Tuning In

The other day my 11 year-old brought me his student guitar and said "Look mom, I tuned it. It was really awful but I fixed it." I plucked through the strings and only one of them sounded slightly off. I said, "That's pretty good! How'd you do it? Did you find the pitch pipes?" He said, "No, I just remembered what you hummed when I saw you tune it." Which I haven't done for a year, dang! But this is the toddler in the morning who would be humming songs he heard in Dad's car on the way home the day before. (Is that Smoke on the Water?) And the one that blew us all away on the musical perception test.

This weekend I watched the movie August Rush. I liked that movie. (I like all movies about kids overcoming things, like Akeelah and the Bee, and Second Hand Lions, and even AI.) August Rush is about a boy who is a ward of the state searching for his parents. It's melodramatic but nice anyway. In one of the scenes he basically learns to read and write music in one day. Z said that was far-fetched. But I don't think so. Not if he had something in his head he really needed to write down.

I remember the week after I graduated from high school. My dad got me a nice keyboard for a graduation present. I played with that thing day and night for a week. I learned some Bach. Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor, the whole thing, which took 3 days. Part of the first Goldberg variation, another day. And Bouree, which I learned in the wrong key because I couldn't find my tape. I used to think that in a past life, I could have been... somebody who really liked Bach. : )

Maybe I could have been a musician. But I tried to learn to read music, and I couldn't stand it. Looking is not hearing. (But it's cheating, isn't it?)

I do know I need to notice my kids talents and nurture them. Definitely steering that one towards orchestra!

------------------------------------
Funniest thing I saw today: A dreamcatcher, hanging from the rear-view mirror of a car.

------------------------------------
(New Category!)
Movies, Movies, Movies: Recently we saw the movie "Vantage Point". It looks pretty good in the trailer, and it is an okay movie, all in all. But the way they rewind the movie over and over to show the scene from different perspectives is extremely annoying. "Aw, geez! Not again!"