Sharps and flats

Nicci:



Today, driving in the car together, Sean put on Chopin's 'Ballade', saying that if he could play one piece, this would be it - some of it so quick that the notes merge into a ripple and rumble of music, and it seems impossible that human fingers can be that deft and delicate. There's a theory that states that everyone can become great at a subject if they devote ten thousand hours to it, but I don't entirely believe it. If I devoted ten thousand hours to playing the piano, I might achieve a moderate level of fluency (actually I doubt even that), but no more. I know this because I'm a rotten musician. I can't sing - I make a noise like a frog. At school, i was made to mouth the words so as not to ruin the group sound and now just the sound of my voice trying to make music brings me out in a sweat of shame. I can't play any musical instrument, either. I've tried. I had violin lessons in my early teens and was so bad my parents made me move bedrooms to the end of the house, where i would inflict less pain on the rest of the family. I tried again when our youngest daughter started learning - we thought we should learn together, but it was a bad idea and although I slogged away for a year or two, dutifully practising scales, drawing my bow with a wail and a shriek along strings that i never quite managed to tune, standing in front of the mirror with the violin tucked under my chin and seeing how rigid and uncomfortable i looked, it was clear from the start that i was going to fail. I couldn't hit the right note: I could hear it was wrong, appalling, but I didn't know if it was too sharp or too flat. 



Sean is a far better musician than I am. He used to play the piano and even now can pick out a tune (I can't understand how two hands can move in different directions simultaneously; I have a flat and linear approach to music - one line of melody is all I can comprehend). He learned the violin and viola for a bit, in order to make up the string quartet he dreamed we would miraculously turn into. But he remains far far away from Chopin's 'Ballade'.



All of which is a way of saying that music is at the heart of our most recent book, Complicit, in which a music teacher and several friends form an impromptu bluegrass-type band in order to perform at a friend's summer wedding - with deadly consequences.... And that Complicit is out this week in paperback.