Time to Get in Tune

I can’t prove it right now, but I’m more and more thinking that Charlie may well have perfect pitch.

Though without a piano or cello teacher (I’ve followed a few leads, but with no luck, yet), Charlie has still been practicing, and has often asked to “play cello” in the later afternoon, before he and I go on our usual walk. Last week, after I took the cello out of its case, a few strums on the strings revealed that it was really out tune. As in, really, the D way way too low, the G unidentifiable, the C low, and loose.

With Charlie saying “play cello,” “play cello,” I turned the pegs, just a bit, but with the memory of how I once broke a string on my viola still fresh, I was very hesitant. Charlie kept asking to play and so I brought the cello over to him and opened the music book. “A, D, D, A,” he sang, perfectly in tune—-and the not-tuned cello was distinctly wrong-sounding. Charlie frowned and kept singing out the notes, in tune, before he plucked the flat-sounding strings.

He kept frowning, and singing the notes, and persevered with the plucking. And when he’d finished and I was wiping the rosin off the strings, I told him we’d bring the cello to the music store to get it tuned.

That was over a week ago. Charlie kept asking to play his instrument, most insistently, and so each night I’d try again to tune it, and just hear the C and G and D as they should be (the A was the only sort of tuned string), and then the pegs slipped no matter what I did. After practicing, we’d go for a walk and then when we got back it seemed late and was dark and Charlie wanted dinner. So it wasn’t until yesterday, Thursday that I put the cello in the trunk of the black car and we drove to the music store.

A young man, his hair as close shaven as Charlie’s and a stud in his ear (and about the same height as Charlie) immediately took the cello and starting working on it. Charlie stood at the counter, eyes wide open under the two hoods (sweatshirt + winter coat). The store has several soundproof rooms for lessons off to one side and there were parents and children, and instruments and racks of music books (A Charlie Brown Christmas! the entire Bastien piano series! sheet music for “In My Life”!) everywhere. Charlie briefly raised his voice, then stood with his hands over his ears. Looking in a rack, I found a beginner’s piano book that had some of the same songs that Charlie’s piano teacher had adapted for him to play and it occurred to me, why not have Charlie learn to play these slightly more complicated versions of songs he already knows?

We left the store with a tuned-up cello and Charlie carrying a new piano book. There were Christmas trees for sale across the parking lot and the piney smell was distinct in the cold air. Adolescent girls walked by us with guitar cases and their mothers calling out, and younger siblings trailing.

Charlie hummed “Winter Wonderland,” all the way home, and every note was in its place.