It's times like this that I wish I was a skilled musician.

See, I've got SOME talent. What I've got little of is skill.

So, Rafi wants, for tomorrow, for me to teach the kids a song by Debbie Friedman about Hillel's three rules -- "If I'm not for myself, etc." It's called, "Im ein ani li mi li", naturally enough. And I've got it in one of my songbooks.

But I've never HEARD it before.

I've got a keyboard that undauntra left with me when she moved to Far Away Land, which is good. So I'm now sitting around, hunting and pecking at the keyboard trying to work out how the song goes.

I mean, I've figured out that "three sharps is the key of A", which is good, and is making things a bit easier, since I can figure out where to put my fingers on the keyboard, and I know the scale I'm working in. But still . . . I kind of wish that I'd not only TAKEN a class in music theory in high school, but actually PASSED it. I kind of wish that I'd not only SIGNED UP for a class in keyboard in college, but actually NOT DROPPED IT after two weeks.

I kind of wish that I'd studied reading music at some point more recently than sixth grade.

On the other hand, I think I can be happy that I grew up in the era when we DID have things like elementary school muisic classes which taught us how to read music. But, still. . . this is such a pain to do when one isn't very good at it.

Okay, so I'm finally making some progress on that song

But only some.

See, I hacked away at it for a while, and finally decided to see if I couldn't find some online snippets of the song. I found two thirty-second excerpts of it on various CD-selling sites, and listened to it, and I think I understand the logic of the song now.

Of course, the CHORDS don't fit that logic.

Okay, I also transposed the chords, because it was obvious that the song was played capoed up two frets, but with the fingershapes transposed down a full step.

What did that last sentence mean? Well, on a guitar, you can get a "capo" which is a little bar that can go across the neck making the neck effectively shorter. It's an easy way to transpose songs higher.

Some chords are easier to play than others. For instance, most of the chords that you'd play in a song that was written in the key of G are fairly easy. A lot of the ones you'd play in the key of A are harder.

This song was written in the key of A. That means that it's obvious that it was actually played in the key of G, capoed up two frets. I know this because I've played with Debbie Friedman. (And, frankly, I'm a better guitarist than she is.)

Anyway. . . the chords don't work quite. Like, the chords are chords that have MOST of the notes that should be theoretically in there, but they're not quite the RIGHT chords. And I'm remembering what a couple of my friends did -- they'd asked Debbie Friedman to write a song for a conference they were doing, and she did, and they re-wrote all the chords because, y'know, they were the wrong chords.

This sucks. 'Cause, see, Debbie Friedman is one of the most talented Jewish music kids-songs composers, like, ever. And she really is. And she writes these songs that you really want to play for your Hebrew school, or your Jewish day camp (basically, if you know any modern Jewish songs, odds are either she or Jeff Klepper wrote it.) But, see, she doesn't have a music theory background, which makes the songs hard to learn.

So, I'm sitting here asking myself -- "Can I rework all the chords to the song before I have to go to sleep tonight? And still put together a lesson for tomorrow? And then LEARN the song well enough to teach it, having never HEARD the song?"