HaederleZTake
Self-Taught and Proud of It
Column by Jim Haederle (6/01/22)
Some may disagree, but I think I’m entirely on the mark when I say that music lessons aren’t for everyone. I speak from personal experience. When I entered high school, I’d been playing piano for a little over two years. I played at home on our living room spinet, I played in the houses of friends and relatives, and I played during algebra class, dutifully fingering scales on the wooden desktop.
When I heard there were practice rooms in the high school music department, each with its own piano, I established a lunchtime routine. I’d wolf down my cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, then make a hasty dash for the music department. The music department was a ghost town at lunch, but I learned upon my first visit that I was trespassing.
A red-haired kid informed me of this as he shook the spit from his trumpet valve. Those practice rooms are for band members only, he said. I lied and told him I was thinking of joining. He shrugged and turned his attention back to the trumpet.
Weeks passed without incident until one sunny day in early October. Hunched over the piano in Practice Room B, I was pounding out a rousing rendition of Maple Leaf Rag when I became aware of someone standing in the doorway, arms folded. I paused mid-passage and turned to see Mrs. Buckholz, one of the music teachers. I braced for the expected reprimand, but she just smiled and unfolded her arms.
“You play beautifully,” she said. “How long have you been taking lessons?” “I’ve never taken lessons,” I answered proudly. “I taught myself when I was twelve.” “You never took lessons?” She sounded disgusted. She sighed, refolded her arms and abruptly turned to leave.
“Such a waste of talent,” I heard her mutter as she returned to her desk out in the band room. Mrs. Buckholz had one more thing to add, right at the end of lunch period. She didn’t look up from her papers, but she quietly addressed me as I was leaving.
“In the future, please spend your free time elsewhere. These practice rooms are for band members only.”
I’d been banished from the music department, tried and found guilty of wasting my talent. Boy, did that stick in my craw. Now, I don’t dispute that many musicians have benefited from formal training, but how exactly was I wasting my talent by acquiring knowledge on my own?
I had learned by ear initially, inspired by an unlikely radio hit in the summer of ‘74. From the movie The Sting, “The Entertainer” had been written before the invention of the airplane, yet made its way to #3 on the Billboard charts that year. That song grabbed me, and I had to learn how to play it. I bought the 45 (MP3s and YouTube were still a quarter century away), and I placed it on the turntable, which now sat atop the piano.
For the next two weeks, I played that record endlessly, each time discerning a few more notes that sounded more or less correct when I played them on the keyboard. Eventually I picked up the sheet music because my rudimentary interpretation didn’t sound entirely accurate. The written score would enable me to play the song exactly as it sounded on record, but first I’d need to teach myself how to read the notes.
The process is really just reverse engineering, and it’s something everyone does in their youth. Kids learn to talk before they learn to read; the opposite would be impossible. So, if the record was how the song sounded, then the sheet music was how the song looked. And once I made that correlation, the sheet music started to make sense.
My disappointment with Mrs. Buckholz didn’t last long. By the end of October, I’d started a band with a fledgling drummer, and I never looked back. No one now could accuse me of wasting my talent, because self-educated rock musicians are a dime a dozen.
Musical knowledge can be useful, but it can’t replace innate musical instinct.
I’ve
known trained pianists who could play with breathtaking dexterity, provided their sheet music sat squarely in front of them. But yank away the score, and their fingers would freeze mid-arpeggio. I’ve never understood how they could play something only when reading it off a page. Go to a Broadway show and I’ll wager there’s not a single actor onstage holding a script.
Despite my lack of formal education, my musical skills have served me well over the years. I’ve played on albums and radio jingles and performed in theaters and TV studios. I even almost went on the road with 80’s pop star Debbie Gibson, but her tour was abruptly canceled when her third album tanked.
So, despite the elitist prejudice that some may feel about musicians who develop their talent on their own, I’m glad I didn’t let a high school music teacher rain on my parade. A waste of talent, Mrs. Buckholz? The only waste of talent is talent unused.
Jim Haederle is a father, freelance writer, songwriter, singer/keyboardist with "The Force," actor, cartoonist, presidential history buff, and can name every James Bond movie in chronological order.
©2022 Roger Zee
A self-taught musician