No not sharks! – stop that movie music! –sharps, those pesky music marks that look like the pound sign on your cell phone.



It started when I became a Christian a few years ago, and as another change of life act, dragged out my old clarinet that had been idle for decades and then began to be asked to play something at church.



Well, I soon found that the piano that I was supposed to play with was keyed in C and the clarinet was keyed in b-flat, a complication that required me to add two sharps to the key signature of any piano piece and transpose. For example, one sharp for piano was 3 sharps for clarinet, a key I seldom, if ever had to play in the good old Missouri Marching Band, and two piano sharps, was 4! – which I never got to in the Rubank Intermediate Clarinet exercise book. So I would have to say NO a lot, which the piano people never understood – that is because they just have to push black keys instead of white for these things, and the poor clarinetist has to use all kinds of side key tabs, and usually with the little fingers, which are not the cleverest of our digits -hence, my fear of sharps.



Fast forward to this Fall, when the One More Time Marching Band (another story) quit for the winter and to find somewhere else to play, I joined, for the first time, an (gulp) Orchestra. Bands, by the way, tend to favor the b-flat clarinets and trumpets and have most music written in a couple or 3 flats, or 2 sharps at the most. Orchestra music, on the other hand favors the violins, which are keyed in C, like the piano, and I am seeing 3, 4, 5 sharps! What to do?



As we all have heard, to conquer a fear we must face it – whether sharks or sharps, or snakes (but that is another story). So, I got out the old fingering chart, found what devilish little clarinet side keys were involved, some I had never used in Missouri OR One More Time Marching Bands, and did the old “ how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” routine: “practice, practice, practice!



It is coming along – albeit slowly (well heck, I am old!)- but I am losing my fear of sharps: bring ‘em on!



(sorry for this indulgence – I was tired of gripping about politics!)