That book of Christmas carols, my Grandmother gave me when I was 14 years old. And I still can't play them!
Every year I drag them out and give it a go. They're written as hymns - 4-part harmony.
I'm not very good at reading music. Hah! That's the understatement of a lifetime! I never learned how to properly read music. Interestingly enough, I can teach it though! So I struggled with any music, but 4-part harmony was a nightmare for me. See, that means you are playing four notes all the time, using four separate fingers, all going in different directions. Every beat of the song, no letup, no respite. Your brain has to direct four uncooperative fingers in four different directions from start to finish.
Imagine trying to read four lines of text, grouped one above the other, all about different subjects, in one continuous process from the top to the bottom of a page, and be able to tell someone what each of them were about when you reached the end. Here, I'll try a sample:
Merry Christmas to us all, see the doggie chase the ball, wagging his tail down the hall.
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy-ass Red Bull dog while barking his head off.
Lorem Ipsem something-or-other Latin phrase that's used as filler and here as example.
Boom-boom, ain't it great to be crazy? Well that depends on your point of view though!
Go ahead, read all four at the same time. That means you read "Merry the Lorem Boom" and "Christmas quick Ipsem boom" etc. (Actually if you're going to do it properly, you start at the bottom and read to the top. So it would be "Boom Lorem The Merry" and "boom Ipsem quick Christmas.")
And don't forget, you have to do it in the correct amount of time, since people are singing along. Yeah. New respect for the church organist!
Grandma used to listen, not particularly patiently, while I struggled with the Christmas Carols. Then she'd pontificate on the one thing she'd ever heard from someone-or-other about reading music.
"It should be just like reading a book!" she'd parrot away, frustrated with my inability to get through a christmas carol without stumbling numerous times. "Smooth and continuous and seamless!"
She never could understand what the problem was.
With 20/20 hindsight, there was a solution to this, except I didn't see it at the time. I should have offered to teach Granny how to play the piano. I should have begun her instruction in the names of the notes and the placement on the staff, and stuck her down in front of the piano with the all-intimidating "C-D-E, has a tree, full of apples as can be!" from (I think) Teaching Little Fingers to Play.
That would have shut her up. There's nothing like trying to coordinate fingers, which are remarkably stupid and uncooperative, with symbols printed on a page 2.5 feet away from where your fingers are. And "C-D-E" is only three notes with one finger each. Music doesn't stay that simple for long.
But I digress.
I actually love this book of Christmas carols. My favourites are "O Christmas Tree" and "Good King Wenceslas," and "Silent Night." That's because they're the easiest to read, with the fewest number of changes in chords. "Deck the Halls" is a nightmare - it changes chords every single word. It's dizzying!
But I love playing them all, nevertheless, despite the annoying memories of frustrating years enduring Grandma's sermons on a topic she knew nothing about. Despite not being a Christian - heck, Christmas is a pagan holiday from start to finish anyway! (Spoiler alert!) The pagans are celebrating the birth of the god from the Mother Goddess. Sound familiar?
Anyway, another reason I like "Good King Wenceslas" is because of the story. "Ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing." Unfortunately it comes after five verses and doesn't often make it that far in today's fast-paced world where we sing one verse and move on to the next song.
So I play all five verses. Actually, at some point during the holidays, I play all the verses of all the carols. Just to be...I don't know...pedantic? Thorough?
Have a good time? Yes, I think that may be it...I enjoy playing them. Badly, yes, but I'm so glad I'm not a concert pianist and I can thump away and sing at the top of my lungs and scare the cats, because it's actually f u n !
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