Chapter 4

After dealing with Rhonda, I didn’t feel much like being around people. Not because I’d hoped to win her back or anything, since I’d already closed the door to that ever happening again, since there was no way I could actually trust her. It just hurt how easily she’d been able to cut me out of her life after the time we spent together. It sucked to find out I was disposable, at least to her.

I did stop by and let everyone know I wasn’t staying for lunch. Partly because I didn’t want them thinking I was ditching them, but also because I knew Kat would start getting anxious.

“Hey, I need to go off by myself for a little bit,” I told her as she started to follow me away from the table.

We were a few steps from the table, but I kept my voice low just in case. Besides Hanna, who I trusted not to say anything, no one really knew what the deal was with Kat, besides the fact that she was hanging around me and Hanna more.

“Did I do something to...?”

“No,” I said quickly, “you’re fine. I just ran into Rhonda and it left me feeling sad is all. I just need a little time by myself to clear my head. Would you be okay staying with Hanna for lunch?”

“Uhh, yeah, I guess,” she said, looking around nervously.

“I’ll still see you after baseball practice. You’re okay with Hanna watching out for you, right?”

While that question would have sounded bad to anyone who overheard us, it was something I needed to ask. Ever since I’d agreed to help take responsibility for her, since her condition made her susceptible to other people, she’d started to become more reliant on me, which was probably one of the reasons the psychologist had warned against her getting too attached. If I gave her specific instructions or it was something routine where she didn’t have a choice, she could do her own thing, but otherwise, she was less willing to be off on her own than she had been when we’d met.

While I didn’t usually mind, since the alternative had proven to be worse, it did become inconvenient at times. Hanna and I had talked it over when she got back from vacation, and she’d agreed to try and see if it was possible to have her with Kat as some kind of substitute. I’d told Kat what we were doing, but I made sure to explain it as a way to help her condition, since Kat was often hypersensitive when she thought she had done something wrong or had bothered someone. We’d only had a few chances so far, and Hanna was the only one I trusted to help with this, since we’d also agreed to not tell people about Kat’s condition, since if people knew they might try and take advantage of her, as Aaron had done.

There wasn’t a lot to it, honestly. It was mostly being a human security blanket. She wasn’t a child and was perfectly capable of doing everything for herself. She just started to get anxious if left to her own devices. It had probably started because she was afraid that she might end up in a confrontation, which is what actually triggered her panic attacks, but that had started to shift into anxiety just being on her own. Thankfully, she’d started trusting Hanna enough that she worked as a substitute when I needed to be somewhere else, although she’d already started making comments about preferring me instead. If I was being honest, it was a bit much sometimes, but it was my own fault. I’d taken on the responsibility for her to keep her away from Aaron, so now I had to deal with the consequences.

“Yeah,” she said, looking at her feet. “I can go with you to the Blue Ridge after practice though, right?”

“Yeah, although I swear I don’t know how you don’t get bored, just sitting in a booth while I practice.”

“I get my homework done. Plus, it’s really quiet before the dinner rush and everyone’s nice.”

“Well, you’re always welcome to come with me then. Go back with Hanna and I’ll see you later.”

She gave me a smile and went back to the table, sitting next to Hanna. I went to the choir room, which was empty, since the whole school had the same lunch. I hadn’t come here since school got back, but at the end of last semester I came here a lot, especially during the time when everyone at our lunch group was mad at me, before I got things resolved between Hanna and Kat.

I actually liked it, since it was quiet and I could work on writing music. I could write other places too, of course, but it helped to have something to play notes on when I was trying to work out a particular piece of music. I only played a little piano, since guitar had always been my preferred instrument and it would have been hard to fit a piano in an RV, but I didn’t need much. It wasn’t like I needed it to play a piece full speed. I just needed to know the notes enough to go slowly through a section in my head and hear it aloud.

I still had finishing work to do on Country Road, which I’d finished in its most basic form before Christmas. I liked it and had played it a few times at the Blue Ridge, but it still felt like it was missing something. Besides that, I had two new, untitled pieces I was working on. One was a break-up song, but told from the perspective of two mockingbirds. I liked the idea of taking something people knew, like a break-up, but putting it in an unfamiliar package. I also had this nice piece in verse two that played off the old Mockingbird nursery rhyme.

Be quiet, don’t say a word, I’m no longer yours, not your mockingbird. I’m done with this, I’ve already been burned. I’m not gonna sing and there’s never gonna be a ring.

The chorus was more about broken nests and broken homes, but I liked the playoff of something familiar like that old song, although it still needed some work. Just like with Country Roads, it felt a bit too one-dimensional.

“Hard at work, I see,” Mr. French said, startling me.

“Yeah. I had a rough conversation and needed some alone time. I used to go home and play a few songs to calm down, but I’ve found that working on songs has a lot of the same effect on me.”

“Music is music, whether you’re playing it or writing it. If you’ve got the bug, you get lost in it, and everything else goes away. I liked that little thing you were playing a second ago.”

“Yeah. I liked the progression. It sounds sad, which is what I’m going for.”

“What you’ve done is pretty close to a famous chord progression from a ballad that was popular thirty years ago. You’ve got the C Lydian scale sound, going into a darker C natural minor sound. That takes you from what I think of as a bright scale and pulls it to one that’s not as bright, which is why it feels sad.”

He came over and sat on the bench next to me, shooing me over a bit so he could reach the keys.

“If you keep what you have for the vocal melody, you can pair it with this for the instrumental. If you take the F-sharp and the A in the D7 chord slump and bring it down to the F and A-Flat in the F minor chord. If you’re still working on lyrics, think about starting with something happy at the beginning of that and moving to sadness at the end and you’ll find it matches the progression of the music towards something that almost feels melodically dejected, because of the chromatic descent. It’s not far off of a lot of blues riffs, which go from D7 to F-minor to C.”

I tried it, singing along the words I had in place. He was right, it did sound like it was getting progressively sadder, although I’d had to rewrite some of the words. His suggestion of starting the chorus somewhere happy and have it fall into something sad by the end worked better with the music, giving everything more of a feeling of actively losing something, rather than just being sad about having lost something. Since music was all about the emotion it could bring out in the audience, Mr. French’s method was the way to go.

“Thanks, that’s better.”

“Good. I like what you’re doing; you just need to keep working on it. I was just thinking about this before you came in. Everything I’m writing sounds kind of one-dimensional, ya know?”

“I do, and it’s something a lot of new musicians need to work on to get around, especially those who start specializing in an instrument and then expanded from there. You tend to think in terms of your preferred instrument, in your case the guitar, and everything else becomes kind of an afterthought. That’s probably what you’re noticing, especially if you’re comparing your music to something that’s fully produced. If you’re going to write music for real, you’re going to have to break away from that and think of it from a full performance standpoint, instead of just how you would play it. It’s a stumbling block a lot of young musicians have trouble getting over.”

“How do I get past that?”

“Well, the easiest way is to get a producer, which is what record labels tend to do with new musicians they sign.”

“I can’t afford that.”

“Probably not, but you can start learning to think like one. Producers are different than musicians, although a lot started out as musicians before transitioning into producing, or doing both.”

“I’m not even sure what a producer does.”

“Well, they come in all kinds, but the best producers are creative partners. They listen to what you’ve got in mind and help you build it out into something unique that can sell. They help mold your song out into a full piece. They listen to a lot of music, both contemporary and older, and have a firm grasp of theory and composition. Really good ones will also understand the music industry itself, and work with your manager to help make your album marketable.”

“That all sounds really expensive. How do I turn this into something that doesn’t feel so one-dimensional without a producer?”

“Well, I can help you some. I’m not a producer by any means, but I can point you to things you’re missing or that you might want to add. Beyond that, the best thing you can do is listen to music not as a fan, but as someone writing music. Listen to the entire song but also listen to the details. Listen for things like chord progressions, time signatures, patterns. Try to pay attention to instruments other than the guitar. What’s the drummer doing? What’s he doing to help everything else stay in time, and what’s he adding beyond that? What’s the bass doing? Is it helping lift the melody by counterposing what’s happening or are you just giving everyone a piece of a single melody, instead of layering it? Listen for unique sounds and instruments someone might have introduced that could add an interesting sound to your song. The more music you listen to, especially with a critical ear, the better you’ll get with your own music.”

“Okay, I can try that. Can you point out some stuff I’m doing here that I could change?”

“Sure. Let’s start with your time signature. This and Country Roads are such different songs, but you’re playing them both in the same time signature, which is probably because it’s what you’re most comfortable with.”

For the rest of lunch, Mr. French went over details I hadn’t considered, for the most part ignoring the main guitar part and lyrics, and focusing on the other instruments. The more he pointed it out, the more I realized he was right. I was writing everything as if it was just an offshoot of the main melody, which is probably why it sounded so one-dimensional. He showed me how the bass or drums could play against the melody, changing how the section felt, instead of just harmonizing or matching the rhythm.

While it still had a lot of work left to make all three songs sound like actual songs, I felt a lot better about them after the hour we spent working on it together.

I kept going back to the lesson the rest of the day and into the next, thinking about what popular songs did that made them stand apart, and what my songs were missing that theirs had.

“Nelson, if you want to stay on any team, you need to get your head out of your ass,” Coach Dean yelled at me as I missed a grounder he’d hit past me.

This was our second practice as a team, and he was still moving us around positions, trying to find the best place for us. I’d been on first base yesterday and was at shortstop today. I actually liked shortstop, but he was right, I wasn’t focused enough. I should have gotten that grounder, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention and moved too late, letting it bounce just past the edge of my glove.

I also knew why he was annoyed. The school’s facilities were really good, considering how rural Wellsville was, but we still only had the one practice field, that we shared with Varsity. One team would work on infield while the other worked on outfield, position-specific training, at the batting cage, or just conditioning, after which we’d switch. The day before, it felt like we’d barely gotten to our positions and started practice before we were told to switch out.

“Sorry, Coach,” I said, trying to focus better.

To my credit, by the time we were told to switch, five more had come my way that I did catch, including one really hard-line drive.

“Infield, go to the batting cages. Outfielders, meet me in left field,” Coach Daniels called out.

Besides Coach Dean, who was in charge of Junior Varsity this year, and Coach Bryant, who was in charge of Varsity, we had two other coaches. Neither was actual faculty, but rather a volunteer from the community, who helped out with the baseball team as part of the PTA, or something. Coach Davis had apparently been a hotshot baseball player for the team five or six years ago before an injury in college killed any hope of a career. Someone mentioned he’d come back to town to help run his parents’ farm and Coach Dean had roped him into being the pitching coach.

The other coach was Coach Cooper, who was a lot older than the rest of them and worked with batters most days as a hitting coach. I hadn’t heard anything about his background or why he was volunteering to work with the baseball team, but I liked him. I’d only gotten about five minutes with him in the cage during the last practice, but it had been immensely helpful. He had a really good way of explaining what you were doing wrong without making you feel like an idiot for making a mistake. I was looking forward to my time in the cage today, getting another lesson, when I saw Harry making a beeline for me.