Darswords

Thank you all for participating. When I did the random word generator, I rejected many, like ‘fork’ and ‘then,’ but finally, a word that could move my muse. Or so I thought back then.

When you are a reader, and your parents only made it to eighth and tenth grade, you soon learn their answer is to go to the dictionary. And rather than break up the story with the tome of words, you pronounce it out yourself. So, I learned words wrong. Often, I put emphasis on the wrong syl-LA-bol. One of the reasons I adore audiobooks is that someone reads words correctly, even foreign words. Even Kindle Text-to-Speech gets things wrong. Like the soft G in ‘finger.’ What?

Yeah, that blog part jumped out at seeing the word. Then, the crazy streaming thoughts drifted away.

Rhythm has always been the hardest part of music. Nope, not a dancer here. Since I went back to the piano, I think it was this last summer that my sight-reading has improved, and many of the songs I revived are reasonable. As of this New Year’s, I made up my mind to make the goal of being able to improvise and compose music this year. I have always admired the people who could just sit down and riff out music. But I tend toward reading and playing every single notated note.

Today, one of the books I’m learning from was about teaching how to do blues and jazzy bass lines. See, most of the classical stuff I play is 4/4 time, emphasizing the first and third beats. I’m learning the second and fourth beats and stagger out beats for syncopation. I remember my piano teacher, Mrs. Skinner, teaching me Alley Cat and Baby Elephant Walk. To my young, early teen self, she looked ancient. And she told me to do this little wiggle to get the beat right. As I tried these beats today, I saw and felt her emphasizing that wiggle. I’m smiling right now at the memory. I can’t wait to make her proud.