Sharon Shares 

Extracts From The Last Note By Sharon McMahan

A Budding Songwriter
As I was growing up, I Started to take notice of the songs coming from the radio. One day when I came home from school, I was listening to the radio and one of the songs I liked came on. It was called Mother-in-law by Ernie K. Doe. I was twelve years old. I remember sitting at the piano and really talking time to concentrate on the beat and how the singing came in.
The more I listened, I began to think to myself that I should be able to copy that beat on to the piano. I started out by finding the note in bas and I began to play it with the left hand, to the beat. After playing the bass for a few bars, I tried to find the cord that would match with the right hand.Once I had both the bass and the chord, I started playing them back and forth like a drum and I was able to get the rhythm going as I played along with the song on the radio.

After the song was over, I sat there and thought about what I had just done. I was very surprised. I asked myself, “what just happened” ? After thinking about it for a minute or two, I concluded that I should be able to make up my own songs.