Theory re tone-deafness • December 22, 2012, 2:40 PM

As you know from my last entry, about two and a half weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting four members of the Canadian women's national soccer team. There was a brief Q&A for each player, and one of them—I won't be specific here—talked about her, shall we say, sub-par singing abilities. While she almost nailed the first three notes of "O Canada" (the first two notes were bang-on, while the third was only slightly flat), she demonstrated it further with her take on Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror". Since she was using totally different notes from what Jackson sang, no one could recognize it. However, upon playing back my video of her talk, I recognize the rhythm of the melody she used, if not the notes.

This got me thinking about tone-deafness in general, and I've since come up with a theory about it. It seems to me that tone-deaf people may well be able to recognize different tones for what they are—they're simply unable to "translate" that internal recognition into the various actions and/or thought processes necessary to play or sing the notes or identify them by name. For example, we all know this melody:

This is, of course, a fragment of "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. My question, though, is this. Suppose we played the following melody instead of the above:

Like the soccer player's take on "Man in the Mirror", this new melody uses the same rhythm of "Over the Rainbow", but uses different notes. Would a tone-deaf person think this different melody was part of "Over the Rainbow", or would they sense that there's something different about it, even though they couldn't pinpoint how? I suspect the latter would be the case—it's sort of like knowing how to read a foreign language, particularly a highly inflected one, but not knowing how to speak it.

I haven't had a chance to explore this question, and I could be wrong in my assessment, but I thought I'd pitch it anyway.

On December 5, 2012 the West Ottawa Soccer Club hosted a social event at the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata involving Canadian women's national soccer team members Christine Sinclair, Diana Matheson, Rhian Wilkinson and Karina LeBlanc, an event for which I had registered in late November. Raffle tickets, already on sale at the WOSC's head office at the Thunderbird Sports Centre, were to be sold at the event as well, and the grand prize was lunch with all four players the day after the social event. As an attendee of the event (and a huge fan of Matheson's), I was incredibly excited not just at the opportunity to see her again (I had briefly met her at an autograph signing in September), but at the prospect of winning the lunch.

Imagine my surprise when, on December 2, I got a call from one of the parishes I play the organ at, wondering if I would be available to do a funeral at 3 PM on December 6. This is a classic case of being logistically paralyzed by uncertainty. Here I was, about 29½ hours away from the social event, one for which I had been planning and waiting for weeks, and for which I had had to make a three-hour round trip into Stittsville by local transit in order to drop off the registration fee in person—and on top of that, there was the possibility, however remote, that I might win the lunch. If I did win the lunch, then where and when would it take place? Would it be at Thunderbird, the Brookstreet Hotel, or someplace else entirely? And would it end early enough that I would have time to get to the church afterward to do the gig? Presumably the lunch would be held in Kanata, which meant a bus ride of at least an hour to get to the church. In addition, if the lunch was scheduled to take place at Thunderbird, that would mean a 45-minute walk to the nearest bus stop. Nor could the lunch be rescheduled: the four players were in town primarily to conduct two nights of training sessions with young soccer players, and after the second night of those sessions they would be flying out to Halifax either late December 6 or early December 7 to conduct another series of training sessions there. In addition, I had a rehearsal scheduled for the evening of December 6, so even if the option had existed to reschedule the lunch for the supper hour, I wouldn't have had the flexibility for that.

I would not be in a position to be certain about my availability for the gig until the draw for the lunch was held at the social event itself. By then, of course, it would be rather late to try to get someone to sub for me if it turned out I did win the event. With that in mind, I tried to have our parish secretary pencil me in for the gig and get someone else on standby, seeing as it was far more likely that I would not win the lunch than that I would. The secretary said the funeral home would be willing to bring someone in, but the musician wouldn't necessarily be crazy about being on standby, let alone losing the gig if it turned out I was in fact available. Generally, though, I don't feel this to be a valid argument, as this sort of thing does happen in professional music circles all the time: if, in this case, I didn't win the lunch, and the other musician lost the gig to me as a result, they wouldn't be any worse off than if they had never gotten the gig in the first place, would they?

In the end, I did decide to turn the gig down, and while I didn't win the lunch, my decision ended up being a good one more on logistical grounds than financial ones, much as I could have used the money: in order to accommodate a couple of errands that I had to run en route to the rehearsal, both of which were time-sensitive, I had to leave the house half an hour before the funeral was due to start.

I'm glad this sort of thing doesn't happen all that often. On the one hand, when you're a musician, gigs are your bread and butter. But on the other hand, money isn't everything. You can be the king of the world financially and still be unfulfilled in other areas. And for this occasion, the money was less important from a fulfillment standpoint. After all, it's a rare occurrence to meet your idol twice in the space of three months—doesn't it make sense to make alternate arrangements in case it happens a third time?

Just wanted to toss out a reminder to be careful how you write down and dial phone numbers. Between my Ottawa and Toronto phone numbers I have been getting a number of calls from people who have misdialed my number. An orthodontics clinic in Thornhill is the worst culprit in this regard—why would I be on their clientele when I haven't even completed the process of expanding my market into Toronto yet? I've also gotten one-time calls from a medical centre in southern Markham, a stress management clinic in Castleton, Ontario, and someone in Kingston named Tanja who was trying to reach someone named Kieran.

I don't mind getting calls, but if they're of the "wrong number" variety, it's a waste of my time and my money (both 613-853-9762 and 416-662-9322 are on prepaid cell plans). It's also a waste of the time of both the caller and the person he really intended to reach. For example, in the case of the Castleton clinic, whose founder, according to their website, has a background in the performing arts, the caller, in leaving the voice mail, said something about cancelling an audition. Well, as a result of the "wrong number" situation, the person he really intended to reach may not have gotten the message and might have shown up for the audition anyway.

The movie Run, Lola, Run has a tagline that is so powerfully right: "Every second of every day you're faced with a decision that can change your life." Or the lives of other people. And whether you dial a number rightly or wrongly is itself one of those decisions. So be careful how you dial that number!

How things can change. I have just received word that I will no longer be doing the 5:00 mass at St. George's, as the organist I was hired to replace, who was away for a few years to study accounting, will be returning, and the parish wants to go in a different musical direction. Although the parish will be keeping an eye out for possible new openings at other parishes, I now have my Saturdays open for the first time since 1997, at least for the time being.

The ham supper gig didn't happen this year, but that doesn't mean I haven't given up on the material I planned to do for it. In fact, I'm adding one new song to the repertoire, a Norwegian one called "Danse mot vår", which I initially heard on the memorial video for my dad as an instrumental done by the New Age group Secret Garden. The lyrics talk about dancing into spring, and I feel this is a perfect metaphor for the transition from death into new life.

On August 25 Hotter than Ice has another gig at the Jim Robillard Union Centre, similar to the one we had in April, and for that gig I may end up using my old TR-505 drum machine, which I haven't used regularly since 1989. I hope to see you there!

Well, it took a little doing, but I finally got my Easter schedule set in stone.

One of the challenges in working as a musician in a small music market such as Ottawa has is that there is very little to be found here in terms of steady music jobs. You either have to take a nine-to-five job and then do a music job on the side, or spread yourself thin doing multiple music projects. In my case, I've chosen the latter option, and while it has provided me with some level of variety over the course of my career, it has also presented some scheduling challenges at times.

Normally I have no problem setting up my Easter schedule—typically my organist predecessor at St. Augustine's, Bob Boulanger, would sub for me for the Good Friday and Easter Vigil masses, freeing me to play those masses at St. Elizabeth's and St. George's respectively. Last October he told me he wouldn't be available to do this this year because he would be visiting his daughter overseas, thus putting me in the position of having to cancel my involvement with the other two parishes for that weekend. In recent weeks, however, the other choirs at St. Augustine's have been granted a piece of the musical pie regarding the Easter masses, and this once again freed me up to do the Friday mass at St. Elizabeth's and possibly the Thursday at St. George's. However, the guitarist who normally does the Thursday mass at St. George's, while amenable to doing the Easter Vigil there, was unwilling to let me do the Thursday mass myself, and as a result I'll be doing the Thursday mass at St. Elizabeth's instead.

It is not unusual to have scheduling conflicts from time to time. I have musician friends in Mississauga, themselves members of the Canadian Federation of Musicians, who have had to get people to sub for them on occasion. And Easter is always a challenge for me in this regard. Hopefully Bob will be able to sub for me again next year so that I can go back to my regular schedule.

Clients within the Toronto calling area can now reach me without having to incur long distance charges. I recently set up a cell phone with a Toronto number, (416) 662-9322, which is probably easier to remember as (416)-6-MAXFAB.

As is already the case with my Ottawa phone numbers, I may not always pick up the phone right away. I might be listening to music with a headset to either learn new material or keep existing material fresh in my mind. Or if I'm in Toronto, I might be in an underground section of the subway, where the cell phone signal can't reach me. In addition, our landline has been all but inundated with telemarketer calls in the last few years, almost all of which show their phone number in the call display but not their name, and as a result we have been reluctant to pick up the phone when someone calls whose number we do not recognize.

As a result, I would appreciate it if clients could leave me a message if they do not reach me right away. This will help me manage my calling time more effectively, as I can schedule a time block to make all my return calls at the same time. Thanks.