Sunday, October 08, 2006

"OIDO"

(Oido is a Spanish term which means "to play by ear.")

Playing the piano is one of my childhood passions. At the tender age of five, I would quietly stay at the sidelines, listening to my aunt play some melodic and captivating pieces. I remember sitting on the piano stool, beside my aunt, desperately trying to mimic her motions, which include flipping the pages of the piano book, moving the wrists in rapid staccato, and humming the tunes which I've seemingly known all my life.

My Tita Beth would patiently teach me some simple tunes from the time she took note of my interest in the ivories. My first piece was "DO RE MI" from "The Sound of Music" - all treble, played only by the right hand. The first two-hand piece she taught me was "Chopsticks", with one bar played with crossed hands, i.e.,left hand crosses over the right. It delighted me no end learning a piece, and playing it over and over again.

The old piano in my Lolo's house was sold when my gracious aunt and her family migrated to the States when I was six. Since then, I would imagine playing the piano on our wooden sofa, to the point of drawing one octave on the hard sofa seat. With my improvised piano and with eyes closed, I would imagine my fingers move to the beat of the music playing on my mind, to be interrupted each time a visitor would come and had to sit on the sofa.

I was seven when I had my formal piano lessons. Unceasingly, I prodded my mom to find a good piano teacher who would make me play "like Tita Beth". Find a teacher she did, in the person of Mrs. David, a music teacher in the public school where Mom taught. I vividly remember my first day of piano lessons…. I wore my favorite jacket (though it was a hot summer day), tied my hair in a neat pony, and cleaned my hands thoroughly. I was so excited to learn I was one hour earlier than our scheduled session. I thought then that after my lesson, I could already play a tune flawlessly.

I realized that reading a piano piece is much like solving a math problem. Each note has a beat which is a fraction of a whole bar, and the sum of the notes’ beats in a bar should equal the numerator in the so called “time signature”, the fraction indicated on the left most side of the staff. (A staff is a series of bars.) The denominator in the time signature specifies the kind of note which would receive ONE beat. Thus, a time signature of 2/4 means that a quarter note (1/4) would have one beat, and each bar would have two beats; an eighth note (1/8) would receive a half-beat, and the bar may have as many as four eighth notes, or a combination of one quarter note and two eighth notes, and so on and so forth. Whew! Beethoven must have been a good mathematician!

I labored through my piano lessons, until I was able to read notes on my own. My teacher would sometimes use a “metronome”, a device used by musicians that marks time at a selected rate by giving a regular tick, to help me capture the correct rhythm or beat. Many times, frustration, desperation, and irritation set in, since apart from the correct beat, one should also be able to read the notes accurately, and play the piece with the ultimate feeling. The pianist has to evoke the composer’s message clearly, through the music’s melody and rhythm, my teacher would always remind me.

Three years after my first piano lesson, I could effortlessly read difficult pieces, and play them “on first sight”. (I later learned from my teacher that not all piano students possess this skill, which I should further hone.) I enjoyed playing and memorizing each piece, although many times, I no longer followed the piece “to the note”, and began improvising. My teacher would always call my attention and say “Never do oido, not yet. Only when you’re older and better equipped should you do so. Discipline yourself into not playing by ear this early; for when you start doing so, it would be very hard to stop, and you will never learn the masters’ pieces.”

I wondered why my teacher discouraged me to do oido then. To my mind, it was a sort of achievement….having to interpret another’s music in my own terms – from the rhythm, phrasing, feeling, and pacing. I did not heed her advice, and continued to do things as I please. I enjoyed playing by ear non-classics, and for a while stopped reading pieces. (Classics are taught the formal way, all the time.) By this time, the latter genre has become boring, since with oido, the possibilities are endless. One may play a single piece one hundred different ways.

I stopped taking lessons when I was eleven. From that time on, I was free to choose what music to play and how to play it. Occasionally, I would try to study a classic piece, but I always end up so unsure of how to play it. To my mind, classic pieces are true works of art, with a life of their own. I have often wondered how the great composers were able to weave up symphonies, etudes, sonatinas, and the like with only eight basic notes to tinker with. Truly, music is heaven’s gift to mortals, understood by all, constantly uplifting the tired and weary soul.

Everytime I play an improvised piece on my piano, I remember Mrs. David, and her admonition on playing oido. With life, as in music, one must have a solid footing on what is true, right, and good, before treading on uncertain grounds. This foundation we get from our “life mentors” – our parents, elder relatives, teachers, good friends, spiritual advisers and people not personally known to us, but who have great influence on how we think and act. These people have our best interests at heart, preventing us to learn things the hard way, and sharing with us valuable lessons learned from their respective lives.

Equipped with their wisdom and our own perspective, we can journey through life on oido. We will definitely encounter a constant series of hits and misses, with some life episodes off-key and out of rhythm, but we should strive to make our life a beautiful musical piece borne of a tapestry of experiences, aspirations, and deeds - perhaps not perfectly woven like the masters’ pieces, but certainly as unique, meaningful, inspiring, and worthy to be played…..again and again...

2 comments:

April Rain said...

My everconstant Sunriser, I appreciate your insightful comments. I agree that we should follow the norms set before us, but not lose our dreams, our hearts in the process.

LIfe is what we make it, and we are responsible for our own happiness. The lives of great people may inspire us, but the ultimate weaver of our life's masterpiece is US, with inspiration from God and the people dear to us.

ApriL Rain

April Rain said...
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