Farewell

DISCLAIMER: I do not hate EVERYTHING I see on facebook. In fact, I really love hearing about my friends and family, and seeing pictures of them. Love it! 

Once again, facebook is not ALL bad; just most of it annoys me (especially right now). So don't get all bent out of shape over this. ;-)

My kids talked me into getting onto facebook, and I stuck it out for several years. At first I found it completely uninteresting. One of the first posts I ever saw from a "friend" (really, just an acquaintance) was how sick she'd been—which I was sorry to hear about—and details of how dirty her bathroom got from her body's attempts to expel everything she'd eaten in the past two days—which I was also sorry to hear about. And I wondered if this forum was really something I wanted to stick with.

Then Michael started playing the "poke" game with me, which I thought was kind of funny. And then I saw some funny memes, and sometimes some fun articles were shared. And then my friend Kim got on facebook and this is really the only contact I have with her, so that was cool. And then we moved, so it was a way to keep in touch with the friends I'd been making over the last fifteen years. And then more of my kids got on, and I got to see what was interesting to them. And then my older kids moved to college, etc., and it was a good way to keep in touch with them...

But I hadn't been on facebook for long before I started seeing the same stories and pictures cycle around again and again and again. And every time a new friend got onto facebook the cycle would start over. It could be a real time-waster. So a year or two ago I almost quit this bad habit; I even announced my intention to quit by the end of a week. In the end, I stayed with it for the sake of keeping in touch with my absent kids and friends.

But this time it's for real: I am quitting. Partly because it is a huge time-waster—because most of what I see is this:

The bigger reason that I'm quitting is that this forum has A LOT of contentious content—because everyone has to express their opinion, and it has to be in a way that gets everyone's attention (so they use pictures).

So I see things like this, that I like and agree with:

And I see things like this (which usually crop up in abundance around conference time, or religious holidays):

But that's not enough to chase me away. It's the string of bickering comments that follow these memes that I hate.

I also detest the vulgarity I see on facebook. Not that any of my friends punctuate their words with cursing, but a lot of the comments from their friends do. And things that get re-posted and memes often include language I can do without. In fact, these posts often come from groups with those words in their names.

Yeah, I even had to bleep out
some of the picture above.

 So even though I've seen some really interesting stuff from a group called I ------- Love Science (for example), I banned them from my page because I just got so tired of reading their blankety-blanking name.



But what I really, really hate is the politics, and all the arguing that goes with it. (In fact, it was probably during the last election that I first decided to quit facebook.) There is so. much. contention around election-time that just looking at the stupid memes feels like someone is picking a fight.

Things about our current president:

I have to say that this sentiment is a little weird. I read "Mao's Last Dancer" a few years ago, and this sounds a lot like what the Chinese school-children were taught to say/believe about Chairman Mao.

Why? What, exactly, does that accomplish?

Things about presidential candidates right now (are the worst!):

I can say the same thing here: What does this accomplish?

No, I don't really like him.

I really don't like her.

Apparently the rest of the country sees things the same way I do (if we can believe facebook memes)

—but we still have to fight about it.

Then there's the new guy...

the man who would have you believe he is the 
ONLY conservative option for president (not true, 
by the way—but he's getting a lot of press)

...who, apparently isn't as wonderful as you might hope?

Just someone else to argue about.

Every meme comes with a set of conflicting, angry, finger-pointing headlines, and is followed by smug "this is so right because..." comments, or equally smug, "this is so stupid because..." comments.

Enough!

Between election periods I see very little of consequence, and the elections are enough to make me want to shoot myself every time I open facebook. So I quit.

I will link this blog post to my facebook account for the day, and then I'm shutting it down tonight before I go to bed. There is a chance that, in future, I will open a new account that will be exclusive to family and a few friends that I don't get to see often. (And who don't post politics every other minute.) So there's a possibility you could get a friend request from me some time later. Until them my kids can text me, email me, or even...call me.

In the meantime, if you want to follow my blog just type your email address in the little white box on the right and then click the "submit" button. You will get an email telling you whenever I have something fabulous to say. You can read it, and post comments if you want (just not political comments). I will never see your email address. If you don't want to follow my blog, that's OK too. I don't know that I am all that fascinating. ;-)

So I wish a fond goodbye to my facebook friends. And...

Farewell, cruel facebook. I kind of hate you.

Music Theory

 A few weeks ago my friend, Kim, asked me how to get her daughter to learn to read music. This little girl "can play by ear, but she is either unwilling or unable [after four years of lessons] to read music." Kim  was frustrated because her daughter loves music, and playing, but it felt like she was wasting her money on lessons.

So I gave her a few ideas, and she said she'd try them out. And that's when it hit me: Kids don't learn to play an instrument
1. because their parents aren't dedicated. (This sounds supremely judgmental and harsh, but I think it's a big part of the whole equation.—Not you, Kim. :-) ), and 2. because most piano method books go about it the wrong way, and teachers don't know any different way of doing it. (I quit trying to teach piano lessons because of the same frustrations Kim expressed. Which makes me not any better than the teacher who tries, but doesn't quite get it right—probably worse, actually.)

To tackle the parents first:

I've told this to friends and to parents of my own students a lot: You have to have music in the house. You have to. Then the parents tell me that their kids love music, and they have songs that they like, etc.

But I'm not talking about just listening now and then. They have to be surrounded, immersed, bathed in good music. This is how I really learned to love music and to want to play it. (I also learned to play the piano because my big brothers played. And how cool was that?) You have to listen to classics, starting with the fun stuff like Brahms' Hungarian Dances, or Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (which they will recognize from Fantasia 2000), or Scott Joplin rags, or Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown music (which is actually jazz, not classical), or things they might hear in old, old cartoons. (I was pretty thrilled at age 14 to learn a Chopin Prelude that I had once heard in a Casper, the Friendly Ghost cartoon.)

So when I was little my mom had a big, console stereo in the living room, and as soon as I learned how to work the thing, I used it. I had kid records that I listened to; later I found a set called The Sensational 60's (from Guantanamera to Turn, Turn, Turn). Soon I discovered the soundtracks for The Sound of Music, and Fiddler on the Roof, and I probably drove my family crazy listening to them over and over again. Then it was 101 Strings with  movements of symphonies, Tchaikovsky's ballet music, Strauss waltzes, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn... I started "sneaking" out my mom's collection of Beethoven—she had a set of all of his works—and I listened to his symphonies, his piano sonatas, and other works for piano. Over and over again. And I learned to play a lot of those piano pieces. (Like Schroeder, I loved  Beethoven.)  Eventually I got my own record-player to use in my room (smart mom!) and I kept listening, checking out soundtracks, ballet music, etc. from the library. When I started driving I discovered the classical music station...

So, yeah. Telling your child to practice the piano over and over again might help (or might just make them annoyed with you); that's part of being a dedicated piano parent. But keeping the music going in the house (and now with the benefit of youtube so they can watch, too!) ...I believe that keeping the music playing will help more than all the nagging either of you can tolerate.

Two things will happen: 1. The kids will hear things they like and want to learn (especially if they have a friend or family member they want to emulate, but even if they only listen to recordings—going to concerts or recitals would be good too.) 2. By hearing this music over and over again (and if they like it you know they'll play it over and over again), they'll be able to predict how to play a piece—what will happen next—because classical music follows definite rules, and your ear will pick up on it. This makes reading the music easier, even if it's a long, hairy piece they've never heard before. And when you buy a piece of sheet music that you've listened to and loved, and then read it while you're listening... All kinds of connections are made! You hear things that you didn't hear before... It's very cool.

Now, this is how I know Kim is dedicated: she prefers a quiet house, but will try playing the music if it could help. If you feel this way you can do like my mom and get your kids their own cd-players, ipods, or whatever. But have the good music available—Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber probably won't do the trick—at least not on their own (remember the Sensational 60's was a part of it all for me). Anyway, when you think about it, you really can't have both a pianist and a quiet house (because if they love it they'll never stop)—but it can become a nice-sounding house. I can't guarantee you'll get a great pianist, but your kids will love music. And, by letting the music play, who knows, you might learn to love it too!

As for the second part, here's my theory of music theory: Skip it. At least at first. When I first started piano lessons, at age six or eight or something, my teacher insisted on my doing the written homework. All it did was frustrate me; I didn't understand what they were trying to teach me, it was boring, and my teacher lectured me every week for not having done it. Not very inspiring.

save it for the big kids

Really, even learning the names of the notes is unnecessary for the students; they only need to know which symbol on the staff matches which key on the keyboard. (Note names are for the teachers' benefit, I'm pretty sure. "Johnny, that's a G.") Sure, they need to know how to count out the different notes, and that  f  is for forte, which means loud, and  p is for piano, which means soft, and stuff like that. That is pretty important, but it's easy to point it out and learn it on a piece-by-piece basis. They'll get that. But don't shove music theory down their throats. Ick!

When I was ten or eleven I was still in the B book that I'd been in for two or three years. What I really wanted to learn was The Entertainer by Scott Joplin because my brother Gregory played it and it was the coolest song ever. But here I was stuck on this little music box song for weeks and weeks, and I just wasn't getting it or passing it off. My teacher didn't know how to help me. Finally she asked if I just wanted to move on, and I told her that I wanted to play the music my brother played (it was Mark this time—Solfeggietto by CPE Bach). She asked me to show her the music when I came the next week. When she saw it she said, "That's pretty advanced. Do you think you can do it?" And of course I did. And I was right. And I never played the B book again. And nobody tried to make me do written theory again. For some reason, teachers must presume that if you can play big classical pieces, then you must know the theory. Wrong! Or is that right?

I never learned written musical theory until I took AP Music as a senior in high school. But guess what? I totally understood it when it was taught to me. All those years of playing the music taught me the theory without the all the pain; I learned it without it being force-fed to me. When I knew how to play, I only had to be told/shown once to understand how major and minor scales worked, chord inversions, etc. Whaddaya know?

Well, this has been a big, long ramble. You can take it (or leave it) for what it's worth.