A Change in Pitch

For a while now, my peers from Mrs. Schneider’s chorus class were accustomed to using our voices as instruments, changing our pitches as the notes changed as we would with instruments.  Holding out full notes in music, as we would with instruments. Now with an airborne virus amid us, our instruments were instructed to be put to rest. Our instruments, the only instrument some of us knew how to play, were considered a threat to the health of others and an accomplice to spreading a virus.

Though our instruments can’t be used, that doesn’t mean that we can’t find another: an instrument that’s navigable through our fingers and not our mind. An instrument unfamiliar to us, but it becomes familiar once we start playing. An instrument known as the piano to most, but as a substitute to us.

As with every instrument, we first learned the basics: the different staffs and notes. Then we put our knowledge to test. Playing the songs, we used to sing with an alternative instrument.  The notes we used to sing together, we now play alone at whatever volume we desire.

With our voices being the only thing that connects us, playing an almost foreign instrument alone is often undesirable. It was foreign to both our fingers and our minds. Making music alone is foreign to us, but there is comfort in the fact that we are learning it together: learning, playing and performing it together, but in walls that continue to separate us. Those walls that separate us will be the one thing that protects us long enough to unite us, so we could continue to use our vocal instruments alongside our newly introduced one. An instrument with a change in pitch now represents a change in our lives.