{"id":1319,"date":"2018-09-08T13:32:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T17:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2018-09-08T14:12:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T18:12:34","slug":"whats-that-tune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1319","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s that tune?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s that tune?<\/u><\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was very young, music was not a very important part of my life. That ended when I reached the age of 7 and someone gave me a harmonica as a present. Harmonicas were cool, all one had to do was blow into them and music came out. Though music was not very important to me, I did have an ear for it. We had a piano at home and I would occasionally figure out tunes on it by pushing the different keys. Not much else.<\/p>\n

But then I made a mistake that changed my life. It might have been a hiccup or me just forgetting to take the harmonica out of my mouth while I was breathing. I discovered by sucking\u00a0<\/u>in air, a different note came out of the harmonica. I then tried three notes in a row. They happened to be E-D-C. To me that sounded like the end of a symphony. da Da DA! I was so impressed that I went to my friend Robby and said he should listen to what I was playing and tell me what he thought it was. I expected him im\"\"<\/a>mediately to say, \u201cIt\u2019s the end of a symphony.\u201d I would have been disappointed, since he didn\u2019t say that, however, he did recognize the notes and said, \u201cIt\u2019s the beginning of \u20183 Blind Mice\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was right. I went home and figured out that if the first three notes of 3 Blind Mice was on the harmonica, the rest of them were probably there too. if I tried really hard, I could probably find them…And I did.<\/p>\n

From then on there was no stopping me. I started learning more songs. My parents were so impressed that they sent me to an adult education class to learn how to play the harmonica. It was pretty dull. Yes, I was introduced to new songs, but everyone was a beginner and they had to learn the notes and scales when all I wanted to do was hear the tune and figure it out myself.<\/p>\n

As I grew older, my parents had me take piano lessons, and then in Junior High School I took up the trumpet. Again the difficulty was all those teachers wanted me to learn how to read notes and learn proper techniques. I just wanted to learn to play. I got no credit in Junior High School when I showed up the first day to trumpet lessons and had figured out how to play a C-scale.<\/p>\n

When I was in college, my roommate taught me how to play the first movement of Beethoven\u2019s \u201cMoonlight Sonata\u201d by rote. I followed how he played it by watching, not by reading notes.<\/p>\n

So you could say, music became an important part of my life. Thank you, Robby. I wish that I had learned more. I used it in school as a teacher and now as a storyteller and performer. I\u2019ve even written some of my own songs. If I only knew how\u00a0to\u00a0write down the notes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s that tune? When I was very young, music was not a very important part of my life. That ended when I reached the age of 7 and someone gave me a harmonica as a present. Harmonicas were cool, all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[67,140],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-stories","category-story-writing","tag-harvey-heilbrun","tag-music"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1326,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}