I geeked out at my chorus this week. We talked briefly about marking our music and some important things to notice when singing 4-part barbershop, and their homework was to go home and delve into their own sheet music (I did give them a cheat sheet). I made a poster. This was an old school poster layout, with a yard stick and rulers, done in pencil, then in ink. It gives examples of the tonic chord (or one (I) chord), rubs (notes next to each other), and octaves. My youngest wanted to help, so she marked the colored sections (bonus, she starts seeing the relationships too). Learning to recognize and hear these aspects helps us along toward making better music.

I admit I don’t use the colors, but I do use the numbers, and I’ve been naming as many chords as I can, not just the tonic. It is good practice.

So I recently needed to reference a piano keyboard, and was too lazy to go to the piano, so did an image search. In the provided images was a tutorial on how to draw a piano, which showed that the black keys were not centered between the white keys. What? I took piano lessons starting in second grade, have had pianos around me most of my life (I can pick out a scale, but don’t have a ready repertoire), but when I draw a piano keyboard, I center the black keys between the white keys. Well, until now. I took a picture of my piano, just to verify the internet info. Yup. The space between the white keys does not hit the center of the black key. Except maybe on the G flat, at least on my piano. Now I’m going to be looking more closely at all the pianos I encounter. What a fascinating bit of trivia and insight on the workings of the human brain.

In cleaning out the office/music room, I found my grandmother’s old vocal method book. The striking thing about it is that my grandmother was a high soprano, while I sing in the tenor range, near opposite ends of the vocal spectrum, especially for females. Still, vocal method is vocal method; I can go through the exercises, just an octave (or two) lower.