Nerissa: Johnny had been showing up for his guitar lessons like a mini-brunette normal-eyed Johnny Winter. He continues to hone his moves, if not his chops, on his little acoustic, or a boom whacker, or what appears to be part of a Hot Wheels racing apparatus. At a recent lesson, he was given this for homework:

-Stand in zero position (feet to the right of the stool)

-Now move to one position (left foot moves about a foot to the left, so legs are wide)

-Pick up guitar with right hand

-Hold guitar with the head up.

Also, he can clap back rhythms that I or Lila clap or play for him. I was pretty sure he was well on the way to superstardom. Or at least maybe eligible for this month’s Suzuki Springfest, a heart-lifting end of the year all day extravaganza held in Downtown Northampton. Suzuki students from every studio mass together in various outdoor locales and play through their repertoire. Lila did this last spring on the courthouse lawn. I noticed that Jeremy, Johnny’s teacher, had a group of his guitar students participate. I dreamed of Johnny sitting on his tiny guitar stool, holding his guitar in place as the older guitarists played. He’d be watching them all, with a mix of reverence and chutzpah, thinking, “Next year, man, I’ll show you all!”

Well, this didn’t exactly happen. Instead, Johnny watched for about ten seconds, then kicked off his shoes and ran across the lawn to slide down the stone bannister in front of the courthouse.

Instead, we walked into Jeremy’s classroom today, and after about ten minutes, Johnny lay on the floor. “No,” he said to everything Jeremy asked him to do. “Dat is so boring.” When Jeremy asked him to clap, he lay on his back and idly swung his arms together so that his hands missed each other. When Jeremy asked him if he’d like to learn “two position,” Johnny said, “Dat is so boring.” (Two position is when you sit down on the stool. I have to agree; pretty boring.)

It came up toward the end of the lesson, when I mentioned to Jeremy that I’d been away for the past two weekends doing gigs, that perhaps there was some general free floating anger that had attached itself to the guitar. “You went away and I didn’t even wike dat,” Johnny said from his side lying position on the floor.

We called it a day a bit early, and actually decided to take a hiatus from lessons until September. I felt a heaviness in my heart. Had I pushed him too hard? Should we quit now before we squeeze all the love out of the guitar for him?

Emily, our violin teacher gave us some perspective. “When I started, it took me six months just to stand still for one minute” [which is part of the Suzuki teaching pedagogy.] “I used to hide under the piano bench. It took me another two years to learn my Twinkle variations. But I knew the music because my parents played it every day. You have to take the long view. You are giving him invaluable life skills that will apply to every aspect of his life.”

I looked up the word “student,” as I noticed it shared a root with “studio” and also, of course, “study,” which is what we called the room my father worked in, a room we’d refer to nowadays as his office.”Study” comes from the Latin studere, to apply oneself with diligence; or earlier to what’s known as “Proto-Indo-European language, or PIE: to “to push, stick, knock, beat.” I like this. Sounds like music. Next fall we’ll come back to Jeremy and we’ll push the tiniest bit more. Or maybe we’ll just knock out the beat with a couple of sticks. Either way, nothing worthwhile comes without an application of some kind of diligence and then that magic Other: grace.

After SpringFest, post-dinner, Lila and I practiced her violin, and Johnny joined us, red boom whacker air-guitar flailing along to “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie” through Brahms’s Waltz. And then, for the first time ever, he pulled his little guitar stool out of the music trunk and set it up in front of his stool, picked up his real) guitar and set it carefully on his left knee. “Wook, Mama!” And he began painstakingly to pluck out notes on the strings.

So far we haven’t knocked his love affair with the guitar out of him yet.

Nields Scream for Liverpool Legends

Nerissa: Much has happened since last we visited our heroes. Mostly the mom in the family has been overwhelmed with a new CD coming out, which has wrecked havoc on all other members of said family, but the innate musicality of the children goes on undamaged despite the parents’ best efforts at overwhelming the household with Busyness. Highlight of the last month:

The Fake Beatles AKA the Liverpool Legends played at nearby Northampton High School on May 3, and we all went, paying homage to the TWO Herbie the Love Bug lookalikes set up to lure my 3 year old (was this concert made for my family or WHAT?)

The Liverpool Legends is a pretty standard Beatles cover band except for two remarkable distinctions. First, they are the brainchild of George Harrison’s beloved sister Louise who travels with them and manages them.

Second, they play at high schools and colleges across the world, and invite the school’s music programs to get in on the fun. Our Northampton High School band and a group of local (student) string players practiced for weeks, learning every note of an array of Beatles tunes with the precise orchestration (“All You Need is Love,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Yesterday,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Ob La Di, Ob La Da,” and on and on.)

Both my children were transfixed. Johnny spent the whole show literally at the edge of his folded up theatre seat leaning forward over the seat in front of him. Lila curled into my arms and sang along, “Woooo’d” along to “She Loves You,” and ran up to the front when invited to do so (the first act ended in 1966 when the real Beatles stopped touring; the second began with Sgt. Pepper era costumes and songs and ended with Let It Be and “The End” from Abbey Road.)

We were so proud of our local musicians. I was in tears watching teenagers I see regularly up on stage with the Beatles doppelgangers, playing those parts with such care and energy. At the end of the show, I got to meet Louise. “Thank you for taking such good care of the fans,” I said, remembering reading that Louise and George’s Mum were famous for answering every single fan letter for all four Beatles back in the day. “I learned from me Mum,” Louise told me.

We walked home from the show. It was dark and sweetly warm. “Dis is da best day of my wife,” sighed Johnny.

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The Many Uses of the Boom Whacker

Boom Whackers

Nerissa: I was told when friends learned I’d be having a baby boy, that at a certain age, all phallic objects turn into guns. Yet I observed a different phenomenon in Katryna’s house. When William turned four, all phallic objects became guitars. So with Johnny. For Christmas, Katryna gave him a set of these excellent Boom Whackers. Each one of these colorful plastic tubes, when whacked, emits a pitch (from Do to Do, up a scale). One can use another boom whacker to strike said pitch, or one could use a stuffed animal, wooden spoon, or one’s sister’s limp-pasta-style hand.

Johnny doesn’t bother with the pitches. Instead, each one of them represents a different kind of guitar.

“Dat one is my banjo,” he nodded in the direction of the green one. He picked up the longest red one, and said, “Pway dat song dat goes,” and then he proceeded to mimic (quite accurately) the feedback at the beginning of “I Feel Fine,” followed by a vocal rendition of the introductory riff.

Today after school, as I put groceries away and made dinner, Johnny and Lila put on The Beatles, cracked the window, and created a row of “microphones,” all the better to regale the neighbor’s cat. They carefully closed the window on their rows of tubes and sang “Love Me Do” into the back yard. I am sure this had nothing to do with the fact that they were on the road with Katryna and me all weekend, watching us mount stage after stage. For now, the focus has moved from guitar to mic.

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Why You Should Listen to Music #24

I had the good fortune to attend a Suzuki parent talk by my old friend fellow guitar teacher Dave Madsen. Dave and I knew each other 20 years ago when we were both working at the Loomis Chaffee school in Windsor CT, where our band The Nields got its start. Dave is a father of two, and though he was a professional guitar player and “regular” teacher, it was through his exposure to his daughter’s Suzuki violin lessons that he got interested in the method, and eventually trained. He is now the foremost local Suzuki Guitar trainer and teacher; he teaches at the University Of Hartford.

There is much to recommend the Suzuki method, but what I want to write about today is its foremost innovation, which is to understand music as a language and to therefore teach it to children in the same way we “teach” them how to speak and later to read.

1. Listening is key. We would never say to a parent, “I think your child shows some good aptitude in the English language. I definitely think you should encourage her to pursue her studies.” Or “maybe you’d better try Chinese with this one. She’s not that talented in English.” Instead, we just assume that if we infuse the child’s listening experience with people speaking the language semi-correctly that the child will learn, and will indeed become fluent.

2. To that end, it really is vital to play the recordings of the pieces every single day, even (Dave said) multiple times a day. There is a famous shot in the Suzuki video “Nurtured by Love” in which a small child, maybe just barely three, is seen pedaling around on his trike with an old fashioned cassette recorder strapped to his little back, playing Twinkle variations of course.

I had a complex reaction to this shot, by the way. On the one hand, this makes a lot of sense to me. In HooteNanny we ask parents to play the CD of the class curriculum (22 or so songs sung by Katryna and me) every day, even if it’s just background music. In my own experience, nothing has been as helpful as relying on my own ear-memory of how a song goes in order to play it back. And the metaphor extends: when I want to compose a song, I usually prepare my mind by exposing it to a variety of music, stimulating my muse in this way.

But on other hand, I thought, give the kid a break! He’s trying to ride his bike! Does he really need that gigantic machine strapped to his back? This might make sense if my goal is to make my child a virtuoso. But I don’t want her to be a virtuoso! I know the life of professional musician, and no matter how successful one is, it’s a hard one. Would I wish that on my child? Maybe. That’s for another post. But gaining musical fluency is a totally different goal from becoming the toppermost of the poppermost, to steal a Beatlism. Watching that three-year-old pedal around with the tape recorder strapped to his back, it was hard for me to see that in any other light than that his parents wanted to make him a star. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they just wanted to make him fluent.

In any case, I raised my hand at this point in the lecture and said, “Can I mix up my Suzuki Book One CD with some Beatles? Because my kids really love the Beatles and sometimes complain when I put on Suzuki. Will that corrupt the process?” And to my relief, Dave laughed and said, “No way! Bring on the Beatles!”

I should say that though we have not strapped an iPod to our children, we have been extremely diligent about playing the Suzuki CDs (Book 1 and Book 2) on a daily basis. Both my 5 year old (the violinist) and the 3 year old (the air guitarist and self proclaimed Suzuki drummer) hum, la la and whistle the tunes of all the melodies all the day long. My son, in addition, runs into the music room when the CD is playing to drum the rhythms of the tunes. But we also listen to a lot of Beatles. These days, it’s late era Beatles: Let It Be, Abbey Road, The White Album, with some psychedelic Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour thrown in. (“Day Tripper” is also a huge hit, as is “Baby You Can Drive My Car” though Johnny likes to caution the listener, “A baby should NOT dwive the car!”) Lila has been learning the riff to “Hey Bulldog” on her violin (loving that low 1 on the E string) and whistles the solo to “Day Tripper.”

I look at my sister’s kids who are 10 and 7. They are not Suzuki kids, but they certainly are musically fluent. Amelia currently plays piano, guitar, bass guitar, violin and clarinet. She can pick up pretty much any instrument and play a scale. She writes her own songs, composes and sings. William can play leads on his electric guitar. They have a second language, and they learned it through good early music education (Music Together and HooteNanny), private lessons (with various area teachers including Maggie, and their parents) and what I have observed to be a constant stream of music playing in their home. They pull notes out of the air just as my kids do.

Is it useful to have a second language? Maybe. It depends what that second language is. Is it fun? Definitely. Does it expand one’s world view, one’s capacity to understand? Undoubtedly. I tend to have a take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to…really anything in life, so I err on the side of playing the darn CD too much, though I balk at harnessing the kid with an iPod with earbuds. But chances are at any given time if you come near my house, you will hear strands of late Baroque violin music mixed in with classical guitar versions of “Lightly Row,” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Stay to listen.

How Young Is Too Young to Go Pro?

Playing "Scavenger Hunt" during our layover: look what we found!

Last week, our family flew to Florida to visit the grandparents, get a respite from New England winter (which has been in short supply), and of course, fly on airplanes. For children aged 3-5, the journey really is the destination, or at least a strong competitor. Every bit of the trip is exciting: the drive to the airport; the airplanes flying low overhead, the trek to the ticket counter and through security (my kids give each other and us high fives when they get through).

Of course, we brought the violin for Lila, and to compensate for not bringing his guitar, we brought a tambourine and mallet for Johnny. On our way down, we had to stop for a two hour layover in Charlotte. I quickly calculated and realized we would miss practice unless we grabbed this two hour opportunity.

“Hey!” I said. “Let’s open your case, Lila, and see if you make any money.” I should mention that the first violin Lila ever saw in person was held by a busker on Main Street in Northampton. So she knew immediately what I meant.

We made ourselves a little camp in between seats at our gate. Then Lila got out her violin and I set out the case in front of her, and myself as audience a few feet away, my back to the river of people racing to catch their planes. Tom put in a dollar lest there be any doubt as to the purpose of the open case.

I suggested pieces. Lila played them, her eyes scanning the passers by. At first, no one stopped. I could tell she was getting discouraged, and my heart broke for her. I know how awful it is to put yourself out there and be ignored. We played many a frustrating busking gig when we were first starting out, though in each instance we learned something. But Lila is five. I was twenty.

But just at the end of Minuet 3, someone tossed a dollar over my shoulder into the case. Lila’s face lit up. People were racing by to catch their planes, but some lingered, listening to the five year old playing Handel and Bach. They clapped, exclaimed, and tossed their bills into the case. And I had an intense mixture of pride and…something else, not so great. Guilt? Shame? I wasn’t sure which. But after a guy gave her a five dollar bill and said, “Can I take your picture? You’re going to be famous!” I got it.

“I think that’s enough,” I said as gently as I could. “Wow, Lila–$13!”

She was beaming. We noted that she can now call herself a professional musician. We’ve just read The Trumpet of the Swan, one of my favorite books ever, by EB White (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little). In it, a mute trumpeter swan learns to communicate through a trumpet stolen by his father. He becomes a famous and beloved professional trumpet player, earning money through his playing to pay back the store from where his father stole the instrument of his salvation. So Lila knows about playing for money. And she knows about performing, watching her mother and aunt. It’s the family business. And it’s the way we give back to the world. Ultimately, that’s what musicians do: we take the gift we’ve been given and give it back. Some of us feel like we are strangling if we go too long without that interchange.

“You know, that’s illegal,” Katryna said when I called her to tell her about our adventures. So that settled my internal dilemma. We won’t be busking in airports again. I will protect my little girl for a few more years anyway from the power of her own talent, the pull everyone has for external validation (through money and attention), and from her own stage mother (there’s definitely a Mama Rose in me, no denying it). And when the time is right, I’ll let her come to her own conclusions about when, if  and how to give her gift.

The Grammys are my Superbowl: By Katryna

By Katryna:

My kids begged me to let them watch the Grammys.  They had heard that Adele would be performing for the first time since her vocal cord surgery.  Her song “Rolling in the Deep” was our family’s song of last summer.  My daughter learned it at Rock n Roll Camp; my son played air guitar to it every time it came on the radio; my husband taught it to his high school music class; I insisted that we sing it every time we had a singalong.  But Adele’s struggle with her vocal cords also resonated with me.

I have had polyps on my cords for my whole musical career- maybe even for my whole life, but it wasn’t until I had a camera stuck down my throat in the fall of 1995 (when we were recording our CD Gotta Get Over Greta for a record label and were in the middle of 3 weeks of studio time at a Big Fancy Recording Studio (Long View Farm Studio)) that I knew.  I relate to everything that Adele has been going through and have followed her story: cancelled shows, disappointed fans, brilliant doctors.  I have always had the choice of whether or not to go under the knife– or the laser as it is now.  Adele did not.  Her polyp started bleeding–hemorrhaging.  She had no voice and had to have the surgery.

The technology has come so far since I was first diagnosed with my polyp.  Surgeons now use the same techniques they would use on infant skin.  The problem is that vocal cords are tiny and any cutting into them or lasering them can cause scar tissue to develop which can be worse than the original pathology.  But infant skin needs to be elastic.  It has so far to grow.  So scar tissue must be minimized because scar tissue is not elastic.  All this is to say that Adele, despite being in the hands of exceptionally well trained surgeons, was not guaranteed a positive outcome.  She was not even guaranteed any voice at all after surgery, let alone the incomparable one she was born with.

So when my kids begged to watch, I acquiesced.  I thought, “Last week I let them stay up to watch football and I don’t even like football.” So we turned on the TV and Bruce Springsteen, one of my favorite artists of all time was singing his new anthem reminding us that we take care of our own.  And by “our own” he means every one in the country.  Everyone.  I was glad that my kids were hearing that.

I did not let them stay up til the end.  I did not even let them stay up to hear Adele, but I promised that I would record it.  As a result, I watched almost the whole thing.  Awards shows are basically stupid.  But at the Grammys, the artists actually do the thing for which they are being awarded.  If you ignore the boring speeches in between, you are just watching a brilliant, amazing concert. Highlights for me were Bruce, Bonnie Raitt, Paul McCartney- a septegenarian who sings as well as ever, The Civil Wars- who won Best Folk Album- when do they ever give folkies any airtime?, Taylor Swift (I know!  But I thought she was great.) Foo Fighters- although I am clearly too old to understand what the heck that thing was with the mouse. I could have done without Chris Brown. Musically, politically, ugh.  But that’s for another post. And, of course, Adele.

The next day, I sat with my kids as they watched Adele’s  luminous performance.  Her voice was different from the CD.  It was less husky, less edgy, but it was strong and pure and lovely.  I heard vocal choices she was making, that I am guessing from my vocal studies, she has to make, to protect her instrument.  She still belted out that chorus and she still brought the house down.  I felt the room rooting for her–a room filled with human beings who know how scary and painful it would be to have their voice compromised.

Sitting there with my kids, I knew that they too were rooting for her.  I love that they understood what it meant to come back from an injury.  Just as many kids watch their favorite football players or baseball players return from the D.L.

Resilience.  It’s probably what we want most for our children. Difficulties will befall our kids when they are grown and we are no longer there to scoop them up and cuddle away the pain.  We want them to be able to withstand those difficulties.  Watching Adele, only 23 years old, so accomplished already, and yet so close to that threat of having all those accomplishments in her past and not in her future, was sending the message to all of us that if she can be resilient, so can we.

We ended our Grammy viewing with the all-star playing of Golden Slumbers led by Sir Paul- he’ll be 70 in June.  He sings as beautifully as ever.  This is a great concert.  We all agreed.  But, being a Monday morning quarterback, and a feminist, I had to add: “That all-star jam would have been even cooler if they’d asked Bonnie Raitt to join them and take a solo.”  And my children nodded- in unison.

Nerissa: So we started Johnny on Suzuki guitar lessons. Yes, he is three-and-a-half. No, he can’t understand the difference between my gently suggesting that he might not want to dump his glass of watercolor paint wash all over the table and cruel and unusual punishment. (At the top of his lungs: “Mama, you are being SO mean to me!”) Yes, I am probably crazy.

But he is so cute carrying that guitar case around. Also, his teacher, Jeremy Milligan, is terrific. We arrived at Northampton Community Music School last Friday just as the sun was setting. My little boy had gone from complete refusal to participate in lessons–unless Jeremy suddenly decided to teach him drumming–to complete accordance. Why the change? Because the week before, I canceled our “playdate” with Jeremy on account of Johnny’s head cold. As soon as he learned wasn’t going to have a guitar lesson, he desperately wanted one. All of a sudden, he was pointing out to me all the songs in which John Lennon was playing acoustic guitar.

That being said, when we paid a visit to Downtown Sounds, our excellent local music store to purchase a tiny drum stool (for our aspiring classical guitarist to sit upon) and a fully grown guitar footstool (of which I have one, somewhere, mouldering in my attic. Grrrr. $23.95 later…) Johnny was like the proverbial kid in a candy store. “Oh, Mama, wook! An ewectwic guitar just for me!” He was pointing to an electric ukulele, which I must say would make a fabulous addition to our home. And I was glad to point out to him the Gretch hanging from the ceiling similar to the one George played and right next to it the Rickenbacker John played. High pitched yelps and shrieks filled the store, and the sales men were completely charmed and charming to us. But when Johnny noticed a full drum kit in the window, “Just wike Wingo’s!” and then noticed we weren’t leaving with it, he shouted so loudly at me on the way down the street back to the car that his father, who works nearby, heard him screaming at me. “MAMA! I. NEED. DAT. DWUM. KIT!”

The lesson involved Johnny listening to Jeremy who said, “When I say a number, clap the number. If you clap the right number, you get a monkey.” And Jeremy would say, “Three.” Johnny, a tiny mischievous smile  curling his mouth, clapped carefully three times. Jeremy hung a Barrel of Monkeys red monkey on the edge of the music stand until there was a long chain of them.  Then Johnny got rewarded for his attentive listening by putting a little plastic checker into a yellow box.

Johnny noticed a small drawing of Franz Schubert on a big poster full of composers and staffs and instruments and notes. “Mama! Dere’s John Lennon!” He further observed that Stravinsky looked like the grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night. Then we picked up his little guitar case, untouched during the lesson, and went downstairs to sign up for three more lessons. On the way out the door, Johnny sighed and said, “I wuv dis pwayce.”

We’ll see if we continue. Lessons are $31 per half hour, and it’s a steep price to have someone play counting games with my three-year-old while I sit on the edge of my seat hoping secretly that the teacher will notice how unusually gifted my child is. Johnny came home and immediately dragged out all of our drums, set them up around his new drum (guitar) stool and asked us to put on “Sergent Pepper’s Wonewy.” Over the weekend, Ringo arrived. We had family music night on Sunday. Tom played harmonica to Gossec’s “Gavotte” and we all sang “Eight Days a Week.” And word is Johnny’s going to have company soon. My friend Debra was driving her three-year-old son to school, listening to the Beatles, and she told him Johnny loved the Beatles and was learning guitar. She asked her son if he wanted to try, and he asked if he and Johnny could be a band.  ”Maybe,” my friend said, “when you guys are a bit older.”

He answered, “Ok, Mom. Can I be the eggman?”