I rummaged through his parent’s closet and found his father’s
old guitar, the one he used to play as a member of the Scuffling
Scrappers. He pulled it out and strummed the strings. A dissonant
sound emerged. Even though the instrument had been neglected for
more than ten years, it was surprisingly still in tune. Although
Henry no longer played, I had seen his father’s friends play, and
tried to pick out a few notes.
Placing a finger on the frets, he found the sensation painful to
his tender young fingers. Despite the pain, he pressed harder and
plucked the string. A single note rang out. He moved his finger up
one fret and plucked a second note. He continued up the guitar
neck, picking out one note at a time until he reached the
highest.
He moved to the next string and repeated the actions. He noticed
that some of the notes were the same as what he played on the other
string, though they started at a lower place. He pressed on the
fifth fret of the sixth string and played the note, then plucked
the fifth string without pressing on the fret. It was the same
note!
He continued his experimentation, moving to the next string. When
he reached the third string, the pattern broke. The note that
matched was the fourth fret. Something must be wrong with that one,
he thought. The pattern returned for the second string.
I reached up to the tuning peg and twisted the one for the second
string, to make it match the 5th fret on the third string, just
like the other. Now the first string didn’t match the second, so he
made a similar adjustment to the first string.
He once again worked his way from the sixth string to the first.
Now they all matched. He strummed the strings again and they
sounded worse than before. Maybe the way it was before was how it
was supposed to be? He retuned the first and second strings. Still,
a strum didn’t sound much like music.
He went back to picking notes. In school they had studied scales,
singing “Do-Re-Mi” for practice. He started again at the sixth
string. He tried to sing “Do” along with it, but it was too low for
his young voice. He tried the fifth string. It was still too low.
Finally, the fourth string was a note he could match with his
voice. He plucked it and sang “Do.” He pressed down on the first
fret and played “Re.” It didn’t sound right. He took his finger off
the fret and played the open string, then back down on the first
fret. Still not right. He tried the open string again and this time
selected the second fret. “Re” rang out. “Do-Re” he sang as he
struck the strings along with his voice. He added “Mi” and found
the same problem. The note on the third fret didn’t match. He moved
to the fourth fret and it was a match. He didn’t understand why
they put an extra fret between the notes, but figured out the
pattern pretty quickly and laid down his finger on the sixth fret
to play “Fa.” It wasn’t right either. This time the note was too
high. He moved down to the fifth fret and played “Fa.”
“That’s weird,” he said to no one in particular.
He went back to the open string and in turn played it followed by
the second fret, fourth fret and fifth fret. Recalling that the
fifth fret was the same as the next open string, he tried again,
this time substituting the open third string for the fourth
note.
He moved along the third string in the same fashion then stumbled
when he jumped to the second. The open string sounded the same tone
as the note he had played on the third string, fourth fret. He
tried the next fret, but still too low. Finally, he was back on the
second fret. The next note he played was the fourth fret, but
again, to high. He backed off one and landed on the third. Success!
Thinking about how the string was tuned differently from the rest,
he decided it made some sense. He finished the scale on the third
fret.
Going back to the fourth string, he played the scale from the
beginning and sang along “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do.”
I’s finger was beginning to get sore. The strings of the guitar
were making a line on the tip and it was red. But he wanted to
explore some more.
He carried the guitar over to the family piano. He remembered his
teacher talking about “Middle C” and pointing to its location at
the middle of the piano keyboard. He pressed it and the tone
sounded. He once again played his scale from the fourth string and
found that none of the notes matched the one on the piano. The
seventh note of the scale he played was a little too high and the
sixth a little too low. He hit the final note of the scale on the
guitar and found the note on the white key next to Middle C. The
elusive note on the guitar had to be the black key in between the
two. Once again, success!
He lay down the guitar and started playing with the piano keys.
Starting at Middle C, he hit the white keys, one by one, singing
along with “Do Re Mi.” This time, no surprises; everything sounded
fine. He moved back up to the white key next to Middle C, the one
that sounded like the fourth string on his guitar, although a
little higher. He noticed the pattern of the keys repeated itself
and counted backward from “Do Ti La So Fa Mi Re Do.” The lowest key
matched that of the guitar. Again he ran through the scale on the
piano, but the fourth and seventh notes didn’t sound right. He had
to play those notes on the black keys instead.
Since the note from his scale was “Do” he figured the piano key
played the note “Do” as well. Since it was next to Middle C, he
figured, maybe it was called “D.” But that didn’t make much sense;
the key his teacher called “C” should be “R.”
I decided to go with “C” and “D” and went backwards to “B” and “A.”
He got stuck at the next key and decided it must be “Z.” He kept
going down “Y’, “X”, “W”, “V”, “U”, and stopped. He was back to the
key that looked like the same pattern around Middle C. He kept
going down but ran out of letters before he ran out of keys. He
started over again at “Z”.
When he reached the bottom of the keyboard he went back to Middle C
and moved upward, “D”, “E”, “F”, “G”, “H”, “I”, “J” and stopped
once more. It would make more sense if that were a “C”, like Middle
C; it would fit the pattern better. But that would mean that “H”
and “I” would be “A” and “B.”
He realized that he had forgotten the black keys, and started over
again. Starting at Middle C, he went backwards and got to “B” and
“A,” the previous black key. Then, counting up again, “A”, “B”,
“C”, “D”, “E”, “F”, “G”, “H”, “I”, “J”, “K” and then back to
“A.”
Well, he thought, that works, but why would “A” start on a black
key? It made more sense to him that the white keys were bigger, so
they must be more important. He started over once again. With the
“A” before middle “C”
“A”. He hesitated as her hovered his finger over the black key, and
then pronounced it “A plus!” He continued, “B”, no black key after
“B”, so he continued onto “C”, “C plus”, “D”, “D plus”, “E”. Again,
there was no black key. “F”, “F plus”, “G”, “G plus”, and he was
back to “A.” Going backwards he decided to change it up. “A”, “A
minus”, “G”, “G minus”, “F”. No “F minus.” “E”, “E minus”, “D”, “D
minus”, “C”, “C minus”. Oops, that was a white key. “B” he
corrected. “B minus” and back to “A”. The patterns made some sense.
He couldn’t quite figure out why two black keys were missing, but
at least he had a way to name the notes.
I stopped playing the piano and went back to his room. He picked up
the sheet music, the gift from Chuck, and placed it up on the
piano. He looked it over, and started to see a pattern of the
notes. There were two stacks of lines, with a single line between
them, right in the middle. ”Middle C!” he exclaimed. He looked over
the music and noted that some of the markings were on the line,
some were between the lines, some had a “#” next to it, and some
had a small “b” next to it. He figured that the # symbols were what
he had termed “plus” and the “b” was what he called “minus”.
Within an hour’s time, I had figured out almost everything he
needed to know to start playing music.