Who cares about music when lives are on the line?
I was doing research for my book’s manuscript when the world stopped.
The book outlines what it’s like to be in a community band. I hoped it would teach folks about the band world and perhaps inspire some to join.
I’ve been a musician since college, playing in various wind bands and other ensembles for decades. But thanks to “Captain Covid,” my rehearsal and performance calendar dried up quicker than an avocado in Death Valley. And I wasn’t the only one.
Whether professionals or community players, we musicians lost a vital part of our lives in March 2020. We could no longer safely make music in person.
It sucked—big time.
The months wore on. As the world realized COVID was not only sticking around but also sneaking his uninvited variant buddies into the party, we started changing our lives. We stayed home, socialized on Zoom, and ordered groceries from Amazon.
I settled into a “ride out the storm” mentality and eventually allowed myself to think about the book again. But that’s all I could do. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t research. My inspiration had turned into a unicorn – always sought, never found.
All around me were sickness, death, worry, and avoidance. With such panic reaching a worldwide high, who the hell would care about playing a musical instrument? Surely, no one would want to read a stupid book about it.
And need I mention month after month devoid of live music? Nada. Zip. Zilch. Lots of folks watched only bookmarked videos on their tablets and phones.
My train had entered a dark, lonely tunnel. And before I could even tell if I would come out the other end, I had to wrap my mind around this new, culture-challenged landscape.
Music teachers and community musicians were going through different forms of temporary purgatory.
Music teachers suffered a new level of aggravation
Band teacher friends told horror stories of new social distancing rules and scrambling to create new lesson plans for newly-minted online students. These stories went something like this:
- Band students could no longer physically play music together but were still required to attend classes virtually. Video conferencing was a new technology to some.
- Video lag time kept the kids from rehearsing online. Some didn’t even turn on their screens. Ever tried teaching a band class to a bunch of black boxes?
- Many teachers were left to their own devices to create an individual-based yet music-related class activity. Not all school administrations helped.
Teaching band class sounded like the ninth plane of hell. I felt for those teacher friends.
Those of us not in school had different concerns.
Community bands around the world fell silent
In the community band world, we weren’t constrained by a school’s institutional requirements. Directors didn’t demand that we show up with our instruments. Bands simply shut down and wondered how long we’d have to wait.
This stupid virus had silenced adult musicians. It was surreal and frustrating.
According to the old saying, silence may be “golden.” But for a musician, such bling holds no value after a while. We don’t just want to play music; we need it. If you could take a music staff with notes on it and give it a twist, that would be our DNA strand—our soul’s building blocks.
Luckily, a few bold musicians around the globe started independent virtual music groups. These ensembles helped many of us significantly – we side-stepped boredom and despair and avoided the dreaded bat virus.
We didn’t have to deal with that pesky virtual lag time. If you were a home-bound musician, this is one variation of how the process went:
- Tell the administrator you play an instrument and want to join the group.
- Check their website for the selected piece of the month.
- Sign up for that month’s online “performance” for free (or pay a small fee to help defray costs, depending on which group you joined).
- Choose a part for your instrument and practice it.
- When you’ve learned the part, record yourself playing that part in one take. This recording included audio and video—a technology learning curve for some.
- Send your digital recording to the group’s administrator/webmaster/editor by a pre-determined date.
- Wait for said editor to combine everyone’s recordings with video and audio-editing software, ideally resulting in a harmonious “performance.”
It was time-consuming, but it’s all we had. Major kudos to those entrepreneurial-minded folks who not only came up with the idea but also labored behind closed doors to bring everything together.
Community musicians had limited choices of which group to join. I went with Virtual Concert Band (VCB), founded and organized by my new Australian friend, Laura!
Even with the time-consuming preparation, it was better than practicing the same music at home, day after day, with no end in sight. VCB gave us short-term goals – something different to look forward to every month. We kept our chops in shape and avoided the risk of spewing COVID-filled aerosols all over each other. And we learned the basics of creating home-grown videos!
I know hundreds of folks who loyally participated during those long months to “perform” with other like-minded players. We created a small global community on Facebook.
Win-win. Sort of.
And yet, although it was fun to learn a new skill, even that got old after a while.
The pandemic tested our patience
From fall ’21 to fall ’22, I mentally re-visited my book’s thesis. Yet even with the limited success of VCB, the tunnel remained pitch black as my train sped on. My muse wasn’t riding this train and seemed to be on the other side of the planet, perhaps enjoying the calm waves and white sands of Bondi Beach. Either way, Morse Muse wasn’t coming home anytime soon.
I figured I had two basic options:
1) Try to work on the book anyway, without the joy of social and musical interaction.
2) Continue waiting for organic inspiration to return. I hoped that when this was all over, community musicians would still want to play as much as they did before March 2020.
I waited. It was an agonizingly slow burn, like watching a candle melt.
During my wait, musicians began gathering in small groups. They’d read a few pages of music together, trying to re-capture the long-lost joy of live music creation. My brass quintet read pieces in our tuba player’s backyard until the weather got too cold. It provided some relief, but it still wasn’t the same.
Between variant spikes, musicians got used to playing only outdoors. We used the same space but stayed at least six feet apart. We tolerated those “playing masks” with the flaps that supposedly kept aerosol particulates from reaching others. And like everyone else, we waited for the next variant to pop up like some warped, biological version of Whack-A-Mole.
No one mentioned it, but the fear was palpable. Yet we were forced to be more patient than we’d ever been before.
That was a damned long tunnel!
After surviving variant spikes, hanging on Dr. Fauci’s every word, filling vaccination cards (ouch!), strapping on those annoying masks, and yes, losing loved ones to COVID, I finally saw this horrible disease begin loosening its vice-like grip on our pandemic-weary planet.
Governing bodies of large community ensembles—jazz bands, concert bands, orchestras—began reaching out to their members to see who might be ready to return to “socially distanced” rehearsals. Again, the fear was deep. It took many months.
Some groups re-formed much later than others. Many applied new rules (e.g., mandatory masking, no attending if you’re sick, putting bell covers on specific instruments). Some of these rules stuck around for a year or more.
But as society opened up, musicians returned to playing like a starving pack of wolves. My long-term fears dissipated as my train left the tunnel. Captain Covid had tested us, but we remained resilient. I could continue my book research, knowing that people would still want to make music!
As of this writing, I’m happy to have a full rehearsal/gig schedule again, with the slight change that some folks continue wearing masks. And that’s their choice. I don’t judge.
It reminds me of what we’ve all been through.
Originally published on Medium.com.
