Chapter 18

    "At first," Paul said, "this is going to look and sound just like so much razzle dazzle. And that is just what it's meant to do. And it did exactly that to you and Maggie, although I had no idea of anyone thundering in off the playground. I knew there were some kids out there, but I never thought about them hearing me. I really just wanted to see how the piano sounded. And it's not every teacher who gets a piano in his own classroom. Maybe every teacher should, but it's not currently the custom. Wait till I tell my Mom. The razzle dazzle has a very scientific purpose. It's to show you just how much lovely music you can make simply by understanding how the numbers work. You establish some very simple basic fingering - triads in the right hand and octaves in the left - and then you put them together in only three variations of the triads, all of which repeat consistently and in order, and away you go. And not necessarily in all the variations. That's an ultimate theoretically assignment, but any structure along the way can be interesting and useful, to tell the completely honest truth, you'll hear a lot more simple structure than razzle dazzle at the beginning."
  
    "To tell the truth from my point of view, that's probably just as well. Is that what you were doing? Triads and octaves? That's all?"
  
     "I think that was all. My mind wanders around all over the place, of course, so I can't be totally sure of what I was doing in strictly technical terms, but that would be the gist of it. But I do know that it makes a grand noise, and much more interestingly than you'd get in your average book of scales."
   
     "Maggie and me both thought you were playing a written piece. At least for a while. Beethoven, maybe. Or maybe something more modern, like Rachmaninoff. We'd never heard a study like that before."
  
     "Interesting you should mention Rachmaninoff, because my grandfather used to say that he couldn't understand why the Russians hadn't realized what he - my grandfather - did about piano studies, because so many of their composers had studied engineering, and thus a lot of mathematics. Also, they sang a lot of chant, which is modes, which are nothing but numbers if you really want to understand them, and thus the rest of music, perfectly. Or even adequately. But let's get going, with the razzle dazzle that you heard edited into nice, little, fairly easily apprehensible sections. And we'll do it in A minor, and thus avoid black keys for the time being."
  
     Paul began with the left hand. "This is the weak hand for most people, technically speaking, so we'll make it confident first. If the hand is not big enough or old enough for octaves then you use fourths and fifths. But we'll start with octaves. I think your hands are just big enough. Pinkie on the A below great C. Plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk. Now the thumb on the A below small C, plunk, plunk and then together. Plunk plunk boom bang thump and crash. Delightfully visceral, what? If  you were a raw beginner I'd get you to try it, but you're half an expert so I'll show you a combination that allows for a small degree of sophistication."
  
     He shifted his hand down a whole second and began producing the G octave in the same way for a bit, then he shifted back and forth from the A octave to the G. "That's rule breaker number one," he said.     "You won't find that in a scale book because in a scale book you'd be moving up to B, just for the sake of somebody's idea of order. But this is according to somebody's idea of music. Sounds a bit like an Indian motif, doesn't it? You can almost hear the tom toms. Simple, but if you put it together with the right hand intelligently, over a nice little four note range, you've already got almost half the octave beaten into shape, I say almost because this octave has nine notes. We're adding the G below into the melody. It's a lot like a tune Nick Taylor wrote once my Mom had shown him a trick or two."
  
     "I think I can do that," Deirdre said. "It must have shown up in something I learned with Iris."
   
    "There's actually an awful lot of it in the Moonlight, and with a mob of triads in the right hand, but I don't think we want to go there just yet. You have to get my drill down first. Let's study the right hand, just by itself. Pinkie on the A below middle C, index on the E, thumb on the small C. Then forget the letters and use the numbers. So the pinkie is on 1, the index on 5, the thumb on 3. That makes an A minor chord. When you get that down you add the left hand octave, A to A, or 1 to 1. Thus you have the first chord in the intelligent man's piano chord book."
  
     "What did you say about a song? Do you know someone who is a composer?"
  
     "Yes. My brother's friend. That lived with us for a while. He wrote a very beautiful tune, and then couldn't find any words for it. Odd for Nick, because he's a wordy devil. Comes of being a writer. Always practising. Turns everything into an episode in a piece of prose. But poetry is harder for him, I guess. He tries every once in a while to scare up some words, but they don't really work. My Mom was very pleased with his tune and told him not to worry about the words. He was young, and had a long life ahead of him. The words would turn up at the right time. Maybe when Michael Thurman needed a theme song for a film, for instance."
   
    "Did that happen?"
   
    "No, not yet. But it probably will. They work really well together. Now let's see how well you and I work together. You sit on the piano bench and give me the left hand octave. Nice and slow. No rush." Paul stood up and they switched places.
Deirdre put her left hand to the keyboard. There was no problem with the octave. Her hands had been playing eighths for a couple of years. She played the interval in unison for a bit, then in arpeggio fashion, but only with the pair of notes.
  
     "Good," Paul said. "You can add the fifth later, but for now we'll keep it simple. Okay. Now do the same with the pair of G notes."
  
     She descended the major second. "My heavens. I think I've actually done that before but it feels different doing it for you. Is it really important? I get the sense that it is, and it almost scares me to think of using it."
   
    "Ah, it's the Irish in you. Faith and begora and all that. There are so many Irish tunes you can provide the basic harmony for with just those two intervals. It's the nature of a simple minor scale. For one thing, it gives you so much variety, because of the whole tone between the first and the natural seventh below, if the triad you use with the seventh in a major, in this case a G major. You go back and forth between A minor and G major, always getting a big part of so many tunes, and occasionally a whole one."
  
     "You're kidding me. It's too easy."
  
     "I'm glad you find it that way. Stay this docile and you'll be telling me the Moonlight  is too easy.  All right, stop the left hand and educate the right. It will be a little more challenging because you have a variety of notes. First: the A minor triad: counting downwards, 1, 5, 3. A, E, C."
Deirdre executed, but saying the letters.
  
     "I'll allow the letters for old times' sake, and in deference to the inferiority of the Germanic intellect. But you must get used to the numbers or die. Either that, or never get past the first key signature. Actually, you might not make it gracefully into the second triad, because it is NOT a minor chord, and thus it is a major chord and you will have to study how the number differ from each other: 1,5,3, and 2,7,4. And therefore the fingering, slightly. Index in the middle for the first triad,, middle in the middle for the second triad.
  
     "You're really kidding me now!"
  
     "Not a bit. I'm dead serious, and so was God when he invented the rules for reasonable music theory. Most of the time, you have to have major chords within a minor scale, or the whole thing is too gloomy. And who wants a diminished chord on the second degree of the scale? Or the seventh, for that matter, but that's for later. Come on. 2, 7, 4."
Deirdre complied, and this time she said the numbers. In fact, she sang them. "You're right. That is easy, and it's bloody delightful. Where did you learn all this again?"
  
     "At my mother's side."
     "And where did she learn it?
     "From her father."
    "And where did he learn it?"
   
    "I think the same place where Moses was given the two tablets. He had to spend a lot of time in thunder and lightning all by himself and the Muse. In spite of their loyalty to solfage, as with all the other Romance language peoples, the French are just as dull as the Germans when it comes to obeying the medievalists about the primacy of the numbers."
  
     "What about the English?"
  
     "German is the mother tongue of English. And for musical purposes the Irish pursue the English customs. The blind leading the blind from one end of Europe to the other. Now put two hands together and show your mother what a genius you've suddenly become."
  
     Slowly, carefully, as if she could not quite believe it would work as well as he said, Deirdre played out Paul's schema. She sang the numbers for the right hand. "That is so beautiful! And as you say, so easy. You promise me the rest of the scale goes so nicely?"
  
     "As long as you stay patient, and sing, or at least think, the numbers as I show them to you. And allow for the fact that with the left hand we have to make certain choices depending on the student. You get to choose whether or not you want to learn just left hand harmony, or if you'd like to study just left hand triads at first, so you can play a tune in the left. If you were a male I'd make you start out that way because of your vocal placement. But you're female, so you get to choose."
Deirdre said nothing of Andy, but she thought of him, and said she's go with the latter. And Andy was also beside the point. She had never heard of anything so radical as using just the left hand to play an arranged melody. It would be fascinating just to see how it was done.
 

Chapter 19

    "We'll continue with A minor," Paul said, "and when you hit that nice combination of competence and boredom that characterizes the balanced student, we'll shift to D minor. Do you know why that is?"
    "No. I'd have thought the first change would be to a major key. Like C, because A minor and C major have the same key signature. No sharps or flats."
    "Brilliant girl! That's a perfect example of the apparent logic that is used in modern music teaching, because it doesn't understand numbers and therefore doesn't really understand the modes, although it may think it does. No, we change to D minor, later on and eventually, because as Mode One, it is really the mother of Mode Two, which is like A minor but not quite the same. Mode Two, like D minor, has a B flat in it. But we don't want a B flat at this point, and not only because Nick didn't use one in his melody. We could start in D mode, if you were a soprano, or if you wanted to begin your vocalizing with warming up your head tone. But for me, the ideal opening to the singer's working day is grinding along in his lower range, like an Asian monk. Thus, A minor, because A is basically the lowest note in the Gregorian repertoire, for the sake of physical nature. But A minor is not Gregorian chant scale strictly speaking, because if it were we would have to call your first note Five instead of One. You'll understand that later. For now, just trust me, call it One, and anchors away. Left thumb on A below small C. Middle finger on E below the A. Little finger on C below the E." Paul spoke slowly and waited between each instruction to make sure the fingers landed correctly.
Deirdre, absorbing his mood nicely, located her digits where they should be.
    "Excellent," he said. "Counting downwards - a fundamental skill that must be acquired right at the beginning, no matter how long it takes - you now have the A minor triad, 1, 5, 3. Fiddle with that, both as an arpeggio and a solid chord. And mix up the numbers. First 1 5 1 3 until the fingers are pretty much in sync with the brain, and then any other combination you can think of. And all the varieties of rhythm that come to mind. But not necessarily now, because the mind's natural curiosity, God bless it, wants to get at least a partial grip on the rest of the list. That's the great drama between the subject and predicate of Aristotle's famous teaching: 'The whole is the sum of the parts.' Our desire to have perfect knowledge of a part is in constant conflict with the desire to comprehend the whole. That's what makes learning so exciting, as long as you're interested in the subject. So, as soon as you've had enough of A minor, we'll proceed to the G major triad. Remember, we're not at the moment studying a major key, so the order of learning has to be different."
Deirdre fiddled as instructed, slowly at first, both in arpeggios and the solid triad, then trying on a bit of speed as her fingers gained confidence. Finally she hit the inevitable stage of boredom and asked Paul if she could change her fingering, by which she meant leaving out the thumb and stretching her index finger to the right so as to bring the ring finger into play.
    Paul laughed. "You get an 'A' for ambition, but also for addiction to the principle of exercising all five fingers as soon as possible. Good on the first, but the second has a host of legitimate objections. Fingering is of course important, but not as important as getting a secure hold on the numbers. Music has to lead with the intellect in order not to get lost in mindless noise. Most five finger exercises are mindless noise invented by someone who wanted to fool unsuspecting parents into believing their children were working hard. They're also bloody unmusical. The sooner you learn the secrets of intelligent harmony the better, and you can't do it by concentrating on five-finger exercises. You're just getting restless because you've conquered the first problem. So now attack the second one, the G major chord, and that should be fairly easy because the fingering is the same as for the A minor. Thumb, middle, pinkie, simply shifted down a second to G, D, and B, which are also which numbers?"
    Deirdre had to think for a moment, not being used to automatically including the numbers in her identifications, in her mental words: "7 . . .4 . . . .2?'
    "Bingo. Try it out. But keep the thumb in. Don't get too eager to stretch the fingers. You have to lead with your head. Get the numbers well rooted before you try to become an acrobat. Then you'll become a better acrobat."
    Deirdre went more slowly this time, as if she could not quite believe not only the simplicity, but also the immediate shift to the major chord within a minor format. Slowly, she played the three numbers over and over again, first in sequence, then alternating every combination she could think of, and playing with the rhythms. Finally she said, "That's neat. But there must be more to learn than just those two chords."
    "Of course, especially if your piano is the only member of the orchestra, and also especially if you've already done a lot of piano, as you have. Initially, there are more chords than you want to think about. It's a nightmare, unless you know how to sort out the math as it actually is, and combine that with fundamental fingering. Once you grasp on to it - or to Them, I should say - it's a walk on the beach. Nice and easy, one foot at a time, and let the waves roll in and stir up the poetry that music is suppose to make in the soul."
    "Do you know a song that uses just those two chords in the left hand?"
    "Yes. I actually know a few, and most of those Irish, as it happens. But seeing you're doing so well with two chords, let's round your skills off with one more, which will give us the first real minimum
arsenal. There's a natural completeness to the three chords, a chord progression as they call it, and that gives you access to a whole lot more songs. But remember that we're breaking all the known rules by starting with a minor key, so when you switch this drill over to a major chord, which I'll eventually let you do as a reward for good behaviour, you'll have to make some minor adjustments. Now, for the sake of simple geometry - or geography, if you like, you've been leading with your thumb, in first inversion, and we'll continue the formula. Put your thumb on the A . . . ."
    But before Deirdre could do this, there was a bang on the door, a loud youthful "hello" and in strode Maggie, with a look on her face that everyone could tell meant she had come with a story of not a little moment.

Chapter 20

    Dutiful and docile child that she basically was, one of Maggie's biggest personal problems of the current schedule was the how to address the young man that had so recently arrived in Blackfish Bay, not only to be her classroom teacher, but also, it had surprisingly turned out, her personal music mentor. She no doubts that the sudden relationship would continue, in spite of the profoundly disturbing telephone call she had come to report. Mr. Cameron carried such an air of determination within himself that it seemed nothing could stop him from doing what he had said he would do, not Mrs. Grayson, formidable as she was, nor indeed all the music teachers in Blackfish Bay, or even up and down the entire east coast of the Island! Besides, the little secrets of the keyboard had worked so well when she was by herself back at home that she could think of no alternative but to continue on to learn more of them. And her Mom had been curious as well!
   
    That she would call him "Mr. Cameron" in the classroom was a foregone conclusion, of course. but not such a simple affair after all because in all her school years previous since she had arrived at Saint Bridget's she had called her teacher "Sister". She would probably do so again, in the heat of the moment, and everyone in the class would laugh. But of course each of them would probably make the same mistake, for the first weeks, and then it would be her turn to laugh.
   
    But he plainly did not want to be called by his surname in an informal situation, especially in Deirdre's house, and even more especially by the piano bench. Yet his wishes had not necessarily made her compliance easy. For one thing, she knew of a family where the children called their parents by their first names and she didn't like it one bit. The thought of calling her father "Horst" did not sit comfortably at all. It made her feel like a stranger, and utterly bereft of the warmth that came into her heart when she thought of him as "Dad". But would calling Mr. Cameron "Paul" offer a little too much warmth? Thus she had mused, until the telephone call and its aftermath.
  
     Mrs Grayson's attack had made up her mind for her. It had not only been quite nasty in itself, and she suspected was totally undeserved, but it had reminded her that anyone could be vulnerable to gossip or negativity, and that made her feel protective. It is difficult to feel too formal around someone for whom you feel protective.
   
    So when she burst into the room she simply, and loudly, burst out with "Paul! Oh good!. You're here! I was afraid you might have gone to the school. My Mom just had a dreadful phone call from one of the other piano teachers. Mrs. Grayson. She's heard something about your teaching, I guess, and called up to try to convince my Mom that it's just one of those methods that music publishers come up with every once in a while. I think she called them chord books, or something like that." She spoke as she walked into the room, but with her message delivered and her mind thus unburdened, she came to a full stop, awaiting the reaction to her news.
    
    Paul sat back in his chair, stared first at the messenger, then at the ceiling, and stroked his chin, vigorously massaging the tip of his jaw between left thumb and forefinger. He also looked at Sadie, who, he assumed would know Mrs. Grayson. In fact, he thought to himself, Sadie did look somewhat concerned. So he grinned, and chuckled from the lowest possible point in his diaphragm.
   
     "And what did your Mom say?"
   
     "She didn't say much, actually. Mrs Grayson seemed to be doing most of the talking."
    
    "How well does your Mom know Mrs. Grayson? I mean, are they friends like Sadie and Iris McCallum?"
   
     "Oh, no. Not at all. Mrs. Grayson is way older than my Mom, and she always seems to think she can tell my Mom what to do. They both come from Brandon originally, you see, and Mrs. Grayson knew my Mom when she was little. Mom told me - not today, but earlier - that Mrs. Grayson didn't like it when my Mom became a Catholic. She said she did it just so she could marry my Dad, and that she'd regret it. I think Mrs. Grayson thinks that being a Catholic is the worse thing that can happen to you. But my Dad thinks that's pretty funny because she's always playing Schubert's Ave Maria at weddings. She'll even sing it if there's no soloist. That's when my Dad calls her Madame Tremolo."
  
     "Oh, Maggie," Paul said. "You must become a novelist when you grow up! You've just rendered us one of the most delightful little character sketches I've ever read, so to speak! I shall have to meet the famous Mrs. Grayson. And no doubt I will, and, having in mind what she said about the perils of belonging to the Scarlet Woman, I shall have to put on my best Sherlock Holmes hat and discover just how much she knows about the beginnings of the Anabaptists, which is the heresy that Mennonites descend from, much improved over their beginnings, thanks to the labours of Menno Simons." He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Sadie relaxed.
  
     "Henri Daniel-Rops," he said to her. "Jacob reads him in the original French. My Dad picked up on him when his history of the Church was first coming out not long after the War. The Anabaptist bit is from a more recent work in the series, if anyone wants to research for the purpose of taking on the learned Mrs. Grayson. My Grandpere knows all this stuff from his own earlier studies, of course, but even he says nobody lays it all down better than Daniel-Rops. He sent Jacob the first volume for his high school graduation present."
  
     "Your brother can read French?" Maggie said.
  
     "He loves languages," Paul said. "And once he was thirteen, and had moved from a little town in Ontario to Vancouver, he was growing up with a new mother who spoke French and a nanny, so to speak, who spoke German. And his new father understood very well the stupidity of the so-called educators of Western Culture when it came to the classical languages, so he also began to read Latin and Greek as they resound in the Scriptures, not as they limp and piddle from the pens of the pagans. But we mustn't get sidetracked. Not even into the early history of the Anabaptists, as interesting at that might be, especially for students of life drawing. Did you hear any more about chord books and their partially useful but also seriously inadequate approach to the wonderful world of music? And your dear Mom wasn't brow-beaten by the dragon from Brandon? Obviously not, or she would have pulled a Mrs. Berry - Anne of Green Gables - which I assume you both know off by heart, like my sisters, and forbidden you to come. . . ."
  
     "Hah!" burst out Maggie. "My Dad would have killed her! You should have been there when I was showing him what you'd been showing me and Deirdre! You don't really understand, Paul! How could you? You've never even talked with him, let along met that side of my family. He's the black sheep, as they say. Well, that’s what he calls himself, because he studied accounting. Money stuff. But his people are all musicians. Well, a lot of them. Violinists, opera singers, teachers. All that stuff. They're one of the most famous families in Hamburg. My Dad can sing, too, but he refused to take any kind of lessons. And he always had a thing about coming to Canada. But he was laughing for quite a while after I showed him what you taught me. And then he said . . . . he said to my Mom . . . ." Maggie's voice faltered . . . . “he said that maybe you could solve the problem of the Moonlight Sonata. Do you know what he meant by that?"
  
     Paul thought for a long moment. Finally he said. "I think so. As soon as you see your Daddy again please tell him that I think I can do just that, and I will be very happy to begin as soon as possible. But we still have to deal with Mrs. Grayson and her misinformation. Have you ever seen one of these chord book piano methods she was referring to?"
  
     "No. I didn't know what she was talking about. But it was a little scary. I mean, you blow into town like a whirlwind and start teaching us a bunch of things we've never heard of before, and you show us how to do stuff we've never imagined doing, but we don't really understand it, so when an adult comes along and tries to tell us you don't really know what you're doing, or that it's all been tried before and doesn't really accomplish that much, we don't know what to say."
  
     "But you did know where to go."
   
    "Well of course. You're here. In Deirdre's house."
  
     "But what if I weren't here?"
  
     "I suppose we might have to find a book?"
   
    "It doesn't exist."
   
    "But what about those other books that Mrs. Grayson was telling my Mom about? If they're not altogether right there must be books that are right. Right?"
   
    "Actually, a book does exist. But not on paper. Only in my Grandpere's head. And Maman's. And I suppose mine. It's in what is known as the oral tradition, like things used to be before they invented printing, so writing things down for widespread publication wasn't really possible. Books were enormously expensive, so students spent a lot of energy memorizing. That sometimes made them vulnerable to bad teachers, but then the same things happened with cheap printing. Music students became vulnerable to inadequate books on scales and studies. At this point memory made a re-entry, but with very little real musical analysis. This left the Renaissance with a lot to answer for."
  
     "Were there Mennonites in the Renaissance?"
  
     "There were Anabaptists, which was the beginning of the Mennonites. And the Baptists. The names are misleading, because what Anabaptists were about was not believing in baptising babies. They wanted to wait until the person was much older. People get funny about children. Rudolph Steiner decided that children should not be taught thirds and sixths in music class. Obviously he didn't understand that music was a branch of mathematics, according to theory, but the education system he founded taught his way anyway. But let's not get too far into religion class. I've got some stuff I want to show you. We have to keep you and Deirdre as even as possible, and at the moment she's a good jump ahead of you. But I won't show you what I showed her. She can show that to you.
Are you good at geometry?"
   
    "I don't have any problems with it," Maggie said. But mostly she was wondering how come she had been able to think of Mr. Cameron as vulnerable to anything Mrs. Grayson had to say.

Chapter 21

    While Maggie and Paul were talking Deirdre had by no means been playing. Paul's chords were fascinating, but not as fascinating as the conversation. And she knew Mrs. Grayson, who was known among her students as "Old Knuckle Rapper", to name only one of her sobriquets. And now she was also wise enough to understand that her lesson was over, and further she intuited that Paul had something to show Maggie equally as unique as what she had been learning. She got up from the bench, motioned Maggie to it, and sat down beside her mother. She gave her a friendly nudge. "Isn't he something? My God, music ideas I've never heard of, and religion class at the same time. This is going to be a wonderful year."
  
     But Paul turned to her anyway. "You both have to hear this, in order to understand the reasoning in my approach. After all, you've both realized  that you're in the business of resigning from you girlish dreams about marrying princes or exploring the jungles of Borneo, because you're realized your destiny is to become musicians. Or maybe music teachers. So you need to understand that if you are teaching a beginner you would never start out with him or her as I have with you. You guys have already had a lot poured into you, long before you ran across me, and you more or less responded accordingly. So now, with your glorious careers in mind, I have to teach how to start from scratch. Maggie, sit down and start pretending you know nothing about the keyboard. At the same time, forget you have fingers. Close your hands, but leave the thumbs free to perform as they've never performed before. Oh, and also answer the following question: has any teacher ever said that to you before? About the thumbs, I mean?"
  
     Maggie folded her fingers as she took over the bench. "No," she said. "Were they supposed to?" Once she was firmly seated she turned her hands so that her thumbs were vertical, and studied them in their isolation, wiggling them with grin on her face.
 
     "Yes. But people don't always do everything they're supposed to. Especially since the Renaissance. Now, find middle C with your right thumb."
 
     "You make me feel like a puppeteer."
 
     "A very good image. Puppeteers are good at making children laugh. And a puppeteer who can make music is doubly useful. Now, think of the C as One, and plunk and count, at least mentally, all the way up the octave. Just with your thumbs, remember. Your fingers might recall that they've been involved with scales before, and might rebel against being left out, so you may have to discipline their memory. Slowly, and thoughtfully, as if you'd never measured a scale this way before. If any question at all comes into your mind, ask it. You can stop playing, or you can plunk while you speak, In fact you can do whatever you want, except rattle away with all five fingers at once. Now, off you go."
 
     "Buy you said I could ask questions."
   
    "So I did. Ask away."
 
     "Were you playing just with your thumbs the first time we heard you?"
  
     "Oh, heavens, no. The thumbs can do a lot, but not that much. But I would never have been able to  manage all five fingers so adroitly- well, all ten fingers - if I hadn't been content to use just my thumbs when I was starting out to learn. I wasn't forbidden to use my fingers. That wouldn't have been very natural, and of course I like to try them out. But Maman insisted I had to know how to do as much as possible with my thumbs before she'd really teach me what the fingers were good for. The isolated thumbs are really a huge cornerstone of Grandpere's technique, besides being an enormous amount of fun because they're so basic to the challenge of measuring the keyboard inside your head. Now get going so you can see what I mean. Thumb on middle C, and play the first three notes. C, d, e; 1, 2, 3. Do, ray, me."
  
     Maggie started off, slowly. "Do I have to sing?"
   
    "No. not if you don't feel like singing. That's always up to you. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it gets in the way. Interferes with listening to the notes on the instrument. But you should pay some attention to the three names of the notes, especially the numbers. That's what you have to get lodged in your brain, the numbers."
  
     She continued to play back and forth, slowly, and then instinctively closed her eyes. She made a couple of mistakes at first, but quickly found the range. "How come only the first three notes?"
   
    "Now that's the best question of the day, so far. It's because the scale really has to be studied in its basic three parts. In fact we're not even going to go all the way to the top, like the scale books do. Music is three things: melody, harmony, and rhythm, and so the sooner we get to harmony, the better. We've done some of that, of course, but this time we'll look at an even more fundamental left hand.
Fundamental because it's only 1, 4, and 5, eventually, and also covers the entire octave. It also tests your abilities as an athlete. A musical athlete that is. I think I saw you score a basket on the school ground. I looked out the window for a moment, having heard some noise."
 
     "I did score two or three, yes. But not as many as I missed."
 
     "That's the difference between basketball and music. To get paid in basketball you only have score some of the time. But in music you're not allowed to miss the note, or even play the wrong note. But of course in music neither do you have an opposing player trying to interfere with your shot. All right, left thumb on little C. That's your 1. Then up to G, which will be your 5, then back down to your 1. That's the 1, 2, 3 for the left hand. 1, 5, 1. 1,5,1. That's it. Slow, and look at it an study it carefully. Think about it. This is something you want to take to your pillow, like when you were a child first learning your alphabet and your numbers. It might seem hard at first, because you've probably always played the interval with the thumb and another digit. But it comes, and you won't believe how much fun it is to do it with your eyes closed, later on. Like Blind Man's Bluff, only it sounds better. But don't close your eyes now. That's for later, after it gets boring to be looking all the time."
 
     Maggie snorted. "This isn't boring! I wish it were. I can't imagine doing two hands together for a year! My fingers are screaming at me because they want in!"
  
     "Are you fonder of scales than Deirdre?"
  
     "Probably. When she was talking about quitting I really didn't feel like that, although I did think I could run into trouble with them at some point. Sometimes they seem kind of stupid, not much related to real music. But they're in a book and I've never seen anything more interesting. And of course Mom encouraged me to be good at them because she knows she wasn't, and she thinks that's why she had trouble with advanced pieces like the Moonlight."
 
     "The reason she had trouble with the Moonlight is that her teacher put far too much reliance on those ridiculous scale studies. Just you wait until she starts learning what you're doing and will be doing."
   
    Maggie stopped playing and turned her eyes wide upon him. "You mean you could teach my Mom?"
  
     "I'm teaching you and she must be at least as musical as you are, don't you think?"
   
    "I know, but she's older than you!"
   
    "Gray hairs are no proof of wisdom.'"
   
    "She doesn't have gray hair!"
  
     "I've never seen her, but I believe you. And I'm only quoting from the Bible, for the benefit of Sadie. After all, we have to have some adult conversation around here." He winked at Sadie, who winked back, knowing that he was enjoying the juvenile conversation immensely.
   
    Paul kept Maggie at the shifting left hand for a little more, and then he said, "Well, you seem to have that pretty well under control, so let's get down to the whole ball of wax. You're a pianist, after all, not a rhythm guitarist. That means the left hand has to learn all the notes. Both thumbs on the C's.
Count up the scale to the top, then back down to the bottom. Look at first, then start playing blind, or pretend you're looking at a scale study. But play the pairs in sections. 1,2,3. Then 3,4,5.  Then 5,6,7,1. And of course reversed."