“Playing by ear on a C major single-octave kiddie glockenspiel is tremendous fun, but it is also incredibly (and illogically) frustrating.”
This evening we went to my grandmother’s house for dinner. After we ate, I sat down with my books with the intention of continuing the arduous process of studying for my midterm, but after studying for several hours today, I couldn’t bring myself to focus.
I scanned the familiar room with my tired eyes, trying to give them a break from the endless sea of text. My eyes were suddenly drawn to a brightly colored thing sticking out of a brightly colored box. It was on a shelf, covered by a few old magazines and my grandfather’s collection of cassette tapes. I reached for it, and unearthed our old glockenspiel…the one my sisters and I spent hours playing and singing…the one that was confiscated a few times for the high-pitched “DING DING DING” sound that drove the adults crazy.
It was (and still is) magnificent for a child’s toy. The boy proudly proclaimed that it was mechanically tuned to a perfect pitch: 8 brightly colored pieces of metal labeled with their corresponding notes…the box went so far as to inform me that it was tuned to the C3-C4 octave. Amazing…something that probably made no sense to little old pre-eight-years-of-piano me.
It is nothing like the cheap plastic that aren’t in tune…nor is it like the wooden kiddie ones that don’t resonate.
Maybe it was the stress from the midterms…maybe it was the euphoria of finding this wonderful time capsule of my childhood…but I sat down with it and played. I started of with a simple scale, and then ran through the songs I had figured out by ear (and then learned on the piano) about 11 years before. It was a delightful sound, crisp, high pitched and refreshing…it sounded like a cold sunny winter’s day.
I quickly ran through all the songs I could remember in a single c-major octave…mostly nursery rhymes and Ode To Joy. I started experimenting with other songs…the lovely little Brahms’s Lullaby. I then began to really really improvise…The Rugrats Theme…”With A Little Help From My Friends”….It was so much fun! So rewarding and satisfying to limit yourself to 8 notes and be able to make wonderful music!
Playing by ear on a C major single-octave kiddie glockenspiel is tremendous fun, but it is also incredibly (and illogically) frustrating. I got so into it that I would hit the table with the blue hard plastic sticks(?) in the place where the note should have been…and every time I hit an accidental, I wanted to scream in agony and frustration, and I desperately hit the small space between the two metal pieces in the hopes that maybe just maybe the thin air and the rims of bars would join forces and sound like the note I needed.
Looking back, it made me smile and I hope it does the same for you. I’ll have to steal back that glockenspiel the next time I’m there and keep it home with me to play the next time I need a sanity break but don’t feel up to playing the piano.
Love luck and lollipops
In case you didn't know what I was talking about while I rambled through the entire post...this is a glockenspiel...and it's sort of similar to my old one!
