40

Going for the Sounds

with the keyboard that would seem altogether essential to making music from the outset. It wasnt until the start of my third
year that I thought of myself as going for the sounds.
I specifically recall playing one day and finding, as I set out
into a next course of notes after a liftoff had occurred, that Id
expressly aimed for the sounds of these next particular notes,
that their sounds seemed to creep up into my fingers, that the
depression of the keys realized a specific sound Id gone there to
make, as if when walking one brought intentional regard to the
sounds of ones steps, expressly then doing each and every one
of their successive sounds, as in a march. I wasnt only going for
good places. I was aiming for sounding spots.
Of course I hadnt really been going only for good places for
two years, playing some game at the keyboard, cultivating skills
at rapid visual detection or merely gaining manual dexterities. I
was going for music. I listened to my records and aimed for that
jazz, intentionally directed to a course of sounds. It wouldnt
have done in the least to have only played an electric piano with
the amplifier off. I filled the room with sounds.
But these so-called sounds had various qualities for me, and
I couldnt form a practically usable description of sound that
would help seize hold of this new acquisition, and describe it in
detail as well, without considering just how these sounds were
being produced.
I knew what these paths sounded like, wasnt surprised by
them as one is startled by accidentally leaning on an open keyboard. Hardly! But how the paths sounded to me was deeply
linked to how I was making them. There wasnt one me listening, and another one playing along paths.
I listened-in-order-to-make-my-way, to find that as I played
each day I was doing this jazz. I recognized the pathways
sounds, to put it way too mildly. But its one thing to recognize
familiar sounds that youre making, and another to aim success-