Friday, January 21, 2011

MUSIC MOM

I have been blessed to be the mother of musicians.

This has not come as a surprise to me as my family and Brad’s are filled with them. Brad has been immersed in music his whole life; playing the guitar and drums in bands, writing songs, working as stage crew for big bands in his younger days. It was only natural to see Tyler pick up the guitar at a young age and soon surpass his father’s abilities. He also played the drums, Trevor played the saxophone and guitar and their instrumental prowess surly comes from that side of our team. I cannot read a note of music. I nearly failed a class in college that required us as Early Childhood Education majors to take a basic music class and learn to play the recorder. The music staff may as well have been in Japanese and the recorder became an object of loathing to me on the same level as a snake! I cannot tell a C from an F by definition. I have tucked written music and instrumentals in with a group of things that I simply lack the skill, or more importantly the desire, to learn which include: threading a bobbin, knitting, changing the gears on my 10 speed bike, untangling large knots and finding my way anywhere without GPS.

I am OK with this.

I can sing, however, strictly by ear and reasonably well. Voice is what I have contributed to my musical offspring. Cadence is involved with musical theatre and works with a vocal coach; her forte being Broadway belt songs, soulful contemporary music and songwriting. This has been a breath of fresh air from the male passions in my house. I have had to learn to respect “music” in forms that are foreign to me. While Tyler can write and sing touching acoustic ballads, his passion and the music he sings with is band is appropriately called “Screamo” named for the guttural, growling, screaming language that they intersperse throughout the song that to me sounds satanic; I hear my son alternate between angel and devil and while the sound is offensive to my very fibers, I have stood in the middle of many a mosh pit, praying for my safety and cheering on my oldest. Apparently, he screams very well.

Trevor has always had an affinity for rap music. I actually find this a tiny bit more palatable if I try to override the vulgarity in most of it and simply appreciate the rhythmic flow. They don’t sing….they “spit” the lyrics. Trevor is known to “freestyle” along with any music, usually beginning with the phrase. “I’m going in…” Sometimes it is silly or funny and most times it has me yelling about the language. Trevor has shown me, however, that rapping does take some skill. I used to say it was not music at all as it was not “singing” and that anyone could “talk” their way through a song, but he protests that rapping requires good rhythm, a quick mind and a good vocabulary. I have come to see it as poetry and that tickles the writer in me. Trevor has been composing rap songs at a rapid fire pace as of late, most of it I cannot support due to content and language. Most defiantly not rated ‘E’ for Everyone and certainly not for the young or old. He recently finished a song about losing his dog Keeper. PLEASE do not listen if you are offended by the “F---“ word. I begged him not to use it but it appears in several places. If you can bleep out the offensive language, it’s actually quite good.

I probably did not ever imagine that I would be I the mother of a Screamer, a Rapper and a Broadway Belter; music has many faces and I am proud of each of them.

1 comment:

kario said...

How fun to watch them grow up! And I love your list of things you simply can't master. Me? I can't tie a knot in a balloon. No matter how hard I try. Can't be done. And I can't play chess. Not a strategic thinker.