Crotchet equals ten. Chapter Two.

 

Adem's English had only improved a little when it was time for Petar to go to secondary school. Adem was a devout Catholic, so his son was destined to attend St. Patrick's College. The school was well over one hundred years old and had been moved to Kilbirnie from its old site near the city centre. When Adem met with the year 9 dean, he gave Petar's official name as P. Enis. One can only blame this decision on his poor English. This decision was to make life hard for the boy from his very first day at college. No pun intended, but he became the butt of everyone's jokes - students and teachers alike. Maybe it was an attempt to be kind, but his form teacher called him Jimmy, and this caught on with all the form class members.

Jimmy Petar became quite withdrawn and found solace in his violin playing. He found his metronome to be a fascinating tool, and he used it all the time. For some reason he found crotchet = 120 to be like the rhythm of his body, his life blood. This was his 'home' tempo and he related all his practice and playing to it. 

He even bought an old style 'swinging arm' clockwork metronome that he found in an op shop. Metronomes were becoming a bit of an obsession.

He would move above his 'home' tempo to practise faster tunes, but he never forgot that practice at slow tempos produced very good results.

The slowest tempo available on his electronic metronome was crotchet = 10. He tried to make his mechanical metronome go slower than this, but the swinging arm couldn't cope. Metronomes are all about time. The concept of time was starting to control his violin playing, but the results were all good. Time is a vital part of playing music that too often gets overlooked in practice sessions.

The influence of his metronome soon started to go beyond his violin playing. As he walked from the bus stop to the school grounds, his walking naturally fell into crotchet = 120 though, on days when he was dreading being there, he found himself walking at crotchet = 100 or even crotchet = 80.

Passing students thought it was funny to yell out his name to him, "Hi P. Enis! What's up, my boy?" Petar just listened to the metronome and walked on. For Petar it was like the metronome was controlling all of life. Maybe other people didn't realise its true power?

To be continued.