Thingies that happen to Steve in his other job

[SteveHopwood]

I called time on the academic year last night. There is still a week to go but nobody is turning up for lessons and next week will not get any better. OK, so I could have simply sat earning cash but we are enduring the longest heat wave here in the UK since 1976 - and you have to be of a certain age to remember that nightmare. I turned 67 today; my body is not able to cope with extremes as it once was. What I need to do now is sit at home not wearing much (banish that vision from your imaginations if you want to retain your sanity) and with all the doors and windows open 24 hours a day.

Sadly, I think there will be no more Gracie stories as she told me last week that she is moving with her mum to a long way away from here and will be changing schools. I shall miss her. We all shall.

Dominic has steadfastly refused to do any preparation in between lessons and I made this clear in my end of year report, so I do not expect to see him again. Sad again; he may be useless but is always good fun. I shall miss him. Probably we all shall. Fingers crossed that he continues to regard piano lessons as a pleasant break from academic high-flying and continues to con his parents into paying for lessons. Yes, I know I shouldn't want this, but he is gorgeous after all. It is better to love kids for what they are than for what they should be.

Assuming these two really do go missing, let's hope that there is lots of teen insanity coming up to replace them. I do have one final one for you guys this year, courtesy of Nikki. Some time soon.



Subsequent edit: I forgot the Nikki story but there are good ones to come.

[SteveHopwood]

An exchange with G this afternoon, a private pupil. He spends just enough time at the piano to "get by". That is most kids for you, and if I insisted only on spending time with dedicated students I would rarely have any. He wants to take G5 this coming December. No problem. That is a long time away and we will be able to take breaks from exam pieces for some general repertoire.

Except that he has only learned 2.5 of the pieces. Piece 3 is two pages long and he still has not learned the second page - yet this is one of the pieces he chose and was the first he tackled. He played it to me today and again murdered page 2.

We are a looooonnnnng way from, "You will learn page 2 in time for the resit, won't you dear?" but it was time to Take a Stand. The subsequent exchange went along these lines, starting with me:

"OK first page. Somewhat lumpy, unmusical, dull and not very fluent, but at least you can get through it." <Not as harsh as it sounds. G has an excellent line in self-criticism and I rarely tell him anything he does not know - he is just too lazy to anything about it until forced to. He prefers that I do not "sugar coat" my comments. I often do, even so; he is a child after all. Today was different.>

"Yes."

"Second page. Nonsense. Much of last week and the £30 your dad spent on the lesson was a waste. You need to do better."

"Yes. Sorry."

I recently sharpened the music room pencil - despite my pretenses to the contrary it is not only Gracie who owns a pencil sharpener. I picked up the pencil and held it threateningly.

"I do not care what happens to anything else, but you have to learn page two for next week."

<Looking slightly apprehensively at the pencil> "I will.

"You had better, because if you don't I will: kidnap you; take you somewhere dark, cold and lonely; torture you slowly to death."

<sensing correctly that he really was not in danger of any wrath> "Please don't."

"OK. I won't".

I must have recited tales like this to you before. It is still fun when they happen.

[SteveHopwood]

I do not have student stories at the moment because I am off school and my private pupils are few and far between these days.

One of them is G - soon to turn 15. Read the post directly above for some background. His dad absolutely insists on paying for an hour a week, every week. He was not here last week but this was the first one missed since starting with me in February or so. This is a wonderful contrast to the kids' lessons in school, where they get at most 30 x 20 minute lessons a year. I have the time to get into stuff that is not always possible in school.

Today was a great example. Somehow, cannot remember how, we got onto the subject of 'beautiful' music, so it gave me the opportunity to introduce G to one of my favourite musical mantras: there is no such thing as an intrinsically beautiful music; there are only pieces of music that are played beautifully.

I demonstrated the difference by playing beautifully the first couple of lines of a new piece we are working on. OK, so a tad on the less-than-modest side there, but I am quite on the good side at this stuff. Then I played it to him dreadfully. Correct notes, correct rhythms; heavy, hamfisted and ugly. He took the point. That is an attractive aside to the main story.

G is preparing for Grade 5, which will happen in December. He has learned the material and I am not one of those teachers who enjoys making kids flog endlessly through exam pieces for months on end. I had ordered a couple of general repertoire books for his previous lesson, so we chose a piece and dived in. We did other thingies as well.

Dad came to pick him up. I was not entirely encouraged when G started to leave but tried to leave the book on the piano. Of course, he did not intend to leave the book behind, had been concentrating like mad for an hour and his attention simply wandered. You guys get my story-telling style by now though, I guess.

G is a standard issue 14-soon-to-be-15 teenage boy. Sweet. Lovable. Loving. Caring. Innocent. Dependent. Certifiably bonkers. Not a bad bone in his body.

Entirely capable of taking not a blind bit of notice of anything said to him. Parents of current/past teen boys will be nodding in agreement whenever they read this.

G came this evening and played me his final exam piece - the one he had most recently learned.

And which I had told him during our previous lesson to put away so he could learn something new.

In advance of spending 30 minutes of time and £15 of his dad's money, on preparing.

I knew what was coming. I do not shout at kids, but many and varied are the cruelties that can be inflicted upon them. Making them squirm is one of the worst.

"Beautiful, G. Time to do what I told you to do two weeks ago and put the piece to rest" I announced. "Now play me the new piece we prepared two weeks ago." I knew what was coming.

There followed a look of blank incomprehension. I sat and looked at him; I can be heartless sometimes.

The light dawned after a few seconds and he dived into his music case to bring out the two books. He had no idea which one to start with. Poor lad, he started with the wrong one and leafed in panic through every page.

The correct one had the piece he was supposed to learn right at the start of the book. G started looking from the back - how many of us do that, I wonder? Finally he arrived at the relevant piece, placed it on the stand and made a passable attempt at it - he is a very good sight reader i.e. can make a decent stab at a piece he has not seen before.

G is a very pleasant young man; he had not committed a crime and there is only so much torture I can inflict on him so I grinned and said, "That was a very good attempted bluff, G. We both know what you have done. On a scale of 1 to 10 where one is not at all and 10 is devastated, how guilty do you feel right now?"

"20. Your silence was killing <I hope not>. I would have preferred it if you had shouted at me." I would be astonished to find I ever needed to. The rest of the lesson continued without reference to this incident, once I had pointed out how much money his dad had wasted two weeks ago. One tiny final bit of devastation.

[SteveHopwood]

Slightly sad day today.

The academy started back today, although we peris do not start back until next week. I received my timetable.

There is no Gracie. I knew at the end of last term that there probably would not be as she told me that the family were moving away but it is still sad to have this confirmed. I suspect I will not be the only one to miss her lunacy.

On the bright side, Dommy is continuing despite my making it abundantly clear in my report at the end of last term that he is wasting his time and his parents' money. I simply do the best I can to help the kids presented to me, so there is hope for more teen lunacy from that source.

I have agreed to be a part of the annual musical that takes place every October. "Beauty and the Beast". Wish me luck. I loathe Disney songs almost as much as I loathe The Sound of Music.



Much later edit on 5th October 2018: I confused the musical with the Disney film of the musical. I cannot blame Disney for the musical. For that I blame the 'composer' of this unmitigated crap. It now vies with Sound of Music as the worst musical crime ever committed.

[SteveHopwood]

Back to school yesterday, and not a day too soon. I like a break from time to time, but it is never long before I start to miss the kids.

The Blue forms have been abandoned. They are replaced by a much more comprehensive form that allow us to award commendations for achievement as well as criticisms for failure - about time, too. They include a column that allows us to issue a detention; the peri staff organiser emailed at the start of term to inform us peri teachers that we are included in being authorised to issue these.

Kids who take instrumental music lessons tend to be the sensitive ones. Whilst there might be a marked absence of trembling and awe in my presence, there is also an equally marked absence of spitting, smoking, swearing and head-butting as well.

Even when they are occasionally grumpy, I know there is something wrong and it is because they are unhappy.

What I am saying here is that there is more chance of me being appointed Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party than there is of me issuing a detention. Hardly a basis for a one-to-one relationship, dishing out detentions.

Even so, there was a wind-up awaiting Dominic. Dommy really should not be wasting his parents' money. I pulled no punches in my end-of-year report last term and was astonished to find him still on my list.

Delighted as well. This is a wonderful young man. Besides, he will not play at all if he has no lessons and nobody knows what effect they will have on his future behaviour. At the very least, when he is a dad he will know the characteristics of a piano teacher who cares about his pupils. Who knows what that might lead to?

I put the form on the piano stand and intoned sternly, "Dommy, I am only too aware that you do absolutely no preparation in between lessons - I have to sit and listen to you."

He did have the grace to look guilty. I could see him thinking along the lines of, "OK, on a scale of 1 - 10, where 1 = none and 10 = execution, just how much trouble am I in?"

I left a gap for a few seconds just so he could squirm a tiny bit then announced, "I know how much you depend on approaching the room safe in the expectation of a warm greeting and a happy 20 minutes, so I am never going to get angry and shout at you."

Face cleared; small sigh of relief, so I stuck the knife in.

"Look at this column on the new form," I said, pointing to the 'Detention' column. "I do not need to shout at you. I can issue a detention instead - and I will in future."

I am more likely to deserve a detention in school than is Dommy, but his face made positing the theory that I might issue one to him well worthwhile.

He was clearly in a panic, so I was only going to continue the wind-up for a few seconds but he beat me to it. Dommy's face cleared. He grinned and said, "But you won't." Then followed confirmation and a 'high five'.

Yes, I know I should, but even in the ridiculously unlikely event that I filled in the form, there is no chance that I would leave it for the staff organiser to find.

Hey ho.

[SteveHopwood]

Nikki was an especial joy today. The 'pianos' in school are electric. They are excellent examples of their breed and far better than the average festering acoustic heap that infests most schools. Competitors to the 6' Yamaha grand I have at home and would cost c. £14,000 these days they ain't, but they do a job.

I belatedly realised today that they have a record facility, so I recorded Nikki playing the solo she is working on for her GCSE performance. You should have seen her face after I played the recording back to her. "Wow," she breathed, "was that really me?"

"Yep sweetheart, that was really you." She giggled that delicious giggle that I would stop at nothing to cause.

In exam terms, there is still a lot of detail to correct but the outline and musicality are both there. The rest is merely nit-picking detail of the sort that makes a huge difference in an exam performance. That was not the point of playing Nikki's recording back to her; ego-boosting was the point. It was the end of the lesson and she floated out of the room on her own little cloud nine.

[SteveHopwood]

I know you guys all love a laugh at my expense, so here is another for you.

I have received the piano score for Beauty and the Beast. It weighs in at 194 pages.

194 pages?

To put this into context for those of you with no understanding of Classical music, the longest and hardest piano concerto I ever played was Brahms 2nd, which weighs in at 100 pages and took me an hour to perform. Players with more blistering techniques than mine, can play it in c. 50 minutes but I have heard performances that took even longer than mine.

194 pages? The damn thing must go on for ever. How many hundreds of pages is that in a conductor's score? Ok, so Brahms 2nd it is not but a lot of it is fiendishly difficult. OK, so I can edit out the more ludicrous demands and will indeed do so, but there is still a lot of learning to be done.

And here is the real problem. I do not know what to learn. There is no way that the kids can learn the entire musical. Even if they could there would be no point; 45 minutes is the best that the audience should be expected to sit through and still remain wildly enthusiastic.

So mountains of this garbage is going to be cut but I cannot persuade either the MD or the drama teacher to tell me which bits are going.

A characteristic of drama teachers is that they will cheerfully and ruthlessly waste everybody else's time whilst instantly going incandescent at the mere thought of somebody wasting theirs. So, I could spend hours flogging away learning stuff only to get to the rehearsals to find that mountains of it has been cut from the performance.

So there is a Steve Special email going out in the morning. To precis, it will say, "Listen up bozos. I have asked for information. You haven't been arsed to reply. Send it to me NOW of find another pianist."

Mind, even when I finally find out what to learn, then learning it is still going to be bloody difficult. I am in trouble.

Hey ho.

[SteveHopwood]

Remember guitarist Billy from a few posts higher up? I was helping him with one of the sections of his G5 exam just before the summer. He gained a Distinction and the examiner remarked at the bottom of the form that Billy's was a remarkably musical performance by a highly talented young player. Well-deserved recognition of a highly talented child.

There are no guitar parts for Beauty and the Beast but Billy and Jeremy, a one year younger pupil, want to be involved. So guitar teacher Paul, the two boys and I stayed behind after school for an hour working out some chords for them to play in some of the songs. We are going to do the same next week. You do not turn kids away when they want to be involved in something musical, so invention is required.

Billie had a photocopy of the piano score that I am playing and was writing the chords down as Paul and I worked out what they are. Jeremy was strumming along, working out how to play them.

So, after an hour we had achieved quite a lot but only written on one copy. The photocopier was playing up today, so I could not take it off to copy. Billy stuffed it into his bag and announced, "I will photocopy one for Jeremy in the morning."

I did wonder at the time why a slightly panicky Paul demanded, "Make sure you don't lose it."

I continued to Billy, "Tell you what. Make two copies; one for Jeremy and one for Sir just in case the dog eats either of your copies."

"Make sure you don't lose it, Billy" came the growl from Paul.

I never pass up the opportunity to threaten innocent children, so I glared at Billy and announced, "Lose it and I will torture you slowly to death. Very slowly." Billy smiled sweetly at me - a sort of, "Who? Me?"sort of a way, so I responded, "Not that I imagine even for a second that you would, so it is a bit of a pointless threat."

"Tell Sir what you did the night before the exam," growled Paul.

Billy grinned that tutu grin that I want to bottle and announced, "I lost my music. Couldn't find it anywhere."

"Luckily, I had a copy" muttered Paul.

"Billy," I announced, "losing your music the night before an exam. That is pure class. Come here" and we high-fived.

A despairing guitar teacher snarled, "For crying out loud, don't encourage him."

It will not happen, but just suppose some sort of disaster occurs and the copy is lost? Paul and I will sigh patiently and repeat the exercise next week. You do not turn children away when they want to be involved with something.

[SteveHopwood]

I know how much you all love to read about my suffering.

Remember the Steve Special post from two posts higher?

It had its desired effect two days ago and I now know which numbers I am required to play.

All the hardest.

Which makes sense - not much point in having me around merely to have me play stuff that could be managed by a Y7 beginner.

Trouble is, the hardest is really hard. Not difficult to play, but really hard to learn.

It is not easy to explain to non-musicians so I will try my best. Tunes are accompanied by 'harmonies'. These are groups of notes clustered together to form 'chords'. Different composers form chords in different ways. We think of these as their, "harmonic language".

There are weirder harmonic languages that that used by the composer of this blasted musical, but I have never been call upon to play them.

I have a hard couple of weeks ahead. First big rehearsal is on the 14th and I am expected to know what I am doing by then; it is not going to happen.

------------------------------

Dommy came for his lesson today. "How are you doing?" asked I. Then I noticed him limping and asked what had happened. He had stubbed his big toe on the stairs. We all know how much that hurts.

Later in the lesson he banged his knee on the piano. Later still he banged his elbow on a nearby desk.

Time for some explanation I decided. "Stand up Dommy," I demanded. Yep, suddenly much taller than me. Not so the last time I looked.

So I described my limited understanding of how the brain's spatial awareness works and how it fails briefly when a child suddenly shoots upwards. We discussed for a couple of minutes and Dommy appeared reassured.

Then the poor boy's face clouded and he demanded, "Have you not noticed my speech?"

Slurred like me after half a bottle of single malt. "Of course I have sweetheart" I replied. "I assumed it was braces and did not mention it in case you were embarrassed." Not quite normal braces, but something to do something about his 'bite'. Whatever, some sort of mechanical instrument of torture with long-term gain in mind.

Dommy explained it with some difficulty. Still really glad to see this glorious child every week.

Not always easy, this being a teen stuff.

[SteveHopwood]

Fantastic afternoon in school today. The kids excelled themselves.

I have another Gracie. Not the Gracie of Pencil Sharpening fame but a different one. A diminutive 11 year old new to the school and clearly with a brain the size of Mars. I never have to explain anything twice and she is frequently a step or two ahead of where we currently are.

Come the end of the lesson I announced, "You have been brilliant today, Gracie. Make sure you tell your mum what I said. Mum's love to hear stuff like that."

Came the reply, "I will have no choice. I have at least a half hour interrogation about my day when I get home."

My mum showed a similar interest in me at the same age but asked the killer question, "What have you done today?" How to even begin to answer that? Where should I have started? The list of thingies I had done was overwhelmingly long, so I mostly muttered, "Nothing" and fled.

I explained this to Gracie and asked if her mum did the same. "Oh no. Mum is much more forensic that that." This kid is 11 and understands 'forensic'? "She takes out my planner, looks at the lessons I have had and asks me about each one individually."

<Expression of mock despair> then, "There is no escape."

--------------------

Amy is really cute. Another new one to me this term, but a Y19 (14-15) in school. 14 year olds tend to fall into three categories: monsters; precious princesses for whom a hair out of place is a major trauma; heartrendingly cute.

Every parent of a former teen reading this is categorising their formerly 14 year old. Trust me and understand this unwavering, unbreakable, unbending truth; whatever category yours fell into, they really needed your unquestioning love back then. You poured it in?

Amy falls into the latter category of heartrendingly cute. She looks at me out of those huge trusting eyes and I am putty in her hands. Right at the end of the afternoon and after our session with Billy and Jeremy (coming up) Paul and I met Amy in the corridor. No idea what she was doing - probably waiting for a friend rehearsing for the blasted school musical.

Guitar teacher Paul runs a rock group after school every Monday and Paul tells me that Amy has attended every one of them even though she does not play the guitar very well. Who cares? Dedication is what it signifies.

Amy had told me earlier that she is swapping subjects and replacing Art with Music. I explained this to Paul, who responded with the enthusiasm I knew he would. It clearly made Amy happy - and a happy Amy is a wondrous sight.

Paul still teaches in a room that would match the Shame of the Black Hole of Calcutta, so he years ago imported a fan. For reasons probably linked to the risk of fire, the school chose to replace it for him, so he disappeared briefly into his prison cell, then emerged with his old fan.

Now, the only people who ever find puns funny are the ones doing the punning. The rest of either laugh dutifully, glance briefly at the punner and then move on as though nothing had been said, of pour some sort of mockery and scorn on the miscreant.

So here is what happened when Paul emerged from his prison, placed the old fan on the floor and announced, "There that is my fan. It is a club of one" and waited for laughter. Amy was fabulous and reacted instantly.

We both looked at him levelly and paused for a few seconds. Then I looked at Amy and asked, "Have you heard a worse joke than that for a long time?"

Several expressionless seconds passed, then, "No".

Paul takes this sort of stuff very well. The kids adore him.

-----------------------

Pre the Amy episode, Paul and I spent an hour working out guitar chords with Billy and Jeremy, for the benighted musical.

You will have noticed that I described, "Billy and his side-kick" as this pair of boys if you have read some of my earlier posts. I have a problem remembering names. I got the idea from somewhere that side-kick is called Henry.

The boys piled into the room for our post-school session and I intoned, "Ehup Billy. Ehup Henry." They fell about with laughter.

"What?" I asked plaintively.

Replied Henry, "Because my name is Jeremy."

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is."

Remember Ben who is actually Carl? Time for another.

"How old are you boy?" I demanded in my best 1930's schoolmastery sort of voice. "13" came the reply. "So you have got to the age of 13 and still do not know that your name is Henry. Shame on you."

Billy joined in. Remember these two are inseparable. "He is a bit thick sir. Can't blame him if he doesn't know his own name."

Paul is quick on the uptake and walked in on the end of this exchange so I explained Henry's confusion over his name. Paul gave Jeremy an, "You are hopeless" sort of a look and announced, "I know that. You know that. Billy knows that. What is your problem, Henry?"

Just to backtrack a few minutes, it turns out that Billy is awesomely talented. It is astonishing to watch him at work. We had a fair few minutes after the boys arrived and before Paul finally deigned to turn up - he is a bit of a yakker and can be hijacked for a natter at the drop of a hat. Two fabulous teenage boys started to entertain themselves.

Jeremy would start to strum a chord sequence. Billy would listen intently for a few seconds and then start to improvise a solo - a really musical solo. Old hat to jazz muzos no doubt, but so far over my head that I was left agog. And this kid is 14? They would stop. Jeremy would start again; same process. Several times. Paul confirmed that they do it all the time.

The weird harmonic language in this blasted musical left me floundering to work out what some of the chords were - and I am a diva when it comes to chords. I would play the piano part and would then hear Billy imitate what I had just played. I would work out a basic chord and say to him, "And you can adapt to what you hear?" "Yes" always came the reply.

Astonishing. This boy has to go to Chethams for his 6th form. I will do what I can to set the ball rolling there.

Come the end of the session and the boys were packing their instruments away. I said to Henry, "Ok, you have a difficult job to do. You have to explain to your mum that she has been calling you the wrong name for the last 13 years."

Billy chimed in, "Take it slowly. Try a little bit each day. Spread it out over a week and she will come to accept it."