Sometime last year, during one of our dinners, I sat down with a guest and asked him his profession. He was the conductor of an orchestra, and his wife was a composer. Now, keep in mind, I'm very proud of our musicians here, but it's always a little intimidating knowing that the audience might hold a Carnegie Hall or a Feature Film type out there.
Rod Stewart once claimed you only needed to know three chords to be a rock star and I think a lot of well-packaged pop music is 70% charisma, 28% technical assistance, and 2% musical training, but even with all of that, in the era of shrink-wrapped, downloadable, "slick" entertainment, most people don't trust themselves to even dabble in music. Truth be told, I get a little annoyed with people who don't even want to try singing. Freeman House, our fiddler, will tell you that Jim Riley shouldn't even try singing either, not because I have pitch issues, but because I make up my own version of the tune--which of course makes the whole ensemble thing sort of difficult.
We started paying for piano and fiddle lessons a few years ago and I was worried that the kids were looking upon the whole thing as a chore, but then for some reason everything popped and they all wanted to join the family band (which in this case is headed by the musical mama and papa--Freeman and Kathy). It's been a real joy to hear them working on tunes, checking out Irish flutes on the internet, and coveting baby Grands down at Oak Valley Piano. (One of the few places you can actually go and play a piano before buying it. Highly recommended.)
Moral of the story: play good music around the house, keep paying for the lessons, and then let them play something well enough, in front of the public, to get a little praise--and they will be hooked.
The other issue is that Americans should really begin taking more responsibility for their own music. They should start turning off the radio, the Pod, the CD-Player and start buying sheet music. We need to start singing our own songs again!
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