Daughter has been struggling with the theory portion of her piano lessons. After her Chinese (doesn't that just explain everything) piano teacher's gimlet eyed stare at me and a quick whispered suggestion of maybe reviewing her homework before the piano lesson, I told Daughter today to start her music hw and to ask if she needed any help.

About a second later, "Mommy, I need help with my homework!!!"

Bloody hell. Her year of lessons has already surpassed my meager musical abilities. But of course I'm supposed to know everything right? She's supposed to write out an example of each major scale with all accompanying sharps and flats. I can musically pick it out if I try it on the piano, but to actually write it out? OMFG.

So of course I turn to the web to search for something, anything on the difference between a sharp and a flat and does anyone have an example of how write one of these stupid things out? No such luck on the inital try, just syllabi and quizzes and assignments of college courses assigning such things. I was thinking, if bloody Calculus textbooks have the answer to the odd numbered questions, why can't a second grade music theory book have the stupid answers!! Anyways, after a frantic search, I hit upon OMFG I love you WIKIPEDIA. I was able to discern that each major has a certain number of sharps included in it...and after browsing her other songbooks, that the extra sharps that weren't played in the scale were to be put on the side by the treble/base cleff.

So yeah, after struggling for a bit, it turned out not to be that bad. I think in second grade I was only concerned about monkey bars and reading that Jane and Dick ran up this hill and then ate moon pies or something.

What the hell happened?