I would love to take a class on the (music) theory of Ragtime.

Yes, I would. I want to learn about their diminished chords and their flat six chords and their non-diatonic passing tones and their chord progressions that seem to deviate from most of the rest of Western music. It's all very delicious to listen to and I'm almost afraid of looking under the hood in case I end up losing some of the beauty.


[So I pull out my Essential Jazz: The First 100 Years book that was assigned reading for a Jazz history class I took maybe six or seven years ago because I remember that Ragtime is the immediate ancestor of Jazz. I skimmed the first page of the appropriate section, flipped to see there were only three more pages about Rag and then came back to blog. (They won't go under the hood like I want them to.)]


In looking on Saturday for some of my old theory books to help with upcoming piano lessons, I spotted a copy of the Maple Leaf Rag (which I started learning in the winter of 2011) and decided to bring it to the office as well. Too often I think about how I don't work a tenth as hard as I did to improve my piano playing as I did in the first five or six years of learning the instrument. I put the Maple Leaf Rag away when I got stymied two years ago. The first page was handled easily within the first day but with the second page my hands weren't doing what they were told.

So, like most other pieces I didn't easily master since I started playing by ear/playing chords to be able to lead worship music in Church settings almost ten years ago, it was put aside. I didn't persevere. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the umpteenth guy who starts exploring playing by ear and NEVER GOES BACK to being able to play as written. I say the skills are almost dead-equally valuable. And on principle, for see-it-through-itude, I want to start working harder. (It would probably be good for my ego as well, to remember what it feels like to work on a single piece for weeks, instead of for a couple hours or a couple minutes because I've built the skill of simplifying music--and of cutting corners.)


So, I sat with Mr Joplin's work for about ten minutes, needing a break from Thomas R. Schreiner* who seems bent on making my brain feel like a heavy smoker on a treadmill, and...well, the second page fell into my hands. My hands started doing that thing where they aren't bothered about whether my eyes or brain can keep up with them. So, it's in there. It's in my hands. It's within reach of being mastered and will probably need just one or two more days.
*I believe the R stands for "Really Neat".


I remember learning in the summer of 2001, when I played the (massive and intimidating) pipe organ for services at an Anglican church, that rest between bouts of slogging away at a piece is absolutely essential. There's a thing like short term memory where you can capture most of a piece in one sitting but if you do too much in that first sitting, and you don't give it time to settle and come back to it the next day, it can be either completely gone or can be in so bad a state that you have to re-learn the piece and un-learn the slipshod version you've now ingrained.


Alors. That said, I am encouraged. I am encouraged to discover I can still learn new pieces. I hope I haven't plateaued as a musician though I simply assume I have. I think I'm too old for most things. But I'm not giving up. I'm encouraged to know I can eventually master something and not only immediately master something.


[Editor's addendum: The last four blog posts have not been the ones I mean to write. Over the past two weeks about three times as many blog posts have not graduated past the draft stage. I mean to write about the things I'm struggling with; I mean to find an appropriate outlet, to be honest, and to be integrated as a person. But I come to write and the posts about needing help and feeling despair don't end up being published.
All these lighter, everyday-life posts are surprising and annoying me. They come out and they get published. But, what I would have written last night around half past midnight about how many hot tears were streaming down my cheek because I just didn't know why I was upset, what I should be doing, who to talk to, or how to move forward--that one I couldn't construct for more than three paragraphs. I started and felt relief but then it stopped feeling right so I stopped typing. It didn't work. So now I'm frustrated. I'm both people but one seems muzzled and isolated. She feels desperate, guilty, and small. But the other one, the one who types at present, she really does like music theory and learning, and this post was completely earnest.]