2009-07-28: Teaching Other Teachers

Players:

Erik_icon.jpg Kenta_icon.jpg

Summary: Erik comes to Kenta for a music lesson.

Date: July 28, 2009

Log Title Teaching other Teachers

Rating: PG


Xavier Mansion - Music Room

The music room has four levels of tiers that each sit one row in a semi circle. On the floor in the semi circle is grand piano. There is a large closet on either side of the room, one filled with string instruments and the other filled with various wind and brass instruments. There are a few guitars in the back of the room next to a large variety of percussion instruments. All the instruments here are for the students to use provided they take care of them and clean any necessary parts after they use it. The room is sound proof, so once the door is closed, the music being played will not interrupt the other classrooms.


On the staff email list you got a ping from Anderson asking if you wanted some tutoring work over the summer, for pay; although not that much since you all don't get paid that much. At the scheduled time Erik is waiting in the Music room, in a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, hanging out by the piano.

Wearing a black t-shirt with a Shamrock and the words 'Flogging Molly'in green, Kenta walks into the music room wearing a pair of shades with his guitar case slung over his shoulder. "Hey Erik, what's this tutoring work that you wanted?" He asks not sure if it's for Erik or one of the students. He runs a hand through his hair before taking of the shades and resting them on his head. After all he's much more comfortable showing his 'eyes' at the school.

Erik chuckles a little bit. "I've always wanted to learn how to play an instrument, and I figured that the longer I waited the less likely I was going to actually do it." He says with a smile. "You seemed like the guy to talk to about that."

Kenta nods and smiles. "Probably since I'm the music guy around here. Which instrument are you looking to learn, unfortunately I never finished school at Juliard so I'm limited in what I know." Which is pretty much a choice between Guitar and Piano and a little bit of bass guitar.

"I figured I'd start with Piano, and if I have any talent maybe in a year or two I can branch out and learn something else. But I've always had an ear for classical music." Erik offers. "And hey, I don't know how to do more than whistle, so even knowing two is impressive to me."

"I know classical but I've always thought Rock was better." Kenta says with a chuckle as he always wanted to be a rock star. "My old band, the Screaming Ninja Flips, we were pretty rockin', so okay, Piano, do you know anything about reading music or anything yet?"

Erik laughs a little bit and shakes his head. "I don't mind modern music but when I imagined myself playing it, it was always something older. I don't know, probably my natural pretension coming out." He chuckles, and shakes his head no.

"Dude, you're talking to an 'old' rocker here, anyone over thirty is considered 'old' in rock years." Kenta says with a laugh knowing that when he's sixty he'll be still smoking cigarettes and rocking out to something like AC/DC or Dropkick Murphy's. "How old are you Erik? Cause aren't you a little young to be like Mr. Summers there?" He says with a chuckle as he goes to find some of the work sheets he uses to teach the students how to read music, the basic stuff like Every Good Boy Deserves Fuge and F-A-C-E, face.

Erik laughs. "God, I hope if I ever end up too much like Scott someone just puts a bullet in me." He says, although thinking about that for a moment causes him to shakes his head and banish some memory. "It is precisely to avoid that, that I am looking for a new hobby. Besides, look at modern post-rock sounds and you find a resurgence of classical instruments. Maybe I'll catch the next wave."

"Oh yeah, I'll make sure to put a nice rubber bullet in you." Kenta says with a chuckle knowing Erik's uses magnetics. "Just to let you know, the first week or so of this is going to be really boring and a lot of this is this on the sheet music. So okay, here's what I give the kids starting out." It's a work sheet with an empty piece of sheet music with just a G: Clef at the front.

Erik chuckles. "Thats fine, everything has to start out boring before it gets interesting. I didn't learn to fly before I learned to make origami out of soda cans. Although that, in and of itself, is fun." He nods, looking at the sheet.

"How learned to fly…well it's an interesting story, and for the longest time I couldn't fly without a dark force disk under my feet the wings….well those came much later and were kind of force on me." Kenta says with a shrug but he can't help but there's a slight chuckle as he remembers learning to fly. He looks around for a bit before frowing. "Where the fuck is a pencil?"

Erik grins. "I didn't know I even had the possibility of flying until I accidentally threw myself out of a window. Fortunately…I did." Erik says with a laugh. He hmms and holds out a hand…a little bit of rattling, and a discarded pencil zips out from under a cabinet and in to his hand. "I love that they use metal to keep in the eraser."

Kenta chuckles and shakes his head. "Yeah but I should have one up here with the piano or at least at one of the stands." He says figuring a student walked off with it at some point. "Yeah, Armande's mother, when we were just starting dating, in the gym here I asked her to use her wind power to raise me to the ceiling and just drop me, so see if I could figure it out. About two feet from the ground, I did." He says knowing it was stupid but hey, it worked.

Erik nods. "Well…I only managed to fly enough not to break my neck. My arms, not so lucky. I passed out, and woke up in the medical bay." He says with a sigh and a laugh as he looks at the worksheet.

"I don't know how many times I ended up in the medbay as a student here. Man that was a long time ago for me, just not for the school." Kenta says as time is weird thing for him. He takes the pencil and begins marking the paper, the five lines of music bar get E-G-B-D-G written on them from bottome to top and the five spaces get F-A-C-E from bottom to top as well. "There are seven lettered notes in music, and 8 notes make up an octive. So from A to A would be one octive."

Erik nods and chuckles as he leans over the piece of paper, following it and giving a nod. "So from A to A would go A-C-E-F-A-C-E-F, yes? That would be one octive? Even in Piano?" He asks curiously about the terminology.

Kenta shakes his head. "No it would go. A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A, it goes in a cycle. Also known as Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do. Each bar holds nine notes, G to G is the standard. G-Chord also associated with the G clef." Kenta explains as he points at the certain notes on the paper.

"Oh, I was just going through F-A-C-E." Erik says with a chuckle as he nods and looks at the bars again. "Ok, DoReMi I did know, everyone has heard that one." He grins.

"Yeah the Do-Re-Mi is kind of the basic, since that's an octive and most things you'll be dealing with are octives." Kenta explains before moving to the piano and he plays eight notes, all the white keys, from low G to high G. "That's an octive of notes. That's the basics that you'll need to read music."

"Oh, I was just going through F-A-C-E." Erik says with a chuckle as he nods and looks at the bars again. "Ok, DoReMi I did know, everyone has heard that one." He grins.

"7 notes, 8 notes to an octaves." Erik nods. "Got it." He grins. "I get the feeling there is more to playing the piano then this, but at least it /seems/ simple so far."

"It always starts off seeming easy and even playing at first might seem easy, then you realize both hands have to be doing different things while reading two sets of notes." Kenta says with a laugh as he goes on to explain a few more things to Erik before taking a break. "So, Ethics, what drives someone to want to teach that?"

Erik chuckles. "It is a combination of law and philosophy." Erik says with a sincere smile. "Thinking about what we are doing and why we are doing it is essential to keep us doing it for the right reasons, I think. We cannot just say 'We have the power, so we're right to use it'."

"I know what Ethics are Erik." Kenta says with the laugh. "But I asks, what it is that drives you to want to teach it? I mean to me, sitting through the classes once was enough but having to repeat it every day several times a day, sounds boring as hell to me."

Erik laughs a little bit. "Because I think it is the most important thing that we can ask as mutants with these powers, and because I've seen the abuses that can result from people who don't consider it. I don't know why it is so fascinating to me; I've always liked law and philosophy." He grins and shrugs. "It's like describing why some people like cars, you know; some people are just good at them, just like them."

"That's stuffs always been boring to me. Though my Ethics teacher, Armande, he's who we named our son after, wasn't bad." Kenta admits. "He helped me learn a lot with my powers, especially how to control them. Dark Force isn't easy and that's why I've been trying to help that kid Owen. I've seen powers be used in ways they shouldn't and people with powers be used in ways they shouldn't."

Erik chuckles. "Well, imagine what I have seen my powers being used to do, Kenta." Erik says with a grin. "So you are doing the exact same thing that I am doing, but on a one on one level. I've seen a man with my powers do terrible things, and it inspired me to think about why we do what we do."

"I don't even want to begin to tell you what I was forced to do with my powers." Kenta says looking down with a shrug. "But that was a different world. Anyway I think I'm going to head down stairs and have a smoke." He's feeling that he needs one. "We'll do this on a regular basis and then I'll start assigning you 'homework'." Aka practice time.

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