The Beginning #

In the beginning, I was tone deaf, born into a family that liked to sing and perform. I wouldn’t say that they were good at it but they liked to do it. As long as I can remember we did have an upright piano in the house and I think it was my mother who started to take lessons although I don’t remember her ever playing. It was my dad who was the musician, he played violin, squeeze box, guitar, and he would just pick up an instrument and play it. Mostly he played by ear but he did understand some music theory but very limited you would not want him to sight read your new stuff but he could fake it by knowing the notes go up and down but his timing would be all over the place until he got a feel for the song.

I was probably about seven or eight and my dad attempted to teach me how to play the violin. I recall that he was even sort of teaching me how to read the music and he gave each of the notes a name but he was using German names for the notes. Whenever I played a wrong note he would swat me with his bow. I played a lot of wrong notes and he would get upset with me because I couldn’t hear the difference and was trying as hard as I could to get my finger in the right position. Needless to say, I hated these lessons, they were a waste of my time and just made everyone upset with me.

My brother who was four years younger than me was born with an incredible ear for music and a very pleasing tone in his singing voice. Many of my relatives would even refer to him as the Schulz Heintje. Child Singing Star Heintje Simons, Age 12 was a big hit with my relatives as they all had records by this kid. My brother could pretty much sing whatever he heard one time. My parents thought it was a good idea to pair the two of us up when it came to singing, as I mentioned my family liked to sing and entertain and wanted their children to be part of the show. My brother could carry a tune but could never remember the words. I could always remember the words but could not carry a tune.

Back to my violin lessons, as my father was determined he could turn me into a fine musician. I was the son that he had great difficulty in understanding. He was an extrovert, I was an introvert. He liked the sound of his voice or that is the excuse I give because he would go on and on about nothing at all. I preferred to be quiet and listen and only speak about things that interested me. I don’t do chit-chat for the sake of chit-chat. Our church was hosting an Evangelist for special services at our church for a week and he was also a published composer (gospel songs) and he stayed at our house. He heard me torture that poor violin and asked my mother if I had an ear for music (he was being kind, just make him stop, please). My mother replied, “Oh, heavens NO”. He suggested that I take piano lessons for a year to give my ears a chance to develop by using an instrument where the notes are within the Western standard, twelve semi-tones in an octave, not the 32 I was hacking. That is what happened and how I ended up taking piano lessons and that continued for about five years.

I don’t even think it was a year and I started hearing tones as I remember my cousin coming over and trying to sing something and remember giving him a hard time about it because he got the words right but it sounded like it was coming from a tone deaf person. I am grateful to that evangelist for getting me onto the piano. However, I will tell you that the first piano teacher that I had for the first three years did not have much faith that I would amount to much. She would constantly show off by playing some incredible arrangements that she had played and didn’t think I could ever accomplish. Just jumping ahead of this story a bit, I did put together some arrangements that were way more complicated than that and included other complicated parts played by other people. I think her point was that I did not come into these lessons with the passion to play the instrument as she expected of me. Funny how that is, when I went to music college I entered as a guitar player and most of my teachers felt the same way about me.