The Comprehension of Sweet Sound is a Conception I Rejected

[heptadecagram]

The Beginning

So, way back when when I was a 5th-grader, my classmates and I were herded into our gymnasium to hear our high school's jazz band play. I was quite enthralled as the music blared off the concrete walls and washed over me, listening to these Big Kids play the Peter Gunn theme. After the brief concert, the conductor told all the fifth graders that we would be ushered into the cafeteria to take a hearing test to see if we qualified to join the band class next year. The test was simple, merely a way of weeding out the tone-deaf: "Which sound is higher, the first or the second one?" *squiiiiiiii* *wooooooooom*.

I passed, as did a number of my friends. Those of us who were interested in joining were to bring notes to our parents telling them to attend a meeting at school where the conductor would go over the basics of joining the band and assign instruments.

Being the sort of person she was, my mother completely missed this meeting. Thus, it was a week afterward when I finally talked to this conductor. I had wanted to play the flute. Or, failing that, a clarinet. Since I was the last one in, the conductor handed me the instrument she needed more people to play. "Here," she said, "you're a trombonist." And thus began my relationship with Fran Shelton, the Hendersonville City Schools Band Teacher.

I played glissandos and scales upon that trombone throughout my sixth grade year. We didn't get Ms. Shelton for a lot of the time; instead we learned mostly from the chorus teacher, whom I greatly disliked. Thankfully, when I moved on to seventh grade, Ms. Shelton took over teaching. We met every day, when other students were in shop or chorus, and we played in a roasting little room with mildewy carpet. Midway through the year, as the weather turned colder, I once again approached my formidable band director with a request to switch from playing the trombone to playing the flute. "No," she said, "I've got plenty of flute players. Play this tuba." So I did.

First Achievement

I studied the fingering and wrote on the music and counted leger lines. I had the dinged-up tuba that the school owned, since there was no possible way I could afford one myself. And four months later, our young group when to the regional competition, where we made straight superior ratings in Grade 3 music[1]. I got an award for that, as my tuba-playing got high praise from the judges.

Repeat thusly for the eighth grade. I played on the tuba, every day, we went to competition, and were superior. I was the only tuba player, still.

I arrive in high school. I sign up for all the band classes available: Concert, Jazz, and Marching. Jazz Band meets an hour before school starts, and Marching Band meets after school until 5:00PM. I skipped eating lunch and spent my time in the bandroom, either cleaning up or practicing. Band was my life. I had at least four T-shirts with sentiments to that effect.

Training and Success

Though a freshman, I was the first chair tuba, above a senior and a junior. I was given the fun, hard parts of Johan de Meij's Lord of the Rings symphony, a Grade 6 piece that we played at competition. Straight superior ratings, again. The judges commented on the excellent "string bass player". Which was me, making that giant hunk of brass sound like a string instrument. At Allstate Competition, an individual endeavour, I made the highest score in our region of any other instrument, 99 out of 100. I continued to be first chair in Western NC for the next four years of high school.

The Jazz Band was my weakest area, as I played trombone rather than tuba. We met every other morning, but we had the best musicians in the Concert Band, and performed much more often, usually about once a month. I was on the loading crew all four years of high school; I got there early to load the van full of stands and instruments and equipment, then unpack at the other end. Then I played along with everyone else, and reversed the process.

The Marching Band was grueling. We started rehearsing in the middle of summer on a bug-infested field near a graveyard. We drilled and marched and played until we fell over, for two hours every day for slightly more than a semester. We were tiny compared to both the Concert Band and the other marching bands we competed against; I don't think there were ever more than 30 of us. And yet we outplayed Marching Bands four times our size, winning scads of trophies. We started taking along a broom to competition, since we so often had a "clean sweep".

Blood, Sweat, Tears

My sophmore year, and it was another Grade 6 piece at Concert Band competion, and another plaque (and would continue to play Grade music throughout high school). We cut a CD[2] of our band's repetoire that year, during a weekend. Right before the recording, I got into a nasty bike wreck with a bad case of road rash. I still went to the recording, and ended up bleeding on my tuba and trombone. I didn't care; I was putting my blood into the music I played.

That summer, our band played at the Olympics in Atlanta. While the other students sat on the air-conditioned tour bus, I was one of the six students that loaded and unloaded our moving van full of instruments and equipment at every performance[3]. I was wrecked from sunburn and exhaustion and slept for fifteen hours when we finally got back, and I loved every minute of it.

I was now the sole, elder tuba player. Due to demand, a second jazz band was formed of the less-skilled members of the concert band. I joined that, too, so now I was up every morning for band. In that band, I was first chair trombonist, as opposed to third (of five).

Junior year. I start teaching someone how to play tuba when we need more volume. Another superior rating at competition. We play in the inaugural parade, and for Billy Graham's Congressional Medal of Honor.

At the beginning of my senior year, another band class opens up, for the very beginners, since our Concert Band is fairly advanced in quality thanks to the work of my class. I sign up, so I can learn flute. Finally. This means that I now spend five and a half hours every day in the bandroom. I'm taking four hours of actual classes.

Another tuba, this one a freshman, comes in, so I train him as best I can. Both he and the now-sophmore are not particularly good, as the band director has a tendency to move the worst players from one instrument (trumpet, of all things, which is possibly the furthest brass instrument in technique from the tuba) to tuba. They weren't good trumpet players, and they make worse tuba players.

Another superior rating, ho-hum. And this year we play at the Gator Bowl, to a crowd of several thousand. And I got to play in the Air Force Band. The tuba players there liked my sound, and I even got to correct them on a particular phrase.

The Fall

As one of the advanced students, I start doing conducting work, getting to conduct Hobbits, possibly my favorite piece from my musical career. I had even tried out for drum major[4] in Marching Band this year, but the band needed a sousaphone player more than a clarinet player, so I stayed on the field.

And this year is where the mental mystery happens.

I stopped playing. Oh, there are frustration reasons to my stopping. The band director never learned my name, for one. That she refused to let me play flute for so long was another. That when I was denied playing flute in my final concert could be another. That I was denied being the drum major could be one, too. But I was tired of playing, and thus after the final Spring concert, I swore not to touch a tuba for five years. I even skipped the band awards ceremony. I did get one posthumous plaque, for seven years of dedicated service, made out to the wrong name.

I can understand being burnt out and wanting to stop. But the totality of my cut still mystifies me. I was certain that I would end up playing music professionally, or at least major in it. I never did. I never even filled this crater in my life with something else as a substitute. Oh, sure, I got involved in dance, but never to the insane extent that I did for music. And it never felt like a hole, either. I haven't missed it.

I got to thinking about this when, for the past two mornings, I accidentally turned on the radio, and the songs playing both times were pieces I had played[5]. So this actually leads to my questions to my friends.

Query²

1. Who of you had something so central an activity in your life, and gave it up? Or was forced away from it for whatever reason? How do you feel about the idea of taking up that activity again? I'm especially curious if it was not something you were turned off to, but instead just gave up.

2. To the musicians on my list, how have you coped with being burnt out? It's been seven years since I touched a tuba, and I still have a non-desire to return to music. It's not an anti-desire, in that I feel repulsed by it, and it never was. It's more a complete lack of feeling about it. What do you think?

For seven years, I was the best at what I did. And I stopped doing it. I somewhat understand why I stopped. But the things that made me stop are no longer an issue. But I'm not even interested in picking it up again. Even my flute and trombone have seen use on the order of once every two years.

---

[1] In such competitions involving the whole band, one plays music which is categorized by its difficulty, from the easiest at Grade 1 to the hardest at Grade 6. The rating that one receives from a panel of judges in both prepared music and sight-reading ranges along poor, average, good, excellent, and superior. My school had a 40-year history of superior rating. I was informed that, two years after I left, the high school band made its first "only excellent" rating in that time.

[2] See Current Music.

[3] Between that, Jazz Band, and Marching Band, I have earned my Master Packer's license. And, unlike many other Master Packers, I'm good at managing the people that bring me stuff.

[4] Director for Marching Band. While Ms. Shelton would be the one that conducts the Concert and Jazz Bands, Marching Band competition requires a student to be the director.

[5] Orpheus Overture, and Zampa Overture, respectively.

Comments

[heptadecagram.livejournal.com]

I'm certain you're right in how Real Life makes it harder. For one, I never owned a tuba, as they are on the order of $5,000 for the low-end models. But, yeah, while there are forums for me to do it (such as community bands or local groups), I never bothered to check them out. I do have local friends here who do such performing, and I'm interested to hear from them on what they think of this. (silmaril, I'm particularly interested in your reaction.)

*hug*, by the way.

[isolde-deely.livejournal.com]

You might find one in a pawn shop. I've seen musical instruments there before :)

[isolde-deely.livejournal.com]

I still love to sing. However, I was in band in middle school. I was a year behind, because I was unable to get an instrument for 6th grade. So, when I started in 7th, the band teacher, Miss Peebles, expeted me to be up to the par of the other students - without even knowing how to play scales yet. So, when I reached high school, I gave up the flute and went into voice instead. I was so burned by the fact of my band teacher expecting too much out of me, and giving back too little.

To this day, I haven't really picked up a flute. But I would love to learn harp.

I was going to suggest looking for community groups, but it looks like they weren't all that successful (giving page #s to the director?!).

:hugs:

[uilos.livejournal.com]

I have a black belt in TaeKwonDo. I got it the summer before I came to college and most of my social life (little of that there was) revolved around the people there. I tried to keep up with martial arts when I came to college, but I could never find a group I felt I fit in with. Just because I have the belt doesn't mean I want to teach your 5 year olds. No, I don't want to come to your club kegger. No, I don't consider it acceptable to be taught by a thirteen year old who's two belts lower than I am. I just gave up come the end of my freshman year. No more motivation left.

I'd like to get back into some kind of martial arts, but I can't seem to find the time or the right group. I think what I want to do is start all over in another style. TaiChi was great for the semester that it lasted, but I don't feel like we got far enough along that I could do it on my own and I don't know where to go to look for another teacher.

[ancientsong.livejournal.com]

I don't know where you are, but there are lots of Tai Chi schools out there who likely teach the style you started learning (there are a number of them). You can google "Tai Chi Association" for a pretty huge list of schools, and perhaps visit one or two to see if you like the instructors (after you found out if they teach the style you started learning).

[uilos.livejournal.com]

Not in an hour's drive of where I live, there aren't. Which is part of why I am moving in August. I don't even know what style I started learning - it was a class through the YMCA and we only got about half of the way through a pattern. You were supposed to come back in the next section to get the other half, but I decided that it was more necessary to be able to pay the rent. Hopefully once I get moved I will be able to find a place. Thanks for the suggestion of where to start looking!

[selki.livejournal.com]

I've never been as seriously involved as you, or as burned out as you, but I was in church choir from very small through high school, including duets and solos (at other churches, even), and chorus (school) all the way into college. Oh, and I took piano and guitar lessons, somewhat. In college I was in a large chorus and a select chorus at the same time. I finally stopped singing regularly after adding a couple of semesters of solo lessons (probably connected to Menotti incident, but I didn't think of it as connected at the time, and maybe it wasn't; maybe I was just giving it up, and now sort of want more of a reason to have done so).

Since then, I only dipped now and then into karaoke and singing sessions at cons and dance camps. I still enjoyed listening to choral music, but didn't seek it out. This fall, though, I started barding in an RPG, and have loved it (picking/writing the songs, and, to a degree, performing them). And a vocal and a sacred (often choral) music station are 2 of my top 3 picks on streaming radio most days.

I don't know what to think about your lack of feeling -- I'm inclined to be sad, but you don't seem sad, so I don't know. But even if the things that made you stop aren't an issue any more, that doesn't take away the emotional response ("this hurts, stop thinking/feeling anything about it" ?) you may have developed.

Very interesting read, thank you.

[victoriana.livejournal.com]

Ah, le theatre. For 6 years of my life, it was What I Did. Particularly those four years in high school. Then came junior year. I worked summer stock in the summer preceding it at Mars Hill, then the Festival of Student Creativity (AKA Festival Of Pain, Festival of No Sleep, and several others), then SMed Rimers of Eldritch, brief break, and then I SMed As You Like It. Shortly after the last performance of As You Like It, I landed myself in the hospital for mental issues.
Theatre became a way too work too hard, party too hard, drink too much and sleep too little. It was making me completely crazy. So I walked away. My senior year, I did a thing or two here and there, but no positions of serious responsibility. I dropped the "Tech and Design" concentration from my degree and switched to general drama, just so I could dodge having to design a mainstage show. I was burned out completely.

ANd I just didn't want to do it anymore. Whatever passion I'd had for it was gone. I think now that it was probably a mere infatuation with tech theatre, not real love at all. I needed something to fill my time, and...well, tech theatre seemed like what The Cool People did, and for years I had desperately wanted to be Cool. It wasn't until I got to the end of my senior year that I really accepted that I'm just Not Cool. I'm a Lit Geek. Or, occasionally, a History Geek. But theatre's just the wrong hours for me, and too much stress. So I left it.

Would I ever go back to it? Not on a professional scale. Do some community theatre, or run a kids' drama club? Sure. I might even teach theatre. But I can't go back to the madness of a rep schedule. It'd drive me mad.

[artistic-alex.livejournal.com]

For me the thing I loved was acting. I began doing it in church productions, where I've played Elijah and Pharaoh. I played Kermit the Frog in a 6th grade muppet play, I played Frank Burns in M*A*S*H in middle school, the Sergeant of Police in Pirates of Penzance and Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream in high school.

I know exactly why I quit.

I auditioned for god knows what Greek Tragedy in college, and was offered the part of a literal spear carrier.* But only if I cut short spring break vacation with my parents to go to Key West. Guess which option I chose! But apparently this put me on a casting blacklist at William and Mary and turned me off of the stuck-up cliquishness of their drama department for good.

The thing is, I was voted Best Actor by my peers in high school. I was good! So part of me missed it. I think my parents missed seeing me act entirely unlike myself on stage.

Cut to a year or so ago, when I got shangaiied into another spear carrier role for the Rude Mechanicals' Romeo and Juliet. I was helping. I managed to learn lines for one of the Capulets or Montagues, I don't remember which, and wound up fighting and insulting and stuff too. Suddenly, I was acting again!

I auditioned for the Tempest and got the serious dad role. I got to work on a play from start to finish again. I enjoyed it; I don't know how good I was, but doing a dramatic role was certainly a change from the comic roles I had done before. And that was enough to feed my fix.

I enjoy acting still, but I think it's behind me now. Now I do drawrings. I can be good at that.

* for the unitiated, in theater jargon, a "spear carrier" is a non-speaking extra, basically a costumed breathing prop.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

When you first mentioned this to me, I said I couldn't think of anything like that in my own life. Upon consideration, though, it hit me: I was wrong when I said that. For me it was math. I will elaborate after the weekend, perhaps.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I clicked on the "Post a new comment" and then stopped there for a long, long time.

I have never been burned out that way. The thing is, your "five hours of music vs. four hours of classes" summarizes the end of high school for me too... but I never thought of going the path of a professional musician at the end of it. At that time, I already looked at that particular train as "left the station" a few years back, when I didn't go to a vocational music high school.

Maybe that made the difference. Maybe that I'm usually on the lookout for something new without becoming the best at what I do makes the difference.

Tangentially: beautiful writing; thank you.

[heptadecagram.livejournal.com]

Thank You.

As one of the few active musicians I know, I was particularly waiting for your response, and I'm surprised at how much clarity it brought to my thoughts.

I'm not wondering at why I burned out, as I understand those reasons fairly well. But I was wondering as to why it didn't bother me that I never went back, and you provided the answer I was looking for: ...without becoming the best at what I do...

I am competitive, and very much so. Looking at this essay again, I'm struck at how every single measure of my performance that I mention is by how good I was in competition. That I was first chair, that my band did do so well. I competed because I found it fun, and I found the music fun as well.

One could even extend that reasoning as to be contributionary to my burnout. There's only so far one can go on a tuba, and there's only so far I could go where I was. But I would definitely write those thoughts off to being secondary to my conscious frustrations.

And now, there's no useful place for me to compete in that forum, and thus I have no yearning to return to it. So now, even though by emotional self has recovered from burnout, music by itself doesn't have the competition that made my band experiences so enjoyable. It doesn't have the drive for me that competition gave it. And now that I recognize that, I'm no longer mentally troubled as to that undefinable wherefore regarding my lack of feeling in music performance.

Thank You.

[radix42.livejournal.com]

Playing trombone, which I gave up in high school, as I had a 'bone with a trigger, but the one a part higher than the 'typical' bass trombone with the trigger. Which meant I could never be first chair, anywhere, and they didn't have parts written for any jazz pieces for it. Thanks mom :-(

The other was programming. That is a long and painful story involving death and religion, amoung other things, but suffice it to say that I was on a soul-wrenching mental block from programming, utterly lacking inspiration, from roughly 1990-97. And I was the kid who had learned dozens of languages by age 16, had a $3000 computer science library (a large superset of the ACM BS curricula), complete collections of Byte magazine and other tech pubs, and composed Turing machine state tables in my head in the shower. I lived to code, literally.

And then a nihilistic moral crises left me thinking that everything was pointless, and the will to code died (the will to exist was fast leaving, too).

Pulled out of that one, thanks to one session with the right shrink and a my first tab of acid.

[frost-knight.livejournal.com]

Your story hits so close to home that I find myself unable to answer your questions (if that makes any sense). Powerful reading, sir.
I won't tell my story here and now, but I feel your pain.

[mystic-spectrum.livejournal.com]

Well, for one,
if you felt the music, you shouldn't have let yourself get pushed into something your heart wasn't in to. Sure, you would excell, as you would with anything if you'd like. Your heart has to be in it.

Which brings me to question,
what is your heart trying to tell you now? You're obviously contemplating music hard. Don't force anything, no matter where you go, you've just got to let it flow; even an idea of wandering into a music store to see where your hands go may/may not take fruit.

Keep yourself open!

Some days, I cannot play. If I try, then it sound horrible.
Others, I want to play and cannot.
But, when I can and I feel it... there is the muse.

[werewulf.livejournal.com]

Musical background: Constant singing in my family.. My mom was REALLY good. Piano lessons for four years until I was in fourth grade. Flute in 4th grade.. *I* wanted to play trumpet or drums but little girls didn't get to play those instruments. It was flute, clarinet or nothing back then (at least in the Hennepin County Minnesota School System.

I moved to Maryland and kept with the flute and played in the elementary school band. Same old stuff, first chair, best of the bunch, yada yada yada. In Seventh grade I was given the chance to switch to saxaphone. Not just ANY saxophone. Baritone. A big beautiful LOUD instrument so that not only could I play but I could be heard.. not just one of 15 flautists.

I LOVED it.

I did all that stuff you say... competitions.. marching band, JAZZ ENSEMBLE (county jazz, never made state) and then off to college. I was trying to get my business degree because of a deal with my mom and dad. If I got my business degree, they'd fund my bookstore and I'd start my own business. The ONLY thing that i spent time on besides trying to get all my business class prerequisites to line up properly was the University of Maryland Jazz Ensemble. This was an AWESOME group. I had more happiness there than I've ever had in music.

2 years in my mom got cancer and was dead within a few months. My sister was in college too and my dad was really worried about money. The money for the bookstore was gone and dad wasn't sure that he could afford to send both me and my sister to college. The new deal was that I had to graduate as soon as possible to get a job and help out.

Jazz had to go. Too many hours of the day practicing when I could be taking other classes or studying. (Forget the fact that my grades were shot to hell by my mom's death.. I never did get my GPA back up to a 3.0... I graduated with a 2.9 *sigh*)

Graduated, got a job, helped out a little, things got better, but I never really got back into playing the sax.

In all that time I did get to sing a lot, in the Markland Madrigalia and in the Boston based Polymnia Community chorus, but I haven't really PLAYEd music since college.

And I miss it. But it kills me that I'm just not anywhere near as good as I used to be and I simply don't have the self discipline to practice and become that good at this point in my life.

I do however still own all sorts of instruments. I have my own bari (older than I am and it leaks like a sieve but I love it) I have a piano and started taking piano lessons again about 3 years ago. I have innumerable harmonicas and I'm really really good at them. I still have my flute but I hardly ever play. My dad gave me a guitar which I never use... I ASKED him for his ukelele and I still have high hopes that I can talk him out of that someday. I bought a bamboo sax last year and mostly just squeek and squawk on it but it sure is neat. Oh yes, and I have a dulcimer, the strumming type not the hammered type which I haven't played since I was in high school. All those instruments that I can't bear to get rid of but I so rarely use. Ah well...

I still sing whenever I can.. I'd kill to get into Izolda's group if it didn't meet at the same time as my scout meetings *sigh*... I keep trying to find a community chorus to join around here but the only thing I can find sings pretentious and boring crap....

There's nowhere near enough music in my life. OH and I think karaoke counts and I play all the time. I've never actually done karaoke in a karaoke bar.. I host the machine for the girl scouts in my basement so I can just happily go down there and be a pop singer at will ... or I can again once the darned basement has been fixed from the flood.

*sigh* You've brought up good and bad memories... I keep thinking of more. I was in a rock band for 2 or 3 years in college. I sang in all the musicals in junior high but in high school you couldn't sing if you weren't in chorus and I was in too many band classes to also take chorus. Family musicales around the piano with my dad playing the ukelele and my mom playing the piano and my sister and I playing the comb and wax paper.

Hey guys.. you wanna put on a show.. we could practice in the barn and I bet all the kids would come.

Hugs and Howls
Werewulf

[ednoria.livejournal.com]

For me it's dancing. I was so committed to it for so long -- you don't build a house with a ballroom unless you love to dance. And I know I was good, both as a student and a teacher (strictly amateur, though I did teach at Balticon a few years in exchange for a membership), a leader and a follower.

But hosting dances became a chore. And knowing our neighbors really hated the parking situation didn't help (we had to hire a lawyer to keep the county off our backs). And getting divorced, and feeling like I didn't want to show my face in what I now considered my ex's dancing circles, and knowing that as my interest in dance waned, his was on the rise.

I still enjoy dancing occasionally, but I have no desire to teach, or take classes, or devote any significant amount of time or effort to it. As with you, most of my reasons for stopping have no bearing on my situation now. But I'm just not interested any more.

(And let me add to the general chorus of "excellent writing". Nicely done.)

[nickymizouse.livejournal.com]

okay, a) gorgeous writing. i love stories :-)

b) deja vu. i totally had that same "mental mystery" thing happen.

*begin flashback*
in 6th grade, i was bored by class, so i did all the music i could: orchestra violin, fiddle, orchestra bass, jazz bass, chorus, flute, fife, piano. and i really liked it! i was all registered to continue orchestra in 7th grade, but then over the summer i just totally lost interest and pulled out. never looked back.

then i started dating a guitarist (oh, 10 yrs later?), and everything came rushing back. dusted off my violin, bought an electric bass & and an upright, played bass in his band, started writing my own music, totally turned into a musician again.
*end flashback*

i still don't really understand the whole no-music or all-music dichotomy of my life (except i guess i'm that way about everything) - am i really, inherently, a "musician", or do i just do whatever everyone else around me is doing? if i moved away, and lost all my musician friends, i'd probably never touch my instruments again. hunh.

so, yeah, there's my 2 cents. weirdness...

[nickymizouse.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, there's a much longer version of that story
here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/nickymizouse/11066.html).

okay, that's 3 cents worth.