In 1995 on the arrival of the completed batch of 500 CDs in a huge carton, I felt proud that I had, in my life, achieved a goal I had created as a 14 yr old.... to publish in some memorable way (to have at least some kind of lasting record of "music I composed myself") at least something that remained to vouch for the fact that I had "existed"
at all.... A "Legacy".
It all started really at about aged 9 while living at Armidale in NSW. I was fostered by the State Child Welfare Department to this stable Greek family that owned the main Hotel of the town at the time called the Beardy Street Hotel.
I remember it well for many reasons. The old piano in the dining room was one of them. I sat alone for long periods just listening to what my hands were doing on the keyboard. I was not stopped or interrupted. Sometimes I would catch "the old lady" sitting crocheting over to the side, listening
curiously.
I think these days
what I was doing might be called "Channeling". I seemed to be looking on as my hands discovered chord structures and the "colour" of the music moved from one shade and hue to another. It sounded good. It felt good. When I had finished. I got up in silence and thought that the audience I felt around me had receded into the walls or the darker spots in the room. I would walk out into the normal world and within minutes forget what I had been doing in there.
By the time I had moved to the Ohio Boys Home just after 11 years old, an orphanage run by the local town's Church of England community in Walcha, I had forgotten about the piano until a new Superintendent with his wife and young son had arrived from England to take up the position caring for the boys. They were soon called Mum and Dad by all the 20 or so boys, as Mr Les Tuck was, since his time as a military Sergeant Major in the British Army, a kind, firm, moral and inspiring story-telling father to all of us almost as soon as he moved in.
He paid for several of the boys to attend the towns bandmaster who tried to the best of his ability to give some instruction to a few respondents on playing various brass instruments. We finally formed a brass band of 9 individuals and marched on Anzac day in the town (of Walcha) and I had a go on a trumpet playing the "last post"
that day, in the last year I was at the home.
There was an old heavy piano that was tucked (pardon the pun) away in the corner of the night lounge where the boys collected after their post-dinner baths, to play chess, draughts, read or wind the handle on the old 78 His Master's Voice record player. We'd listen and sing along to Red River Valley, The Portuguese Washer Woman, The Pub With No Beer and others before peeling off to bed in order of age.
I was already privileged to be the only boy who had any interest in the piano, and because Mr Tuck saw that I had "an ear" for music, he paid for me
(out of his meager pay) to have beginners lessons on every second Thursday school lunchtime a short walk into the town. Mrs Rudd taught me the basic theory and practice of music.
Very basic really, but gradually the piano keys became an orderly control panel
for me, into the world of music.
After about 6 months I began to use chords with melodies of the songs Mr Tuck taught the boys, and it was a thrill, as a 14 year old, to be sounding so "professional" after the relatively short period of time I was having lessons.
The
trick was that I had discovered a playing technique that someone later called "my Chef Method"... I figured they meant I was playing the right chords to simple melodies
- in the right beat or rhythm. Sort of a "pub technique" of the old days.... You don't read music (music recipes) you just improvise
a chord accompaniment to a known melody - using the basics about keys and chords. LOL
My first favourite Key was F major.
Then B flat Major. Suddenly I found that F# major was just as easy when composing
and the key sounded "smoother" than C major. Then I found that the key of
"C" was in the middle of "F" and "G". A lot of simple and popular melodies
used more or less of those keys, so was easy to accompany a melody. Then I
discovered Minor chords. Just drop the 3rd one half note down. So then I
found a familiar feel in a Baroque style of improvisation..... and from there I flowed into the style popularly known as Classical Music
Suddenly I found arpeggios and loved the up and down rolling, rippling motion - depending how fast I'd go of a particular chord and key. So the first piece was born by adding a simple melody to a few chord changes. I was in ecstasy by my personal discoveries about music and so my first "Classical" piece was called Ecstasy.
It was a little later, one very inspired afternoon, when the other boys were off playing football or something, that I sat down and "a door opened" and I just rolled out at least a half an hour of variations or movements to the piece. It sounded like something you'd hear at a concert. Try as I have from time to time over the years to recall the exact or even similar stanzas, I have only created different ones. At 14 and though I seemed to have the signs of the later developed ability to just play something worth listening to as my fingers touched the keys, I had no way of recording them anyway, so it was not pursued beyond a couple of pieces I wrote down on paper. I dreamed of a piano that would record as one played.
The last composition was just to contribute the chorus to the Ohio Boys Home Song created from Mr Tuck putting words to an old welsh song. He helped me be drafted into the Army when it was time for me to leave the home at 15, and I did 9 months at the Balcombe Army Apprentice School of Music in 1964 where I learned nothing except that I hated it there. After nearly breaking my back in the gymnasium from falling from a rope connected to the ceiling, I was quietly discharged on medical grounds and "sent to join" the long lost mother I had found living at Kings Cross during my trip to Sydney for the Selection Board into the army earlier in
the same year, 1964.
