Key Change
by Misha Angrist
Last fall, in a dark club a couple of hours before showtime, I accosted my future piano teacher—an affable, clean-living hippie who spent five years making sublime music as part of my favorite local (and perhaps favorite ever) band, who were celebrating their 20th anniversary that night. I was scared that James would decline my fervent request to become his student, and even more scared that he would agree. When he said yes, I procrastinated for a few months. Eventually I scheduled my first lesson and braced myself.
And in part I was right to do so. James is a big fan of playing everything in all twelve keys. He commends this scary-ass book written by a heroic antifascist 20th-century Hungarian composer. He likens the exercises to weightlifting—a necessary step on the path to musical fitness. Which, I am afraid, makes me a 97-pound weakling (you can add 90 pounds, but the point stands). I don’t want to play everything in all 12 keys; I would be fine playing even a few bars, not completely terribly, in just one key (ideally C or F or G).
James likes to talk about our brains and our emotional states. As I watch him sit at one of the many keyboards in his studio, fluidly conjuring Scott Joplin and Charlie Parker and JS Bach, he shares his own insecurities—the unprovoked voices in his head that still insist, “You suck.” As a hired gun at a recent three-day recording session in Western North Carolina for a mid-tier twangy Americana band—simple songs, friendly musicians, easy peasy—he tells me that he experienced “mini panic attacks” during every take.
Keep us breathing fire!
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