I walked to Mrs. Windsor’s house as I always did when I heard the piano. Before ringing the bell, I stood against the wall and sighed sadly. I daydreamed what I’d rather be doing. I had been tutored enough to read, understand, and even write some musical compositions, but I just didn’t have a gift for it. But Mrs. Windsor had offered to give me the lessons for free, so I felt it my duty to try.

The door opened. I walked in, sat down on the piano bench and began to sort through my sheet music. Today Mrs. Windsor introduced her niece Pasha to teach me. With a smile, Pasha sat beside me on the piano bench, opened my sheet music to the beginning page and asked me to play. I arranged my fingers on the keys. Then I frowned (皱眉) and concentrated to make the notes on the page match the finger movements. I had to admit I was a rather mechanical pianist.

After about a page or two, Pasha gently put her hand on top of mine as if to calm my fingers. There was a long pause. “Jennifer, what are you hearing in the music?” I looked at her rather strangely and admitted I didn’t know what she meant.

“Here, let me try and you listen,” Pasha advised.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her fingers dance lightly over the keys. Then, she began to play.

“See, it begins here beside some kind of river. Hear the water flowing beside you?”

Her fingers rose and fell gently on the keys. “Now the princess appears and she’s picking flowers from the water’s edge.” A happy piece of music filled the air in time to Pasha’s dancing fingers. “Oh, but she slips!” The music changed. “And our princess is being carried off by the fast-flowing stream. Quickly, the princess’ horse sees her plight (困境) and races to the river’s edge where he swims out to let her catch hold of him. Luckily, they make it to the bank and she hugs her faithful horse.” Pasha finished with a big smile and then looked at me.

I was delighted and advised to try another one. Pasha smiled and together we played many pieces of music that afternoon, finding the stories in the music and learning that sometimes it takes a friend to pull you out of the river onto dry land again.

GRAMMY award-winning blues harmonica (口琴) player Sugar Blue made his first China performance in December 2017. Chinese audiences were amazed by his stormy playing of the harmonica.

Born on December 16, 1949 in New York, Sugar Blue is a great singer and composer. Sugar Blue’s love for music comes from his mother. Till today, he still vividly remembers the first time his mother took him to the Apollo Theater to see Stevie Wonder, a music genius. The way Wonder played the harmonica onstage greatly impressed Sugar Blue and made him even more determined to spend his life working on his musical dream.

Sugar Blue’s musical career has been quite smooth, in which New York City plays an integral part. At that time, the musical atmosphere in New York was very diverse, jazz, blues, pop, rock, etc.

He tries to pour everything that he feels about a song into it. His inspiration comes from people and the things that he comes across in his daily life, involving personal relationships, love, work, and daily struggles. In his eyes, you can write about the wonderful things that happen to you and you can also write about things that are not so good. He also draws inspiration from literature. Besides poetry, Zora Neale Hurston’s book also influenced him a lot, which is in his eyes “poetry from the first word to the last.”

Among the cities he has been to, Shanghai is his favorite. “In Shanghai, there’s rock and roll, jazz, hip-hop, traditional Chinese music. I had a wonderful experience.” he said. “The city itself is full of life and energy.”

In his new album, Sugar Blue writes a song about Shanghai to show his special love of it. The song features well-known Chinese sheng musician’s playing. Sugar Blue loves this song and highly values such cooperation with Chinese musicians.

7 . In 1957, Max Vernon Mathews wrote the first computer program called Music, which enabled a computer to create sound and play it back. He was then working as an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. It enabled a large IBM computer to play a seventeensecond piece of music he had written.

The computer was so slow that it took an hour to play the seventeensecond piece of music. So Mathews moved the work to a tape player to play the music at a normal speed. He later said that the sound quality of the musical notes was not great, but the technical importance of the music was huge.

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke visited Bell Laboratories in the 1960s. He heard a computer “sing” the song Daisy Bell on devices (设备) and learned about the programs developed by Mathews and other engineers. Clarke noted this technology in his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was later made into a movie.

Mathews continued creating other versions of the Music program. He became interested in how computers could help musicians outside recording studios. The Groove program he developed was the first computer program made for live performances.

He also developed an electronic device he called the Radio Baton, which looks like two drum sticks. It enables the user to control the speed and sound levels of orchestral music (管弦乐) played on a computer by moving the two sticks on a special electronic surface.

Mathews said he believed modern musicians were not making full use of the power of computer music. He said a violin always sounds like a violin. But with his Music, the way a violin sounds is unlimited. He did not want computer sounds to replace live music, but he hoped computers would one day be considered serious instruments.

Over the past twenty years, American country music has become more and more popular. Song writers are no longer writing about the modern values of the USA—money, success or expensive things to buy. Instead, they are writing once more about things that are common for everyone: feeling alone in the modern world, the value of having good friends and so on.

In the 1950s, American music was about other things, for example, love—getting or losing a boyfriend or girlfriend. Money was also thought to be important.

Then in the 1960s, song writers turned to other subjects. During these years many young students were angry with society, so songs were often full of anger. Political leaders were not well thought of.

Today country music has returned. It has become big business and brings in between 200 and 400 million dollars a year. Once, the home of American country music was Nashville, Tennessee. Now, however, the music has reached all parts of the States, from Los Angeles in the west to New York in the east. Singers do not just come from the States but from all over the world. There are many famous singers from Britain, Canada and Australia. A lot of them appear on television too.

The first country singers sang while playing the guitar. It was easy for them to carry a guitar on their travels. Now, however, a lot of electrical equipment is needed for large theatres.

Country music today still remains very popular.