Language and Music to me 24/11/2017

Language and Music to me  24/11/2017

        I must admit that my LIQ/language intelligent quotient /ˈkwəʊʃənt/ is not high if not too low as I often fail to express myself in such a way that I can …..when I compare my utterances with my siblings, cousins,  friends and so on.  I have discovered that there is something that I must do to improve.  I believe in improvement and progress through practice in the process. 

After all, language has a system and we repeat the same patterns all the time like a musical piece though language is in many ways more complicated, especially the spoken one which you have to think and retrieve information fast and accurate.  This demand is a bit tough for me as a pensive person, so I cannot speak without so much thought, consideration, hesitation and… especially impromptu ones.  My language on call can often be so crude and quite rude as well.  Nowadays, we can record speeches on Wechat to be listened again and again. 

        I picked up my mother tongue consciously, subconsciously and unconsciously.  I also learnt the written form of the standard Chinese in the same manner.  I think I learnt the standard English language in more or less the same way and some deliberate effort especially when I studied the English course and gave tuition after class.

I engage in the English language whenever I should and now I could because it is my belief through practice that I can improve all the time.  I need the set up or the speech records or language registers in my mind to ready myself to speak on call.  If it is my first time talking about certain things, I have problem to put my thoughts in words in speaking, be it Foochow, Chinese or English.  I discovered that I always improve through trials and errors.  Yes, I can refine my language through practice just like how I improve the piano playing the songs through practising the songs many and many and many…… times.

Language  unlike music is indispensable.  Music to me is dispensable and I only play the songs when I am free enough.  I learnt it for two years at two different centres at two different towns.  When my son refused to learn the piano anymore, I stopped going as well as …

However, I carried on at home for quite some time when I was not seriously engaged in any business.  I played on, hoping that I could become a professional pianist or at least …

When I started my work again, I stopped as I have said music to me is dispensable.  Lately, I have started playing my favourite or challenging songs again.  I realised that again I had the initial hiccups when I first started playing those three songs which I believed that I had played at least 100 + times to become quite automatic or spontaneous.   After practising for a few more times, the old memories of the song patterns and which keys and which fingers on the right and left hand to press to play the song have come back.

I can play the music  “Can Can Dance” from memory again now. I only passed it  after five weeks of practising.  This experience is invaluable.  The first book is Step by Step Piano Course; the second and third book is Piano Lesson Made Easy Level 2 and Level 3  by Lina Ng and the fourth book is Lesson Book-Level 4 by Willard A. Palmer … Level 4, we only had a few more  songs to go to complete the book.  We learnt the piano for fun, not for test.  We did not want to be bothered by tests, so it was easy for us and the teachers. 

But I still need some more time to pick up the songs, “Little Buttercup” and “Mor Li Hua”.  The knowledge of musical note/chords like English grammar helps a person to start, continue and … again.  It is the knowledge of musical notes /chords and the memory records of the songs that help me to pick up the songs gleefully again.  

If I don’t know how to play the song, I need to refer to the notes all the time.  Once I can play from memory or spontaneously, the musical notes are meaningless or unimportant in the play.  Of course at this stage, I can enjoy playing the songs so much and proudly when I can play from memory.