Deja Vu All Over Again

I learned something again.

I mean that in all possible ways: another learning experience, a re-learning of something, knowledge once known but lost, a learning of something new, having an epiphany, or any other way you care to parse it.

I am fascinated by how our knowledge of a subject colors our view. When I was first learning to land an airplane, the single thing that grabbed my attention was exactly how quickly the world was getting bigger in the windscreen. The view was mesmerizing. What? I'm supposed to be doing something here? As I became more and more familiar with the process, I learned to make the decisions and perform the actions required to ensure that the arrival was less than earth-shaking.

When I began to play a musical instrument, my first pieces had only two or three notes, then they began increasing in complexity as my skills and knowledge increased.

My point is this: when I first see something unfamiliar, I am often so overwhelmed by the event that it is impossible for me to really absorb the details. When my experience increases, I begin to see things in a different light. I can start to appreciate the nuance and subtlies in greater depth.

This leads to other questions. When do you know enough? Is there always a deeper layer of understanding, always more to learn if you are willing to invest the time? I think perhaps there is.

I had a small epiphany of my own last night. I was transcribling (Not a typo…well, it began as a typo until I saw the truth of it) some music.....the Halelujah Chorus (and believe me, that is some music), anyway, as I was entering the notes for the organ part in my MIDI staff, I could hear the pitches at the same time. I knew on a logical level that the grouped notes formed chords and chord inversions, but listening to them caused me to think about them in a different way.

In my novice naivety, I had always assumed that the keyboardist read every note and figured out which finger went where each time. What I suddenly saw was that each chord could be read as a word, the notes analogous to the letters, and performed by the fingers as a unit as easily as we pronounce a word after we have learned to speak. Wow.

We don’t learn to speak in full sentences, and we don’t learn to play in complete passages. My first instrument was the Cornet, followed by the Saxophone, both instruments that normally form only one note at a time. When I learned guitar, I learned chords, but I learned them individually as hand and finger positions, not as discrete notes. The big deal is thus: if I know a chord, say a C major, and I need to play a C6, unless I have learned the C6 I can’t do it. I have no clue which note(s) I am playing in my chord is(are) the one(s) that need to be modified to change the chord. I just know that when I do this it makes a C.

So…one thing I have not done is to really learn to play melody lines on my guitar. I can read music Ok, I just never took the time to learn where to find the notes on the guitar, There are a lot of places to find the same note on the fret board – some are more useful than others.  I’m taking the time now…crap….if I was only half a century or so younger…this would be so much easier!