Finding 35

12. The Sound of Music

Some families were really musical; some families had pianos and took lessons; did science fair projects; went to boy scouts and girl guides, and Sunday school.  Our family was not like that at all.  My father was tone deaf, loved the bagpipes and marching bands, he couldn’t keep the tune, but he loved to hum along.  For many summers we went to the Highland Games and the Tattoo, where bagpipe bands would play and marching bands would march.  My father just loved it.  We were after all of Scottish heritage, and the pipes ran in my dad’s blood, and my grandfather’s even more.  My mother’s mother had made her take piano lessons at a young age, and my mom hated it, and she never forced us to do anything of the sort.  So growing up, my parents weren’t really into music, or perhaps they were just parents and they didn’t have the time or interest in it.  What always seemed to end up on our record player was Neil Diamond, Nana Miscouri, Roger Whittaker, Bob Denver, and any sort of bagpipe music, which was always too loud, and my mother would call out, “Don, turn that down”, or the occasional old record, old quartets singing old songs, in albums covers that just smelled old with the paper jackets a little faded.  I never read the jackets, but the songs were familiar.

At the end of grade 4, my elementary school was about to embark on a music program­­–a real music program with real music instruments.  Moving beyond the recorder (which I tried in grade 3) and the ukulele, which I never tried.  Students were asked what instruments they wanted to play and we were able to choose.  They gave us a list of instruments, and off we went.  Seriously, like a 9 year old knows anything about choosing an instrument, let alone more than 3 or 4 instruments in a school band.  Everyone knew what a trumpet and a tuba was, and of course the clarinet and flute and the saxophone.  But the rest?   No clue.  I remember sitting at the kitchen table with a list and going through the instruments we could choose from.

Flute and Clarinet, too girlie for me; the Saxophone was too… showy.  There would be a million trumpets for sure.  I remember my dad saying something like this at the time, “why would you want to do, what everyone else is going to do?”  So with his advice and carefully going over the list I made my choice.  I had not heard anyone mention they were thinking of playing the trombone.  So that is what I choose. 

We placed the order, and later that summer the music store called and said we could pick up the instrument.  It had arrived.  My dad drove us over to Halifax, and we went to the music store and picked it up.  We were told not to open the cases until we had our first class, so I waited patiently.  That must have driven my parent crazy, as I wouldn’t let anyone open the case.  Those were the instructions, till finally, my father said it would be okay to open the case, we wouldn’t play it, just take a look at it.

Opening the trombone case, my eyes were wide with excitement and fear.  Was I going to open it upside down?  Would everything fall out?  Would it break once it fell out?  Then what would I do with a broken trombone?

So carefully I opened the locks and lifted the lid.  Inside the case was lined with a bright blue material, shiny and sort of soft to the touch material, it glistened everywhere.  Opening the case all the way revealed the trombone disassembled, with each part nestled in a plastic sleeve.  The brass was so shinny; the chrome-spotless.  I just looked at it, my father took apiece out, and I probably freaked out a little.  Treating it like an un-hatched egg in a nest, and that his touching it would disturb the rest of the pieces of the instrument.  Slowly though, he took out the slide, and moved it a little, and we put it back.  For the next week or so, I would open the case and look at it, wondering with anticipation like Christmas, for the day I could put it together and make a sound.

In our first music class, we put the instruments together, and I discovered some of the kids had already been playing with their instruments, which was something we weren’t supposed to do.  There were three other trombone players, and about a dozen trumpet players, a kid on French horn, and about a billion flautists and 500,000 clarinet players.

Playing came naturally to me, and I had an ear for music.  That is something that amazed my parents as my mom detested taking lessons and my father, you know, couldn’t carry a tune.  Band trips, and concerts and new friends would make band class one of my favorite parts of school.  If other parts of my life didn’t become so stressed in later years, I may have spent more time in music, however I met a whole group of people where music was a big part of their life, their entire families were into it.  It all seemed a little foreign to me.

My parents just like all the other band parents would come to our Christmas concerts.  The music became more intricate as our skills developed, and through a band trip in grade 8, I discovered something I else I loved to do, photography.  Cameras and band classes would be the two constants in all my years through school, a small core group of students would continue playing in the school band all the way to end of high school.  All the other trombone players I started with, dropped out by starting high school, I was the only one left from my elementary school class. 

One thing I need to mention is the teacher that saw us through this.  Mr. Williams.  He was the conductor of an orchestra in Halifax, and an accomplished musician.  He was the one teacher that went way beyond the call for all the music students.  He saw us grow up from grade 5 to high school.  He knew all of us quite well.  Mr. Williams was definitely more than a teacher, he was a mentor of sorts, and deserves more thanks and praise than I could extend.  Band class was a safe class, where everyone felt they could fit it, where as in other parts of school, that wasn’t always the case. Mr. Williams made the music program viable, almost single handedly.  All of the kids that had him felt that way I am sure.  It was the best part of my entire school life.  All kids should be so fortunate.