Author of “Two Lives to a Destiny”
Edited by Vaughn Harbin.
Flashback
Flashbacks
Parts 1 through 4 recounted…
- I began playing piano at age 30, and got very good at it, very fast.
- 5 months later, played Moonlight Sonata, and my own sonata called “The Dream”, at my first recital.
- Traumatized by this event, an old wound came back to life and unfortunately, the goal of becoming a pianist was no longer possible.
- As fate would have it, selling my piano suddenly became a really bad idea, and life had its way of correcting this mistake.
- How a moment in life inspired me for a lifetime. This is where it all began… “Séraphin: Heart of Stone”.
Part Five – Leading with the Immediate Struggle, a composer he will be…
So here I was, spring of 2003, and as I woke up one morning, the first thought that popped into my head was… “Okay, let’s create a ballet”. And this, I said to myself with a lot of conviction, as if I already knew how to do this. Moments later, I jumped out of bed, washed up, had breakfast, and then rushed to my piano which I hadn’t played for some time.
Well, as eager as I was to begin this little project, this definitely didn’t go as expected. Some of you might know this, but trying to play the piano after you’ve stopped playing for a few years can be quite a struggle. Plus, this was the new me with a minor mental disorder. Right, I’d kind of ignored that part of myself for a while, but as soon as I had both hands on the piano with the metronome fired up, while looking at sheet music, this all came rushing back to me in a flash. And so, a word to self… “Let the struggle begin, because I want this, I need this to happen, and I’ve been desiring something like this to happen for a while.” My children weren’t present in my daily routine anymore which left me with a lot of spare time. The idea of creating something, anything, especially after seeing “Séraphin: Heart of Stone”, had a purpose. And during this time, all my passion was directed to the one thing I couldn’t do correctly anymore, which was play the piano. Or was it?
This must have taken place during a weekend because I was on my piano from morning to nightfall. Although, at the start of the day, I had a lot of bad vibes circulating within me about losing my mojo, I finally realized something. I was still able to play the piano, but just not like I was taught to play. I discovered this while playing my very first composition called “The Dream”. I didn’t write the score to this piece because I simply didn’t know how to write music scores during this time. However, I knew the piece by heart. So, all I had to do was to place it into the correct tempo with a metronome, and voila! Unfortunately, while trying very hard to time the piece with the metronome, I couldn’t play my piece right to the end. I must have spent the entire morning trying to time this piece without any sign of being successful in doing so.
Eventually, I took a break, made myself something to eat, and then went back to the piano. But, when I got back, I said to myself, “Mr. Kimmell, it’s not like you’ll be winning an award for your music so just turn the damn metronome off”. Oh my God! What a relief! The moment that metronome was turned off, I played my piece from beginning to end. I know what you’re thinking. I took a break, probably ate a sandwich, came back to the piano, and everything fell into place. I thought so too, so I turned the metronome back on. Not a chance. I could not concentrate on the music. And so, EUREKA! That spelled “THE END” for the metronome, at least for now.
During that afternoon, all went well. I must have played my piece at least a few hundred times, feeling more and more comfortable every time I played it. But…there was still a BUT! My motor skills needed practice, lots of practice. Although, the piece started to sound okay, my fingers weren’t comfortable playing it. I was a little rusty and though I knew which notes to play, the closest finger would fight to play the note, and sometimes I’d get into awkward positions when the wrong finger was used.
Nonetheless, after supper I decided to call my first, and only, music teacher (Estelle Lacasse), to find out which music school I should register myself at, in order to have her as my teacher again. During this call, it so happened she had room for me at her home studio. If you remember, I began playing piano in 1993. It was now spring 2003, ten years later. Now this little episode of mine just went full circle, and she was very happy to have me back as a student. I didn’t give her any details about why I wanted back into piano lessons. Of course, I was a very proud character at the time, and she knew I had excelled as a piano player, so I never did tell her about my condition.
The following week I got back into the saddle. I went back to 1st grade piano lessons, but for practice only, not for the theory. I had to get these fingers back into their element, so to speak and for the most part, everything went well. I got back into Hanon, A Dozen a Day, and the little easy pieces of music that we all learn to play in grade one. But there was the metronome aspect that didn’t work well, and when she asked me what I used at home, I simply said I mimicked the beats per second in my head. Okay, this was indeed a little white lie, but like I said, I was a proud fella and didn’t want anyone looking at me any differently than before. But what she did next just blew me away! For anything that required the metronome she would just let me have the freedom of not using one, but she would jump in if my tempo needed to be corrected. Now this went extremely well and was most effective.
The other little problem was reading my notes, and so I cheated a little bit. At home, I went into rote learning mode and learned all the pieces by heart. Just so you know, this is highly frowned upon by any music teacher. Reading is key, but again, I didn’t have the option of having the concentration to read and play anymore. There’s a saying that we use in the music industry, “Fake it, ‘til you make it”, and that’s exactly what I did. Did my teacher know? Of course she did but she simply cautioned me not to do that, and I always replied that over the years I might have taken on a few bad habits. Then we’d giggle about it.
A month went by, and I became very comfortable with my piano again. As comfortable as can be, I should say. But during this month of training, I also created my very first composition. By the way, I have every intention of using this piece in the musical I’m trying to inaugurate today. The name of the composition is “Solitude”. Since being alone was a situation that I got used to for a few years, the idea of solitude was embedded in me, and it naturally was incorporated into my first piece of music. Thinking back to when the idea of creating music came to me, I called it a ballet before getting out of bed. Today I know it can take whatever form I want it to take.
As mentioned in Part 4 of this miniseries, here is a link to “Solitude”, as it was composed and interpreted by myself in 2003, played on my Kurzweil Mark 10, Ensemble Grand.
How did I compose this? That’s the funny part. I haven’t the slightest clue. But wherever this came from, it’s way beyond a place that anyone goes, but yourself. How did I play this? I simply played the emotional version of the piece without taking any music theory into consideration. And going forward, this has become my preferred method for composing all of my pieces.
Stay tuned for Part 6 and learn not only what influenced me in writing music this way, but also how I created a story out of pure fiction, which brought fate knocking at my door.
Stream Two Lives to a Destiny Original Novel Soundtrack
In case you missed it:
The Creation of a Musical Part I
The Creation of a Musical Part 2
The Creation of a Musical Part 3
The Creation of a Musical Part 4
