Volume 19　音楽の効用


Musical Moments

Michael Rhys: Hello everyone and welcome to the February edition of Cultural Crossroads. I'm Mike.

Ann Slater: And I'm Ann.

Michael: And today we're talking about music and musical instruments.

Ann: Oh.

Michael: I've never asked you this: do you play, uh, a musical instrument, Ann? 

Ann: Well, now that you ask, um, no, I don't, ha-ha.

Michael: OK.

Ann: I did. I did when I was, uh, very young. I played the violin.

Michael: Ah, well that's a particularly difficult instrument I would have thought.

Ann: It was difficult. It was difficult. I remember, you know, especially when you first start playing because I was, I probably started playing in first grade.

Michael: Right.

Ann: And your arm gets unbelievably tired because you're holding up this violin, and then your fingers get really sore. You need to develop blisters, you know, on the tips of them for pressing down on the strings.  So they, that really hurts. And then other than that, I did play the recorder for a little while, which I enjoyed, but again, for whatever reasons, I didn't really go forward with that.  How about you?  Did you play anything or do you play anything?

Michael: I had one lesson on the recorder.

Ann: Oh.

Michael: I think when I was about 8 or 9. Just one lesson and that w-that was enough to teach me that, "No, this is not for me." Apart from that, no. But I, when I was 17, 16 or 17, my parents bought an organ for the home - electric organ. And that got me hooked. And so from that age, I basically self-taught how to more or less play keyboard, starting with the organ. Then I bought a secondhand piano, which my parents made me keep the other end of the house.

Ann: Ha-ha.

Michael: Where they couldn't hear it. And so playing was just a hobby amore than anything. I never really took it that seriously. And I couldn't play other people's music. I never learnt to read music, which is quite common even among musicians in the U.K. I mean, uh, Paul McCartney apparently cannot read music.

Ann: Wow.

Michael: But I was interested in creating music and writing music, and so I did that for quite a long time.

Ann: And what sort of music did you, uh, compose or play?

Michael: Oh, well, mostly just fairly bad, well, it wasn't that bad, I consider myself what we might say in English as a bit of a hack. I have immense respect for real musicians. I mean, they study very hard. I just, kind of, made it up as I went along. Uh, and it was fun to do. And it came out OK. But I think I'll just leave it to the professionals, ha-ha, now. 

Ann: Uh-huh.

Michael: But music is, I think playing an instrument and having an appreciation of that side of music is important for people.