Page 15 of The Scientist
“John-Luke,” he replied, grinning smugly. He looked like the son of a politician, with perfectly quaffed hair and a button-down polo shirt.
“How biblical.” I walked over to that side of the room. “Let’s try and keep the outbursts to a minimum, John-Luke. I’d hate to have any more Freudian slip-and-falls on my watch.”
He gave me the same cocky grin. “I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises, Teach.”
“Do give it your best effort,” I said with a wry smile. “Mommy has a lot of work to do. And if you’re on your best behavior, I’ll let you go play frisbee golf when we’re done.”
His friends were laughing and elbowing him, but he didn’t say anything further so I moved on.
“So, unlike a lot of people around here, I do not have a doctorate degree. But what I do have is a lot of real-world experience in writing and composition.” I did have a Master of Fine Arts degree from Northwestern and had some pretty great internships, but I found that terribly boring, so I decided I was going to speak from the heart when giving introductions about myself.
“What I love most about composing music is the infinite possibilities.” I thought of what Frank Zappa once said about composition. “There’s something exciting about being given a piece of time, and you get to be the one to decorate it.”
I looked around the room, and I seemed to have everyone’s attention, despite frat boy’s outburst. “Throughout this course, I’ll be giving you the vocabulary necessary to speak the same language as those who are already in this business, but beyond knowing the parlance, you’ll only be limited by your own creativity. So, let’s get started.”
I spent the next hour going over some introductory topics and tried to give real-world examples of where these things might apply, hoping it would have a greater impact. At some point though, I could see their attention drifting. Heads were resting sideways on fists, and there were one too many glazed looks on the sea of faces.
I abruptly stopped mid-sentence on my explanation of ledger lines and blurted out, “My god, you all look bored out of your minds.”
They all started to chuckle and straightened up in their chairs.
“Why don’t we change things up a bit?” I looked around and my attention focused on a young man sitting by himself midway up the auditorium. He had a kind face that resembled Chidi fromThe Good Place.
“You there,” I said, pointing to him. “What’s your name?”
He looked around to make sure it was really him I was speaking to, before deciding that I must be, since there was clearly no one else around him.
“Sam Matherne,” he replied shyly.
I smiled encouragingly. “Sam, tell me what kind of music you like.”
“Ummm… rhythm and blues.”
“Nice,” I said. “Who’s your favorite artist?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose.“I don’t think you’ve heard of him.”
“Can you check your watch for me?” I eyed the Apple watch on his wrist.
“Why?” he asked, looking down at it.
“I just want to know how many calories you burned jumping to that conclusion.”
He looked up, grinning from ear to ear.
“Why don’t you try me?” I said confidently.
“Eddie Kirkland,” he answered.
I grinned back at him before I sat down at the piano and started playing one of the few Eddie Kirkland songs I knew. Luckily, he had come up in my graduate thesis work so I got to show off a bit.
Sam could not wipe the smile from his face as I played“Meet Me on Sugar Hill”and sang along. I looked around to see Ihad piqued everyone’s interest. I broke down the composition of the song piece by piece, going over basic rhythm patterns and harmonic intervals. I got a thrill out of seeing them scribbling furiously on their little notepads. Did I just crack the code to teaching? I decided to try again.
“What about you, John-Luke?” I asked when I noticed he was chatting with his neighbor and not paying attention. “What kind of music do you like?”
He gave me an arrogant smile. “Yeah, music’s not really my thing, Ms. Olivier.”
That answer took me by surprise. “You really are in the wrong classroom.”