I just started to learn to play the saxophone this August.
During my school years, I had never had the chance to learn to play an instrument. To be fair, I didn’t have the patience or tenacity to learn as well.
The schools in China don’t teach kids to read musical charts properly. I remember singing Do Re Mi Fa… with numbers. 1 stands for Do, 2 for Re… 7 stands for Si. It’s been three weeks since I tried to read charts, but the notes are still déjà vu strangers to me. As for beats and rhythms, they are my genetic black holes.
The music education has been lost in China for a couple of hundred years. In the ancient dynasties, such as Tang and Ming, music—especially rhythms—was once a significant quality of the cultured class. The pursuit of the aesthetics of the arts represents one’s social morality. Truth resides in beauty. In a society, educated people first sought enlightenment and revolution through art. Yet, with the arrival of chaotic wars, the rise and fall of dynasties, and unstable economic conditions, the mainstream Chinese Han music gradually disappeared from history. Some archaeologists have uncovered a few ancient musical scores, but unfortunately, the knowledge of music theory and the methods to perform have been lost, making it impossible to play those pieces again.
Throughout my years of schooling, I never once heard world-famous works or performances by great musicians in those music classes, let alone learned the fundamentals of music structure and classification. In addition to the conservative and repressed cultural identity of East Asians, people refuse to expose themselves through singing and dancing. The pathway of beats is blocked.
I was shocked when I went to a Brazilian club for the first time. Rhythms and beats just flowed in their blood, expressed and exchanged like sweating and breathing. I tried to open my body with some help from alcohol, but my limbs and trunk still couldn’t catch the right pace. People were grooving, and I was just twitching. Eventually, I realized our bodies were built differently. The absence of music has made my body strange to rhythmical movements. Posthuman anthropologists have proposed that we are remaking our bodies continuously.
For people who undergo amputation due to accidents, after wearing prosthetics, their bodies gradually adapt to and reshape themselves around these inorganic objects. A simpler example would be wearing shoes: shoes make the soles of our feet thinner and more flexible, allowing them to adjust to a wider range of terrain. When you want to learn a skill, your body changes in response to the tools and habits that come with it. People who work in kitchens need to keep their nails very short, which causes their nail beds to become wider; long hours of standing also make their calves more muscular. Professions such as athletes or models, which require maintaining a specific physique, are also a form of bodily transformation.
During the first few weeks of practicing the saxophone, I have already found that I need to change the natural posture of my lips and tongue to make a sound. My breathing habits have also been adjusted, from breathing with the upper lungs to the deep-down belly and waist. I can imagine how the bodies of musicians have been reconstructed after years of work. It’s actually quite romantic to think that your body is the obvious proof of your experiences, hobbies, profession, etc. The anatomy of the body is never just biological but also cultural.
Therefore, the perfect human body, as Leonardo Da Vinci portrayed in the Vitruvian Man, is pure imagination. The perfect human body is the most useless thing in the world.
It’s week 3; I have practiced the majors, the Mixolydian, whole notes, and half notes. I still struggle with producing stable air, and the lower F, E, and D are my biggest problems now. I don’t know when I will be able to play songs. My teacher told me to take it easy. Learning slowly is the only way to learn music. It’s a totally different language.
«Your life is long, why do you rush to learn it fast?»
He is right. I will continue going to the dock, enjoying the ocean view and practicing.
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