I thought I would start a new blog of my music world from the view of a deaf
person. I learned to play the Piano as child despite being deaf and it was very hard
for the music teacher to teach me as it was quite a challenge. I think I was 11 when I had my very first music teacher. I dont remember much about my first music teacher apart from really big bushy prickly beard which convinced me he was something out of the film musical, Fiddler On The Roof. God when i think of it he used to say "give me a Kiss!" Yuk thank god I didnt have too many lessons with that one. He had a wife called Val and David was an organist at the church I went to at that time.
It doesnt bear thinking about this man, mmm something creepy about him.
I went onto music teacher number 2 a piano teacher and opera singer called Clare Harding. She had a nerdy husband of one of the Bee Gee lookalikes but he kept his distance with their gorgeous whippet dog all jet black called Bodaceau.
Clare had old fashioned Bicicles penny farthing bikes I think they were called, all over the walls of the music room. I took my grade one piano exam and really struggled.
I was such a nervous wreck I passed by just getting the two marks over. I went onto grade 2 the next year and that was just a little bit better. For passing my exam I cant remember whether mum let me having a riding lesson or a tortoise... dear mother, all that work for one riding lesson and a tortoise. No wonder kids who perhaps were allowed to be more rebellious dropped out.
I didnt know about rock and roll then... the only records my parents had were musicals like the Sound Of Music, Big Crosby, the Seekers, Shirley Bassey.
My sister never played me any music, rock and roll. Perhaps it was just all noise in the back ground, I didnt understand it.
I know I used to pretend to sing with my neighbours singing to hairbrushes and making up silly surreal songs. My freinds in the early seventies really did try to teach me to sing I think in the world of pretend.
Every Christmas I used to go to a Christmas event where all the kids from my dads work place at Laycocks Engineering used to have a Christmas party. There was jellies and Ice cream, and of course the chance to get up on stage sit on santas lap and speak onto the microphone. I plucked up the courage once I remember, i dont remember what I said, what it was all about, but the crowds went silent and seemed all embarrassed. Was I not talking properly? did I talk in my own deaf language that only me could understand? That was my most earliest memory of ever getting on stage.
