Music theory class

When you learn something and forget it, where does the knowledge go? Is is still in your brain, stored someplace that's inaccessible, kind of like a misplaced file? Or, if knowledge isn't used for a long time, does your brain erase it the way we do when we clean out our computers by deleting old documents? And if you re-learn something you previously knew, does that count as learning something new? For the purposes of my blog, I say it does.

Yestersday I began a "music theory" class with the director of the Jackson Hole Chorale. We're learning the very basics, like notes, measures, rests, etc. I know I learned all this 40 years ago when I took piano after school and learned to play the recorder in the fourth grade. But these days, as a tenor in the chorale, I find I can't hit notes or find beats without first hearing other tenors since the part. And while they're good, they don't always know what they're doing either.

Our first class started with basics: the clefs, notes, rests, ect. It was much more complex than I expected. My immediate aim is to just keep up with the class. My more ambitious goal is to be able to read music again. And I guess a really longterm goal is to not be 80 years old and blogging about taking a music theory class because I forgot what I learned 30 years ago.