I was a Teenage Mutant Musician

I was a teenage mutant musician.

Mutant (myoot’ nt) adj. of mutation; of, relating to, undergoing, or resulting from change or mutation—an animal or plant with inheritable characteristics that differ from those of the parents; sport; from Latin mutāre to change.

In fifth or sixth grade we were given a music aptitude test. As I recall, part of the test involved the playing of two notes, one being at a higher or lower pitch than the other. I had no idea what that meant. The aptitude test also involved testing our ability to distinguish between two sets of rhythm. I didn’t know what that meant either. Those who did well on the test were invited to take part in the school’s music program. I wasn’t invited.

In seventh grade, Jerry Smith, who just happened to be one of my best friends, began playing the tenor saxophone. Richard Miller, my closest friend (both literally and figuratively) brought this anomaly to my attention and suggested that we join him and join band together. I readily agreed since the three of us rarely did anything apart from the other.

Joining band meant picking a musical instrument. Having done so well with the music aptitude test my vast knowledge of musical instruments included drums and the trumpet. My parents said no to the drums. Richard and I both ended up picking trumpets for band and we sounded great together. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to say that we sounded “grate” together.

Having announced our intentions to join band to the band director, he gave Richard and me our first and only music lesson. “See these five horizontal lines here? See these little black things on the lines? Those little black dots positioned on and in between the lines represent different notes. See those three dots above the notes on the line? Some of them are filled in and some of them are not. If the dot is filled in you push the corresponding valve down. If the dot is not filled you leave the valve open. Practice until you are good enough to come out and join the band.” And, with that lesson completed he turned around and walked out of the practice room and went to work with the high school band.

My first attempt at getting a note out of the trumpet sounded more like the rushing wind through tall grass. Considering that something other than rushing wind should emanate from the bell of the horn I tried humming through the mouthpiece. Needless to say the sound that came forth from this musical wonder sounded more like a dying cow in the blowing wind than what I had envisioned a trumpet making. By the end of the hour Richard and I discovered that by puckering our lips up and giving the mouthpiece the raspberries a genuine trumpet sound-like noise could be produced. Meanwhile, Jerry, who was much more advanced than us on his tenor saxophone than we were on the trumpet, endured all manner of noise until we became proficient at “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. After that the three of us mastered such classics as “Three Blind Mice” and “The Farmer in the Dell”.

After several weeks of practice, at least three weeks anyway, we were ready to join the high school band. Showing no fear or trepidation whatsoever, which clearly we should have had, we ventured out of our little practice room to join the high school band. We took our seats at the end of each section and looked at the next selection to be practiced: “The William Tell Overture”. Things were going great until about the second note. I have no idea how far Richard got but I know I was lost within the first measure and we hadn’t even gotten to the Lone Ranger part of the overture! We returned to the practice room in shame.

Eventually we made it out of the practice room and into our rightful places in the band. In my case it was the last chair of the Third Cornet section. Richard wasn’t that far ahead of me; however, in years to come he would be up in the first chair while I remained somewhere in the middle of the third chair section.

Eventually a benevolent band director by the name of David VanVeld took pity on me and gave me three opportunities to help me with my lack of musical talent. First, he persuaded me to switch to French horn, which consisted primarily of playing what are called after beats or after notes—one at a time with a short rest between each note. Luckily, my move to French horn quickly moved me to second chair! Barbara Lawrence played first chair French horn and she could have played first chair in any band. Then he invited me to pick up the baton and lead the band. Doing so required more than swinging my arms around in the appropriate pattern for the music, but also required me to follow multiple lines of music on the “score”. It was just my luck. I could barely follow my own music let alone the music of dozens of other people all playing something different which when played together is supposed to sound like finished art, or music.

Then came the big break. Mr. VanVeld invited Richard, Jerry, and me to arrange marching band music for state fair competition. It really wasn’t arranging music; it was just transposing music from one key to another, but it became a building block in my own music education.

Later on in my high school career whenever the band director was absent I was the anointed one to lead the band. On a few occasions it got me out of my classes so I could work with the junior high school band (that didn’t exist when I began band). One year I joined with friends Richard Miller, Jerry Smith, Rick (Rafer) Daniels, Gary Bruce, and Mike Shaddy to form a Dixieland band. Since I had been booted out of the trumpet section I pretended to play drums in our little band. We played at basketball games, political rallies, and various other venues. Yeah, we were that good. We were actually invited to perform.

High school was bearable because of band and band was more tolerable because of road trips. We always took a school bus or two wherever we went. We marched in state, county, and city fairs and almost always following our routines there would be time to wander and get into mischief. As band members we were family. We frequently changed out of our band uniforms into street clothes on the bus. No, there was nothing risqué. Noise on the bus reached a fevered pitch on the return trips to the school until we were about a mile away from the buildings, then inevitably somebody would start singing “God Be with You Till We Meet Again”. We all sang that benediction.

High school graduation brings a dash of reality to life. By then it was obvious to me that my seventh grade dream of being a professional musician was exactly that: a dream. But, pushing more than 50 years later I can still tap my foot to the beat of music and when asked I can stand in as a substitute chorister to lead music at church. Yeah, I am that good.