Some people are born with a calling. Others spend their entire life looking for it. Raison d’etre is the French word for “the reason for your existence.” Why are you here? What is my purpose for being?
On the first day at conservatory, my composition teacher asserted, “You’re here because you have a calling.”
I didn’t think I was destined to be a composer, but I knew I wanted to study music. I wanted to know if my compositions were any good. I wanted to learn the jargon to analyse and discuss music. I wanted to fill the gaps in my knowledge. I was hungry for music.
When I was working full-time for an energy trading company in Houston, music seemed to flow out of me such that I had to stop what I was doing and write it down. If I didn’t, I was afraid it would get lost forever.
Recently, I asked one of my ukulele students who had produced an entire CD of her own songs. “Do you feel as if you’re a medium? Music arrives in you, and you have to get it out?”
She nodded.
Thinking back, I began composing as soon as I learned music theory. It gave me the vocabulary to translate the songs in my head into notes on paper. My piano teacher, Mrs Hermann, handwrote scales and chord inversion exercises for my homework. I was fourteen.
These days I meet songwriters who sing and play well but have none of their compositions written down in notation, only lyrics and chords.
Note reading is not required of my ukulele students nor of my peers who jam in ukulele clubs. As long as you know how the song goes or follow others who do, you can accompany yourself on the ukulele with chords which are represented by letters and numbers: C, C7, Gm, etc.
So you don’t need to know how to read or write notes to be a song writer. You don’t need music theory either. You can “hear” the song that is bursting to be sung. Or you play a chord progression and fit the words to a melody that can ride on the harmony. Composing is not confined to a step-by-step process. It need not start with notes. It can start with words. It can start with harmony. It can start with a rhythmic pattern.
How will you remember the melody? Record it. How will someone else sing or play your song? Listen and learn from the recording.
If composing is not my calling, what is? Teaching ukulele? I hadn’t even heard of the instrument when I was pursuing my music degree.
These days I use the ukulele to teach music, answering my students’ questions with just enough music theory without compromising play time. My goal is to get them to join the ukulele meet-ups (also called jam sessions) on a regular basis so they get their practice. Having taught piano and learned a variety of instruments, I truly believe that the ukulele is the easiest and fastest way to make music and new friends.
The ukulele is not my final destination. Neither is music. They are the means to an unknown end – the raison d’etre that is not yet my calling.