MUSIC MANNERS FOR EVERYDAY LIVING

Music manners start with listening, which may be a reason school music programs get cut:

No one knows how to listen.

And being able to listen is the key to musical education.

Teachers don’t tell their class to shut-up and listen, but it’s a goal.

Early music education lays the listening foundation.

I’m not talking about Art History class for college freshman without a clue, but grade school days with a flutophone.

Blow air through the instrument, cover some holes with fingertips, and let the magic begin.

What starts as a cacophony of wonder and confusion turns into the sound of sweeping grace separated by elegant silence.

It only takes a lifetime to figure out, but what else do you have planned?

First Brush With Music Manners

The music teacher in my school was a man named Mr. Howly.

Isn’t that a perfect name for a frustrated musician surrounded by beginner horn honkers?

He must have gone home howling after each day.

I call him a frustrated musician because of his teaching skill.

You’d think a competent teacher would have more patience with students who graduate from flutophone to trumpet, or clarinet, or saxophone, and show enough enthusiasm to attend summer band classes.

Instead, students were put on the spot and yelled at in the middle of class for missing a note.

Embarrassing little kids in front of their peers was his secret power. It thinned the class out that summer.

2

Finding a new instrument in a non-musical family is a bigger challenge than it sounds like.

“You sucked on flutophone. Let it go.”

“Actually you blow into flutophone, which you’d be good at since you’re full of hot air.”

“If I had to listen to your stupids jokes, or the squeaks and squawks you call music, I don’t know.”

“We can add both to your list of what you don’t know.”

3

If you’re lucky you have time alone to contemplate the universal puzzle of time:

I can watch TV or teach myself to play guitar.

In my younger days of self imposed isolation in Brooklyn, New York, I chose to teach myself guitar.

I missed seasons of Fantasy Island and Love Boat for guitar.

One mantra of the times went like this:

“In my twenties I wanted to play guitar badly. Now I’m in my forties and still play guitar badly.”

Now I’m in my mid-60s and still play a bad guitar, but it hasn’t held me back.

Music manners are timeless.

Start A Band At Your Own Risk

For five years a group of friends gathered to play.

More and more people came and no one left until one night.

One of the guys decided he was Mr. Showtime.

He started a song when it wasn’t his turn and wouldn’t quit.

To make it worse, he took a guitar solo break, then a harmonica solo break, before more singing.

The longer it went, the more fired up he got. He didn’t stomp his guitar then set it on fire, but he was getting rowdy with other equipment.

One of the band guys tried to cut in and got cut off.

Another just stopped playing.

Yet another asked Mr. Showtime to step outside.

With a fragile voice that explained he did nothing wrong, he quit the band.

If he couldn’t do it his way, he wouldn’t do it.

In other words, he lacked music manners.

After five years, that was the last night of the no name band.

Music Manners For Life Lessons

Learn to count and be on time.

Listen to others.

Don’t play over them.

Put the time in to learn your instrument.

If it’s a guitar, resist the urge to learn a new song and audition it in the guitar room at your local Guitar Center store.

Unless it’s Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Everyone needs more of that.

Remember, if you play a song recorded by someone else, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a creative bone in your body.

You don’t go to Cover Band Hell if everything you do isn’t original.

But you might get there if you rewrite lyrics to popular songs and mutilate the original to the point it’s unrecognizable.

Do that and you might get a mystical visit from George Harrison singing My Sweet Lord.

Instead, get a set of songs and practice. Then practice some more. Eventually the music seeps into you.

If you ever thought to write a song, now would be a good time.

Just remember the music manners.