Theory

When Alan was an adolescent, he started to struggle to connect with Mom and Dad. Who doesn't? When things got really tense when I was visiting from college or from med school, I would drive him out to Barnes and Noble to let him calm down. I told him that I, too, had struggled at that age with them. It's hard to be mature enough to form all these thoughts, but not be mature enough to know when they don't matter. For me, it was Lynne Slattery Schroeder who first set me straight on that. For Alan, I felt it was my job. I told him that parents were like that -- that you couldn't change them, and that it was easier to change 5 hard things about yourself than one easy thing about someone else.

On the drive, we would listen to my Dave Brubeck CDs, and I started ear training with him. We talked about basic music theory. We used pieces with weird meters to practice hearing the beat.

Blue Rondo a la Turk, 9/8 broken up as 2-2-2-3/3-3-3:

Take Five, 5/4:

I think he played a version of this at his senior recital with Ed Hou and Ryley Crowe. I am waiting to get footage of this from our parents. I also played it with our jazz band, Gyrase, in med school. Too bad we never played it together.

Unsquare Dance, 7/8:

Later, Uncle Steve and his friend Jordan would introduce him to more jazz, but this was his start. Our sharing of music went both ways. He was always introducing me to new things, but this was something I introduced to him.

In retrospect, this was the beginning of our tradition of car conversations. It often felt like we were each other's co-pilots, driving through life together. I'm sure now, I'm not the only one feeling a bit lost without Alan in the passenger seat.