If, like me, you don’t pretend to be an instrumentalist, you might be able to imagine the quandary I find myself in as a songwriter. You might also like to suggest that I select another profession.
Would you trust a surgeon whose medical training consisted of watching box-sets of ER and Scrubs?
Would you pay a lawyer who had perused a few John Grisham novels instead of attending law school?
Probably not.
And yet, I have somehow deluded myself into believing that the most rudimentary understanding of musical theory is sufficient to pursue one’s chart-topping ambitions.
I find this handicap particularly tedious when I compose melodies on the piano. I say ‘melodies’ because these childish jingles would be viewed with scorn by real masters of the ivories.
Although I sometimes fancy myself as a guitarist, I have never been taught piano. While the rest of my schoolyard chums were being rapped on the knuckles for failing to complete a recital of ‘Three Blind Mice’, I was strumming the power chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
Thus, to find myself suddenly facing a piano wearing the sort of expression that a monkey would when encountering an iPod is quite a challenge. Attempting to perform and record 4 minutes of seamless piano - albeit piano of troll-like simplicity - is a frustrating and interminable exercise.
Ultimately, let me conclude this self-deprecating entry by stating that I believe an intuition for melody to be the single-greatest faculty that a songsmith can posses. In any case, I was under impression that session musicians could be hired to overcome any instrumental difficulties that might be impeding the completion of a masterpiece.
In time, I may employ one of these virtuosos but, by then, I’ll be able to afford piano lessons.
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