The Mezzanine

It’s been about eight years since my nephew auditioned for, and won, a role in the School of Rock musical touring Australia, New Zealand, and China.

Coincidentally, his little sister is eight years younger than he is.

She is currently nine, and about to audition to be in the Melbourne tour of Annie.

I am, of course, fairly biased. But I’m also pretty knowledgeable about performing arts stuff, especially singing. And my niece is a DAMN GOOD singer. Like… way better than her elder brother, the professional jazz musician, who toured in musicals as a kid. (He can sing, but he got his SoR role for his awesome piano playing.)

My niece can hit the notes, and project, and put feeling into her voice, and change her accent to match Annie’s, and sound different for different songs. And she’s NINE.

There’s a good likelihood that she’ll actually get cast as something. And I will watch with amazement as my sister’s family does this whole thing again.



(My daughter is going to be wild with envy. But that’s a separate issue.)

Advice for budding musicians who want to get good at playing with a group: JOIN A CHURCH BAND.

No, seriously. I have so much experience at different varieties of music-playing – but the kind of experience you get out of being in a church band is a whole other level.

You see… half the people there will kind of suck at music.

By playing piano in a church band, I have learnt:
- how to play with guitar and drums accompanying
- how to play without the drums, because the drummer failed to show up
- how to get the drummer into a different tempo by thumping the piano keys loudly, because he started the song at completely the wrong speed
- how to play in a way that supports the singers rather than overpowering them
- how to deal with the singers accidentally skipping two bars
- how to notice that the singers are unexpectedly repeating the chorus rather than moving on to the next verse
- how to loudly start playing the tune when the singers completely lose track of what they should be doing
- how to play beautiful tinkly music while people go up for communion
- how to extend the beautiful tinkly music for far longer than you were planning because communion is taking forever
- how to change the entire song to a different key halfway through rehearsal, because the singers complain it's too high
- how to realise a few bars in that the guitarist is playing in a different key to you, and transpose the song on the fly to match what he's doing
- how to be ready to unexpectedly launch into the "Happy Birthday" song when the pastor gets overexcited about us being part of a community

I've spent my weekend arranging random music for multiple accordions.

This because:
- My old accordion group was far too far away, and I was too exhausted to go.
- I found someone closer who wants to start an accordion group.
- I contacted her, and she said "Great! Do you have experience arranging music for groups?"
- And I thought "…no, but the fact you're asking me that question means I'm probably better at it than you."

I live in that weird area of musical ability where, if someone asks me if I'm musical, I will gauge where they're at before answering. Decent musicians get told "Eh, kinda. I can play a couple of instruments, but not well." whereas non-musicians are told confidently "Yes. I am very musical." If someone is used to arranging music, they're better at it than me; if someone is looking for help arranging music, I am definitely better at it than them.

So I've created arrangements of Feed the Birds, Edelweiss, and the Inspector Gadget theme song, and totally failed to figure out an arrangement for Que Sera Sera. I'm now trying to make one for You Got a Friend in Me, from Toy Story. (Basically, I'm listening to the same YouTube video several thousand times, and slowly writing down the melody, the bass line, the embellishments, and the background music. It takes FOREVER.)

At least, this way, we get to play the stuff I like playing, rather than random crap I don't like.

My accordion skills are at a level where I'm really living in the wrong century.


Because, given the amount of musicianship I have, if I lived pre-electricity I would be playing for friends and family at least a couple of times a week. Which would be great.

But I'm not a professional. And I'm not an awesome player. And really, my only option for other people hearing me at all is busking.

I don't want to busk. And I do want to play for people sometimes. But, unfortunately, I live in a time when people simply aren't bored enough.

When people asked me my taste in music, I used to say "everything except heavy metal and country and western".

Then... I became a country fan. So it became "everything except heavy metal".

Now... I think it's become "everything except heavy metal and Frank Sinatra". Because seriously - listening to a few minutes of Sinatra from outside the MRI room was enough to make me snap and ask them to give me anything else to listen to during my MRI, because all the Sinatra would drive me crazy.



Oh yeah. And I had an MRI.

It was exciting and weird, and did sound just as much like a jackhammer as everyone had told me. It was on my knee - so I only had to be in the machine up to my shoulders, rather than full-on claustrophobic nightmare conditions. Which sounds like a good thing, but in practice, instead of being in a high-tech coffin getting cool sci-fi effects as I was transformed into a super-soldier, I kept opening my eyes to see this machine eating me! and it had almost reached my head! Very stressful.



So... Frank Sinatra. Does that music suck, or is it just me?

1) Spring is here! Along with lovely spring weather.

2) The boyfriend brought me flowers. Because he's great.

3) Funky country music on my phone. (Yes, that's a GOOD thing.)

4) My hair is getting long!

5) Elf purred at me this morning, and looked happy.

6) Spring! Hurrah for spring!

Are you checking my tagged entries?

Everything's cross-posted from here to LJ, these days. But my earlier stuff wasn't.

If you're looking for a tagged entry from my LJ-only days, please look here.