The Musicians in Residence at the local college put on a concert tonight: violin, bass, and a piano played by a dear friend of ours.

And not just a concert but a lesson on Claude Debussy. Russ gave a bit of history and a demonstration of the heptatonic scale typically used in Western music, with a picture of it on a bar of music on the screen behind him. Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music children singing Do Re Mi appeared next to demonstrate and the audience chuckled.

Then he showed the pentatonic scale (five notes in an octave instead of seven) and played it. Then the whole note scale, no sharps or flats. Neither of them sounded like much with so many sounds missing.

But then he started playing some familiar gorgeous Debussy piece whose name I didn’t catch, and then another, using those scales. The fun begins when you mix them up between the two hands or instruments.

See! He said, bounding enthusiastically up from the piano bench and waving his arms at the audience. You can try this at home!

The next screen: You TOO can convert classical music to Impressionism! You just need six things:

1. You have to say it in French!
2. Pentatonic scale.
3. Use the sustaining pedal a lot.
4. Whole note scale.
5. Unusual rhythm.
6. I had a hard time seeing the last thing through the tall head of the guy in front of me and Richard doesn’t remember so I can’t tell you and
7. I’m not actually typing the numbers 6 or 7 but this computer program is expecting me to because I typed that you need six things so it is bound and determined to put a numbered list of six things here and won’t let me type anything without auto-adding those numbers and won’t let me delete the numbers after I do. It’s creating an Impression of what I’m trying to say. Russ would laugh and laugh at that.
8. And then, 8, after I said that and hit Save Draft there was no sign of any of the numbers on my Preview page, including the ones I actually typed and the 8. it put before any of the rest of this sentence.
9. So we’ll just have to see how this blog post plays out. (Still indented, too!)