself by turning the page and seeing what musical treasure awaits me there. Sometimes I’m granted the bonanza of a lightly jazzy Johnny Mercer number or a familiar spiritual. Sometimes, it’s a song I’ve never heard of and don’t enjoy playing. But the reward of an ever-widening repertoire is motivating. I have practiced more over the past six months or so than I have since I was a kid.
Readers, I am still a terrible pianist. But I am better than I was before.
I am working my way toward the back of Adult Piano Book 2 this month, and after spending several days flipping between “Deep River” and a simplified Tchaikovsky number, I decided it was time to move along. And there it was, positioned as an opportunity to practice adding trills: “Theme from a Festive Rondeau” by Jean Joseph Mouret. A few notes in, I realized what I was truly dealing with: the theme song from Masterpiece Theatre. Only this time there were trills.
My muscle-memorized version of TMT, as I’ll call it here for short, did not have any trills. Other things were different too. The movement in the left hand was altered, and chords were showing up in new places. To be frank, I’m not even sure what key I’d memorized the piece in, but it wasn’t the same key as the setting I was now presented with — D major. The key of D major has two sharps, which is both not that many and one more than I can easily maneuver. It’s just another way this simple piece of music was taunting me: on the cello (which I played quite well as a 17-year-old and can still find my way around) D major is essentially home base. It’s the first key you learn, because you can play a whole scale without moving your hands out of first position, four fingers evenly spaced on the neck of the instrument. But on the piano, instead of greeting me like an old friend, D major is an unrecognizable jerk, constantly reminding me that I’m an adult who plays the piano like a 10-year-old.
And so, for the past week, I’ve been trying to play a piece of music that I’ve known by heart, by rote, since girlhood. And I’ve been struggling. The music I’m reading is not particularly challenging, but it is proving a challenge to me. Just when my fingers think they know where to go next, I realize I’m adding something or leaving something out. I am forgetting both of the sharps. It’s frustrating and hilarious. My roommates should be grateful that I have headphones.
What I can’t stop thinking about is how the whole thing would be so much easier if I didn’t already have the old way memorized. Now, instead of just reading the music and getting it into my brain, I have to retrain my brain AND my fingers to do the same piece in a new key, with new rhythms. Oh, and don’t forget those pretty, pesky little trills.
Listen: this newsletter is called Metaforia. When I started it just a few weeks ago, I told you I was going to be presenting you with some metaphors. But I’ll be honest: I’m tired — so, so tired — about writing about this pandemic, and the lockdown, and the ways that I am trying to make meaning, or find new paths forward, or whatever other beam of sunlight cracks through and makes it to my fingers and into these paragraphs. So I’m not going to hold your hand with this metaphor. It can be whatever you need it to be:
The whole thing would be so much easier if I didn’t already have the old way memorized.
— Marissa
I remember she once told me that I should write a book someday because my name would look interesting on the cover.
(but still very kind and patient)
I can 100% hear you playing TMT in my head. I only know that song from hearing you play it when we were kids. When I've heard it since, it is catalogued in my head as "The song Marissa would play really well"
But learning a new way of doing it sounds so hard! I'll bet this is really good for your brain! Almost as if you are learning how to unlearn something. But I guess you aren't unlearning so much as removing some very old and engrained habits. What a tough and important skill to practice!
And this is old stuff from childhood, so it's had some time to be woven tightly and thoroughly into your neural networks. An interesting study technique I read about recently was to smell a specific scent when learning or practicing something. And then when it's time to recall (say on a language test in school) then you smell the same scent and it makes it much easier to recall. Could be an interesting experiment to try on yourself with "Theme from a Festive Rondeau."
A UU dad & mentor at my work shared with me all the things he was trying out in order to never become a curmudgeon. One of those things was parking in a different place every day to force himself to have to remember and learn new things.
We could make lots of meaning pulling metaphors out of this. But I think even in the absence of metaphor it still highlights the challenge of changing our own well-practiced behaviors. Thanks for giving me something very cool to think about <3
I learned on the Schaum books! Boy that brought memories back! Sounds to me like a few lessons to teach you scales and arpeggios might help you quite a bit, imho. :)