Category: interests

Me in choir in 9th grade in high school.  My love of music started way before that, though, when I learned the fundamentals of music from my Uncle Don when he taught me the accordion at Age 7   I picked up the guitar at 10 and never looked back.  I couldn’t wait to get into choir, and finally in high school was able to join for three years.  (Hard to forget the devastation in 12th grade when I had to drop choir for geometry).

Starting this class tomorrow:

 MUSC 1200 – Music Appreciation 

“This survey course provides an introduction to aesthetic and historic issues relating to musical works of major composers. The course emphasizes the art of listening to music. Topics include instruments of the orchestra as well as works and influences of composers. Students will study both instrumental and vocal works. This course requires no musical background or skills. (3 contact hours).”

Back to music after many years away – at least educationally.  With a change of classes proposed by Kent when I went there for my advisory meeting last week, I had to drop children’s literature (which was a choice for a humanities credit at Lakeland but not at Kent) and Health (which was needed at Lakeland but not at Kent for the degree I chose), I chose Music Appreciation out of the list of humanities choices that Kent gave me as the final humanities I needed for their degree.  So tomorrow I’m off to Music Appreciation, a course which I remember Roger being in when I first met him in 1983 .  I took a course with this professor before, “Popular Music,” in approximately 1984.  He is a good teacher.  It will be strange to see him again with us both being 26 years older, probably in the same room where I took the course before.

That room brings back many memories.  At Lakeland, when you enter the building where the music rooms are, at first you go by the large art gallery. 

These were some of the pictures that were in the Lakeland gallery last time I was there a few weeks ago.  They change the series of pictures every few months.  Back in the 80s I often did homework there in the gallery, ate snacks, and usually ended up meeting one or more friends that hung out with me, or me and Rog together, and it was the spot where we would often play guitar and sing together.  So the gallery is definitely a part of the whole music experience for me.  Since I went back this decade, I have probably sat in there 4 times doing algebra.  The ghosts of past times still are there, merging with the current scenes.

In the music room, in the main section, I had Lakeland Singers (a choir group that also had some dancing, which I was not so used to and made my awkward debut in Winter quarter, 1984), and I was in that class until the end of spring quarter, 1986.  This room served as practice room for the band and choral groups, and I also took my popular music class in that room.  Roger, who I met in a band practice in December 1983, was a student in that room as well for music appreciation and music theory (2 years of that!) and we often met there as I would find him after my secretarial classes, as well.  He also had a piano class in an adjacent room.  Then later in approximately summer of 85 or 86 I took piano and voice lessons and that was in the piano/organ practice rooms that are adjacent on the other side of the large teaching room.

Wish I had pictures of the Lakeland music room in the 80’s, but I’ll make up for it by taking some this week!  The picture above of me in high school was taken by my mom.  She is a bigger photo buff than me!  And I think my Uncle Don took the one below, another great amateur photographer!