Betty KainzVienna, Austria on July 23, 1996
HTML script by Betty and Alfred Kainz © 1996
Since I started taking piano lessons at the age of four, I learned to read music before I could even read words. Maybe you've never given much thought to what kind of problems this can pose for a child. Take the alphabet, for example... Needless to say, I was more than a little bit surprised, let's say devastated, to learn that the alphabet didn't just consist ot A, B, C, D, E, F and G. The first time I was confronted with the fact that the whole alphabet consists of 26 letters, A-Z, I thought "What in the world are these other 19 notes ?!? ...nobody told me about them ! "Gee...", I thought, "...everybody knows that Every-Good-Boy-Does-Fine are the lines and F-A-C-E are the spaces in the treble clef ! And everyone with a little bit of sense also knows that All-Cows-Eat-Grass are the spaces in the bass clef, and Good-Boys-Do-Fine-Always are the lines. That makes a total of 7 notes and letters...A, B, C, D, E, F and G !" (In those days there was no women's rights movement to protest against the fact that it was always only the boys that did fine. )
It was a grim day for me, the day I confronted my piano teacher with this heresay, hoping she would refute these rumors that I'd heard about the alphabet consisting of 26 letters and not just 7. However, much to my disappointment, she said, "Yes...that's right. There really are 26 letters in the alphabet. Only 7 of them are used for the names of musical notes, and I figured you'd learn about the rest of them as soon as you needed them." If I hadn't loved her so much, I'd never have been able to forgive my piano teacher for that.
...but I did forgive her, and as you can see, I was finally able to accept and, to a certain extent, to learn to utilize the other 19 letters of the alphabet. Otherwise you wouldn't be reading this now. ;-)
I didn't mention it before, but my first piano teacher...the one who broke the sad news to me about the alphabet back then, was Mama Short. She wasn't my mama, and she wasn't short either (Short was her last name), and that was just what everybody in Jasper, Texas (population 5100) called her. She didn't actually live in Jasper...she lived in a log cabin in the woods near the city limits, just down the road from Eddie. (Eddie was the subject of a lot of the local gossip, because he drove a Cadillac and didn't work a lick. He just drove around in that big white Cadillac and collected his percent of the welfare money that the 5 women who were the mothers of his 19 illegitimate children got from the government for being single parents.) Mama Short lived out on the Sandy Creek Road. (Yes, there really was a Sandy Creek...I used to go fishing there for perch until I got a fish-hook caught in my leg one day, and I had to run home 2 miles so that my mother could cut it out with a pocket knife. After that, I gave up fishing for a few years. ;-)
Anyway, like I was saying, Mama Short lived in her log cabin out on Sandy Creek Road, but most of the time, she gave the piano lessons at the Episcopal Church across the street from my house on Bowie Street (named of course after Bowie, one of the great Texan heros and inventor of the Bowie knife.) Years later, while taking a course in piano pedagogy at NTSU, in Denton, I was informed, along with a few others who had started learning piano around the same time, that the method that Mama Short and other piano teachers at that time had used for teaching (I think they called it the "middle C method") was so bad that it's a wonder that I ever learned to play the piano. I thought "Well....what could they expect from Jasper, Texas, population 5100 in 1958...it's a wonder that there was even a piano teacher there !" I was a little bit insulted by this, because I could play...whatever method it was that I was taught. But mostly I was insulted because my professor at NTSU had, in his analytical, statistical observations, overlooked that Mama Short was, in spite of her back-woods teaching method, a wonderful teacher. The most wonderful thing was that she didn't just teach me how to play music, she taught me to love it as much as she did herself.
Years later, after I was living in NYC, and Mama Short had died (God bless her), my mother told me that Mama Short had never taken any money from her all those years for piano lessons. It seems that she thought I had some talent, and she decided to teach me piano all those years, just out of the goodness of her heart. We were pretty poor when I was growing up, and my mother and father had both had to work hard to make ends meet. My mother was a proud person, and it wasn't like her to take charity from anybody, but Mama Short was the type of person that made you want to obey her (when she said "Jump !", you said "How high ?!?"), so I guess that's why my mother accepted her generousity. I still get tears in my eyes when I think about Mama Short and all those years that she gave unselfishly of her time to share her knowledge and love of music with me.
So I'd like to say "thank you" to Mama Short and all my other music teachers for giving me the greatest gift that I've ever received, a gift that all the money in the world can't buy. ...the love and understanding of the universal language called music.
Another one of the probelms involved in playing piano at such a young and tender age is the purely physical problem of size. Aside from having a very small finger span (which, needless to say, limited my repertoire), one of my major problems as a four year old pianist was that my feet didn't reach the pedals. Being grown-ups, most of us have long since forgotten how it feels to always have your feet hanging around in the air, but I can remember that, as a child I loved this feeling. I just loved to dangle my feet, and when I began playing piano, of course I loved to swing my feet in rhythm to the music. I was already starting to get into the groove, much to the dismay of my mother and Mama Short, who found this habit for some reason somewhat distracting. So they got me a foot-stool. I was forced to sit up straight while playing, with my feet on that stool. After a while, I got used to the stool, but it was still frustrating to not be able to play using the pedals (a little bit like being able to steer a car, but not being able to step on the gas).
I'll never forget the day when, after Mama Short realized that my legs were long enough, she put the sheet music to my first piece with pedal in front of me. It was wonderful ! I felt like a whole new world had opened up for me ! But the result was catastrophic...I didn't want to play anything without using the sustain pedal anymore. I played Czerny and Bach using what would have been too much sustain pedal even for Debussy. I had a lead foot that rivaled Eddie's (...remember him ?!?) when he was speeding down the highway in his Cadillac with the father of that 16 year old that he'd gotten pregnant hot on his heels.) This was a bad habit that took years to correct.
...even now, I still have to tuck my feet behind the legs of the piano stool when I play Bach.
That tuba just wouldn't play, boy...
I mentioned before that I played in the band in junior high school (in Waco, where we'd moved to when I was 10), and that our band director, Mr. Freeman, persuaded me to learn bassoon. He was also one of the biggest influences on me regarding music and my love for it. He was a great teacher. He seldom got angry, but when he did, his whole face got red and his cheeks puffed out like a blowfish. I don't think he was ever angry at me, but I remember one time that I did see him get pretty angry.
We were rehearsing a Sousa march for the big Friday night football game, and somehow the tuba part just wasn't coming through, although the tuba player (a nerdy guy called Bob Bloodworth) was huffing and puffing. His cheeks were bulging, and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets. Mr. Freeman tapped his baton on his music stand, and said "What's going on there, Bloodworth ? I don't hear enough tuba, but it looks like you're blowing your brains out ! What in the heck is wrong ?".
The room got deadly quiet, and you could have heard a pin drop except for a couple of telltale giggles from a trombone player called Bert, who was always bored because he'd flunked out twice and was repeating the ninth grade for the third time. Mr Freeman got up, went over to the tuba, and poked his head in the bell to see if something was muffling the sound. It was obvious that he'd found something, because he reached in the bell with his hand, and pulled out some crumpled up sheets of paper. But they weren't just any sheets of paper. As he took them out, one by one, it was more than clear for everybody to see that they were Playboy centerfolds ! Of course, from a grown-up's point of view these days, where everybody and their dog has access to all the porno on Internet, it doesn't seem like such a big deal, but back in those days it was a scandal ! It wouldn't have been so bad, but whoever (whoever ?!? ...of course it was Bert, the trombone player !) put those foldouts in there had added a few of his own artistic touches and had written "Trudy" next to the naked girls on the pictures. Trudy was a french horn player and the star baton-twirling head majorette of our junior high band.
Of course, when Trudy saw this, she broke into tears and ran hysterically from the room, and needless to say, the whole rehearsal session was disrupted. Mr. Freeman had to drag Bert down to the principal's office, where he tried his best to calm down Trudy and her mother too, since Trudy had immediately run into the girls' counsellor's office and had called her mother on the phone. The rest of us made the most of the situation and had a jam session that didn't sound anything like Sousa. Bert got expelled for three days as punishment. But that didn't bother Bert one bit.
...he was as proud of the many times he'd been expelled as a gunslinger is of the notches on his revolver's handle.
Speaking about Trudy...I do have one small confession to make. I hope you won't think too badly of me after you hear this. I'm not proud of what I did, but I can't really say I'm sorry about it either. I guess for my own sake, in defense of what I did I should explain a little bit about Trudy...
Trudy was, like I said before, a majorette. She was a blond-haired, blue-eyed baton-twirling freak. She nearly never went anywhere without her baton in her hand. She was always twirling it round and round, and out of the blue, she'd practice throwing it up in the air and catching it. Needless to say, this made me nervous when I was around because I had visions of her missing (which did happen on occasion) and hitting somebody (...maybe me !) on the head. Trudy was egoistical and a real tease too. She loved to wear short skirts and tight sweaters, but she acted really insulted if any of the guys were too attracted (...I think you know what I mean). I don't like to make generalizations, but I'm sure you know the type I'm talking about. To illustrate my point...the kids in school used to call her "Prudy Trudy".
Trudy was also an aspiring beauty queen. She participated in every beauty pageant (Miss This or Miss That), within driving range with her mother's old Plymouth that came along. Anyway, Trudy's mother was a typical "back-stage mother", and supported ("pushed" is probably a better word) Trudy in her pursuit of every "Miss" title. Of course, in such competitions, the contestants have to prove that they have talent as well as beauty and intelligence, and Trudy did this (...or tried to do it) by singing. Her voice wasn't too bad, but she was a terrible musician.
I made the rounds of the local beauty pageant circuits with Trudy and her mother, doing arrangements for her and accompanying her on piano. The pay was pretty rotten, but at least it was work (after all, I was only a teenager at the time), and I got all the free Cokes I could drink, since Trudy's father drove a delivery truck for the local Coca-Cola distributor. This went on for a while, and Trudy did manage to win a couple of "Miss" titles. But my nerves were wearing thin, always putting up with her and her mother, so when they got pretty far behind with paying my salary one time, I told Trudy's mother that I didn't want to accompany her anymore. However, she promised to pay her debt if I would agree to accompany Trudy one last time. As the new "Miss Whatever ", she had a date to sing at the grand opening of a local shopping mall. So I said "OK...but I want the money you owe me before the performance." Trudy's mother agreed, and I arranged a patriotic medley of "America the Beautiful", "God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land", complete with melodramatic modulations in all the right places...guaranteed not to leave a single dry eye in the audience, even with Trudy singing.
The day of the shopping mall Grand Opening came, and although I'd hoped for rain, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the show was on. Trudy's mother came up to me shortly before Trudy was supposed to sing and said "I'm sorry...I didn't have time to go to the bank. I'll give you your money next time." Well, this was a little bit too much for me, since I'd heard this story quite a few times before, but I thought to myself, "Well, you're already here now...might as well play." Trudy made her entrance, and we started the medley. It was going well. During the transition to "God Bless America", I looked around and saw that people were starting to get lumps in their throats and swallow hard, just like they were supposed to.
Then I started thinking how little Trudy and her mother appreciated everything I did to make her sound good. I swear, I didn't plan it in advance, but by the time we got to the modulation to "This Land Is Your Land", I was mad enough to bite nails. Something came over me, and instead of modulating to the key we were supposed to, my fingers suddenly found their way to a few unplanned transitional chords, and modulated to a key around a third higher than we'd rehearsed. Being neither a seasoned performer nor a good musician, Trudy wasn't able to jump into the right key. She just kept on singing in the key we'd rehearsed, and looking over her shoulder at me every couple of beats. The unrehearsed dual tonality of our performance was evident even to the untrained ears of the local shoppers and patriots in the audience, and needless to say, Trudy's performance was less than a raging sucess. However, her mother was raging...raging mad. Thank goodness I didn't have any of my own equipment there to pack up, since the shopping mall had graciously provided a beat up old Baldwin, and I got the heck out of there real fast !
Needless to say, that was the last time I accompanied Trudy. This is one of the stories from my past that I'm not particularly proud of, because what my fingers did on that day was very unprofessional. Since then, I've managed to get them much better under control, and they nearly never do anything that I don't want them to do anymore.
...I wish I could say the same for my mouth.
Marching with a bass drum isn't easy...
I played in the marching band in high school. Not because I loved to march or because I loved football games, but because I had to. Everybody in the high school band had to play in the marching band, and had to attend every football game and every pep rally. The fact that I couldn't march while playing bassoon didn't help me either. I marched with a variety of instruments, depending on what was needed at the time, and on my present mood. Sometimes I played clarinet (having learned it before I learned bassoon), and I also bought a second-hand trumpet and managed to play well enough to play the third trumpet part if the range wasn't too high, (since my embouchure left a lot to be desired). Sometimes I played crash cymbals. This had it's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage was that I could get even with anybody I wanted to by crashing the cymbals directly behind their head while sitting in the stands at the football game. The disadvantage was that they were very heavy and a pain to carry while marching. (Life does have its ups and downs, doesn't it ?!?) Being a piano player, I was often called upon to play glockenspiel, since most of the drummers we had in the band couldn't read music very well. It was heavy too, but I enjoyed playing it because the glockenspiel could always be heard over the whole band. It was sort of a powerful feeling.
One particular friday night, I found myself wishing I'd played some other instrument at that football game instead of glockenspiel. The reason for this was Tracy Roe. Tracy was our 200-pound, half-blind bass drummer. He was one real nerdy guy. I guess every high school band has one. I'm sure you know the type...pants hitched up high around where his waist should have been but wasn't, greasy hair, acne, glasses as thick as coke bottles, and bad breath that always smelled like stale cheeseburgers.
Half-time came, and we marched out onto the field to entertain and amaze the small part of the audience that wasn't gone buying greasy french-fries at the snack bar or hadn't run out to the parking lot for a quick nip of the fifth of Johnny Walker that they had bought on the wrong side of town with a fake I.D and stashed in the glove compartment of their dad's pickup truck. We had a great drill for the halftime show. Our band director, Mr. Collier had seen to that, since he and the band directors of our rival schools were always trying to out-do each other. He'd had us practicing before school, during band class and after school for weeks. I don't remember the name of the march that we were playing, but it's not so important, since when a marching band plays in a football staduim, with everybody playing out of tune, the wind blowing and the crowd making noise, everything you play sounds just about the same anyway.
All that practice seemed to pay off, because our drill was going really well. That is, at least until we came to the part where we were supposed to do a counter-march. (In case you don't know, it's a marching manouver done in tight rows. When each person reaches the end of the row, he should make two sharp left turns and go between his row and the row to his left. The effect as seen from the stands is like seeing hundreds of ants in a perfect square that seems to be alive, moving inside of itself.) The point where I should turn was approaching, and I was concentrating on not hitting anybody with my glockenspiel, which I held on a diagonal to me, supported by a leather holster. The unfortunate thing was that just as I reached the end of my row, Tracy Roe, who was in the row to my right, made his sharp turn to the left. I don't know if you can imagine the total circumference of Tracy's stomach with the bass drum resting on it, but it suffices to say that this total was much broader that the space between the marching rows. I looked up just in time to see Tracy's stomach with the bass drum on it looming in front of me, but too late to be able to do anything about it. Tracy hit me broadside, and I lost my balance and stumbled backwards into the person behind me. The result was the so-called "domino effect", a chain reaction, with everybody falling down on top of each other, one after another.
However, that wasn't the high point of the half-time show. Tracy's grand finale was his exit from the football field. We were supposed to exit at the 50-yard line. Unfortunately, nobody had noticed that the bench on which the opposition's bench-warming second string sat during the game was exactly on the 50-yard line. Everybody else saw it in time and either hopped over it or went around it, but even Tracy's coke-bottle glasses couldn't help him to see over his bulging stomach-and-bass-drum-appendage. He tripped over the bench, did a somersault that even Nadia Comaneci would have been proud of, and landed flat on his back like a beached whale.
...we lost the football game too.
You don't need a piano player...
As I mentioned before, one of my most memorable experiences was being at Interlochen National Music Camp. The summer that I went back to work there, I was a staff accompanist. Among other things, I was assigned to play for the ballet classes. I'd never done that before, and most of the ballet teachers were very helpful and patient in explaining to me what kind of music they needed or wanted for certain exercises. Most of them had a pretty good working knowledge of music too, and if they wanted me to play a waltz, for example, they'd simply say "Play a waltz."
However, one of the teachers I was assigned to play for, Peter Petrovich, wasn't as patient as the others. He was a very egoistical man. He was a good dancer, and he knew it. He was good looking, and he knew it. To make matters worse, his English wasn't good, and he didn't know it. Unfortunately, he also had no knowledge of musical terms. So when he tried to explain what kind of music he wanted for a certain exercise, there were always big communication problems. For example, one day I started to play, and he said "No ! Play something softer." So I played the same piece less loud. Then he screamed "No ! ...I mean play something smoother !" So I played what I thought would suit him. But that wasn't right either. After a while, I realized that when he said "softer, or smoother", what he really meant was a waltz.
This went on for a couple of weeks, with me nearly in tears every day, trying to please this Attilla-the-Hun of the ballet studio. I was at the end of my rope with my nerves. I felt sick at my stomach every time I went off to play for one of his classes. The only way I was ever able to satisfy him was by playing mazurkas, which I'd discovered he loved, regardless of whether it really fit to the movement or not. (The mazurkas were, in his case, really music to soothe the savage beast.)
One day, Petrovich was holding his advanced class in the big ballet studio. The studio itself was beautiful. It was a huge, open space with windows on two sides which looked out over the lake. It was common practice for the tour guides at Interlochen to bring their groups of tourists to observe the advanced classes in the big studio, since this gave the tourists a really good impression of the quality of work being done at Interlochen. When he had an audience like this group of tourists, Petrovich was always in best form (...or worst, if you see it from my point of view). He was even more conceited and arrogant than normal, trying to make a really big impression on his audience. Of course, the dancers and I suffered more than usual, being the victims of his demonstrations of how he thought a real ballet-master should be.
The class started off bad, and got even worse. Nothing that I played that day could please Petrovich. (...not even playing a mazurka could save me that day.) I turned the other cheek, (like my mother always told me to) when he halted the class and reprimanded me for playing the wrong music for the first exercise. I gritted my teeth when he screamed at me in anger to stop during the second exercise. When he threw a fit and waved his hands theatrically in the air as a signal to stop because he didn't like the music for the next exercise, I bit my tongue and counted to ten. In the meantime, a couple of the dancers were nearly in tears too, having also been victims of his tempermental outbursts.
During the next exercise, I had already changed the music twice, and Petrovich was still dissatisfied. He stopped me for the third time, and came towards me, screaming "No, no, no !". That was the last straw for me. I'd finally reached my limit. I'd had enough of Petrovich and his inhuman treatment of myself and others. I stood up, picked up my things, looked him straight in the eye, and said to him (loud enough for everyone in the studio, including the tourists to hear), "You don't need a piano player. What YOU need is a record player !"
That was the last class I accompanied for Peter Petrovich.
...and the last I heard, he was assigned a male accompanist, whose ego was just as big as his, and who was about a foot taller.
I have to admit, I've always been clumsy. My mother used to say that I'm like a bull in a china cabinet. She even sent me to ballet classes when I was small, hoping it would help me to become more graceful, but it didn't. That's the real reason I started taking piano lessons. I hated ballet lessons, and thinking that nothing could be worse than that, and that it'd be at least worth a try, I convinced my mother to let me try piano lessons. And I was right...I liked piano a lot better than ballet.
In addition to resulting in the usual bruises and scratches, my clumsiness has gotten me into a few situations that were embarassing, to say the least.
During my rock and roll days (I guess that was about a hundred years ago or so...), I played in several different rock bands, one of which was called Slick. (Don't laugh...nobody could think of a name for the band, and since I'd had the nickname Slickfingers for quite a while, we used that name as default.) We had a 6-foot tall bass player with long red hair named Randy, who used a Marshall amplifier, on which he hadn't turned down the volume in so long that he didn't even notice that the knob was missing. Then there was the lead guitar player, René, who was a fantastic guitar player, but who'd taken too much acid a few years back and often couldn't even remember which day of the week it was. On rhythm guitar and lead vocals was Gary, who was also a very good guitar player and was pretty normal except that he was cross-eyed. The drummer was Mac, who was a great drummer and drove an old Harley-Davidson...at least he drove it when it wasn't standing disassembled in our practice room. And of course, I played keyboards...in those days, an RMI electric piano and an old 50's vintage Hammond B-3 organ, complete with Leslie. (I'm still sorry about selling that B-3 !)
Back in those days (before the onslaught of things like discos, disc-jockeys, raves, and sampling), we used to earn pretty good money by playing in clubs and for parties and high school dances. On the day I want to tell you about, we were playing for the Homecoming Dance at one of the local high schools. The school's gym had been transformed from a sweaty-smelling basketball court with splintery wooden risers into a fairyland, complete with crepe-paper streamers, aluminum-foil-covered crescent moons, and spinning-mirror-ball stars that made you dizzy if you looked at them too long. Our place was up on the small stage, where we'd had to move the speaker's pult to the side and unplug the PA-system that the principal used when he held speeches at assemblies, since there was only one wall socket on the whole stage. It was a good thing that we had a couple of extension cords with us !
Everything was going well. The principal had only told us to turn the volume down four or five times, the Homecoming Queen had been sucessfully crowned, and all the kids were having a great time (partially thanks to the bottles of booze that most of them had stashed out on the parking lot).
We used to play a couple of tunes that didn't call for keyboards, and I always used this chance to go out into the audience and see how the sound was. The rest of the guys had just cranked up and were into the first few bars of "Purple Haze", and I decided to make my way around backstage to the other side where the stairs were. It was pretty dark backstage, and the dim light coming from the emergency exit sign with one burned-out lightbulb didn't help much either. Just when I thought I'd found my way out, the music stopped abruptly. I looked down and realized that I'd tripped over the extension cord that we'd used to plug everything into that one single wall socket. Naturally, I did what anybody would do in my position...I plugged the cord in again as quickly as possible. Of course, the rest of the guys in the band didn't know what had happened, and in the meantime had started strumming wildly and fiddling with their volume controls trying to get some sound to come out. As luck would have it, I plugged the cord in at the same moment as they were all fiddling around, and the result sounded like Metallica sight-reading a piece by John Cage.
...needless to say, that was the last time we played at that school.
Plunged into a pit of darkness...
Unfortunately, that wasn't the only time that my clumsiness caused problems with extension cords.
As I previously mentioned, while I was studying at NTSU, I got involved in playing for musical theater. We did some musical reviews, for which I wrote arrangements, some experimental stuff with audience participation (...that was real fun!) and also lots of standard musicals, like "Cabaret", "Mame", and "Gypsy".
During "Cabaret", I ran back and forth between the orchestra pit and the stage, since I played in the on-stage, all-girls Kit-Kat-Klub band, as well as in the orchestra. (We had a second pianist who played in the pit on the tunes that were played while I was away on stage.)
During one particular performance, I'd needed a little bit longer to get down to the orchestra pit than usual and was in a hurry because I didn't want to miss my next cue. But it would have been better if I'd taken my time and missed it, because while trying to wind my way through the orchestra pit while they were playing the intro to the next tune, I tripped over the extension cord that all the music stand lights were plugged into, and the whole orchestra pit (including the conductor's podium) were plunged into total darkness. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been another scene, but again, as luck would have it, it was a scene in which the stage was so dark that no light bled down into the orchestra pit. Since we'd only done a couple of performances most of the musicians didn't know their parts by heart, and those who did were so shocked by what had happened that they stopped playing anyway. The whole performance came to a screeching halt. I plugged in the lights and sat down at the piano.
...in that moment, I wished that I'd stuck with the ballet lessons instead.
Accordions sure do have a lot of buttons...
In the course of my musical theater days, I did quite a few productions of "Cabaret". I loved that show, and there always seemed to be a shortage of female pianists for the Kit-Kat-Klub band, so I could never refuse when somebody asked me to do "Cabaret". One of my favorite productions was for the Dallas Summer Musicals, where I worked for quite a few years. It was a beautiful, modern 3000-seat theater.
In addition to the scenes in the Kit-Kat Klub, I also had to play accordion on stage for "Tomorrow Belongs To Me". In case you don't know the show, it's a serious, moving scene in which the tenor sings about how the future will belong to the Nazis. (...it really gives you goosebumps when it's well-done). The intro was an accordion solo, and the tenor joined in a few bars later, followed by the whole orchestra.
Now, I never learned to play accordion, and although it does have keys like a piano, there's a lot more to accordion playing than meets the eye. You have to play the melody on the keys, pump the thing to keep the air moving, and use the buttons for playing the chords (...not so easy for a clumsy, uncoordinated person like me). Having had no experience in accordion playing, and not having had much time to learn it, I was horrified by the fear that I wouldn't find the right buttons. But there are only a few chords in that song, so I knew that if I found the right one in the beginning, I'd be alright. Thinking I was really clever, I devised a way to cheat my way through. I stuck a wad of scotch tape on the button for the tonic chord so I could find it with my index finger without looking, and from there I could easily reach the other buttons with my other fingers without moving my hand.
This worked great and I was, of course, thrilled and relieved ! I shouldn't have let myself be lulled into a false sense of security though. A couple of my pals at the theater were aware of my trick with the scotch tape, and when they were bored about halfway through the run of the show, they decided to play a trick on me. They secretly took off my scotch tape and stuck it on a different button.
The next performance taught me a big lesson. When the scene rolled around, I grabbed my accordion, went out on stage, placed my right index finger on the button with the scotch tape, and started to play. I don't have perfect pitch, but I noticed right away that the key was wrong. I started looking frantically for the right button, trying not to let anybody notice, since after all, I was on stage. However, with all those millions of buttons I just couldn't find it in time. Thank goodness, the tenor was a profi, and he covered up the situation well, but when the orchestra made it's entrance, it was a direct modulation. I faked my way through the rest of the tune by playing the chords with my right hand on the keys instead of using the buttons. Needless to say, after that day, I always checked to see if the scotch tape was on the right button before the performance and didn't let that accordion out of my sight anymore.
...that day, I sure wished I had taken accordion lessons too.
Vienna, Austria on July 23, 1996
Betty Kainz