Read Wolf Notes and Other Musical Mishaps for Free Online Page B

red apples, and filled a plastic bottle with tap water.
    She heard someone’s feet stomp down the stairs and hid the picnic in a bag under the sink. Now she could enjoy a day of music lessons, before taking the food to James in the evening.
    The kitchen door crashed open and Zoe marchedin, wearing clumpy shoes that made her a head taller than Helen. “Aha. Still licking jam off your fingers? I hope you wash your hands before you touch your violin.
    “I just want to tell you it’s very important to know your place in an orchestra and I am senior to you, so that violin solo is mine. Do you understand ? Do you promise not to get in my way, baby girl?”
    “I’ve decided not to make too many promises this week. But don’t worry, Zoe, being a better fiddler than you is not my main priority.”
    “Quite right, you just concentrate on learning what you can from me. And please remember, ‘fiddle’ is baby language. Big people call it a violin!” She stomped back out again.
    Helen grinned. Being better than Zoe wasn’t her main priority, but it was near the top of the list. If any audience was going to hear her play this week, they would hear her play a solo.
    So she mustn’t be late for her first lesson with Professor Greenhill. She dashed upstairs for her fiddle, then out of the door leading from their wing into the old lodge. She found herself in the dining room and slid to a halt. Which way was the Professor’s study?
    She noticed that all the windows at the south end of the dining room were huge, giving an amazing view of the loch and mountains in front of the lodge. All the windows at the back of the room were small and poky.
    It was like the lodge was facing the mountains, gazing at the picture postcard landscape, but ignoring the forest at its back. Helen grinned, tempted to give a panto yell of “it’s behind you!” This summer’s drama was happening among the dark trees, out of sight, not in the brightly-lit mountains.
    She shook her head and jogged towards the door near the front windows. It led to a long corridor decorated with big maps of Scotland; a corridor decorated narrower by piles of cardboard boxes full of “What’s on in the Highlands” magazines, and empty display stands for flyers.
    At the end of the hallway, she arrived at a closed door with a laminated white sign:
    PROFESSOR FAY GREENHILL’S STUDY PLEASE KNOCK
    ( PLEASE DON’T KNOCK IF YOU CAN HEAR MUSIC)
    The flautist from breakfast, Juliet, was sitting outside listening to the flute music floating from the room.
    Helen sat opposite her. “Are you next? I thought I was in at ten.”
    “No, I’m waiting for my friend, Amelia. She’s had the first lesson of the whole school.”
    “Have you been listening? Does it sound like the Professor is a hard teacher?”
    Juliet shrugged. “There’s been a fair bit of good music in the last ten minutes, but it started off with a lot of nervous silence.”
    Helen grimaced. “I’m pretty nervous too. Playing in front of the great Professor! I bet I play my wolf note about a million times in the first five minutes.”
    “Your wolf note? What’s that? I thought violinists used horsehair, not wolf hair!”
    “I don’t think wolf hair would be long enough to string a bow!” Helen smiled. “But we do have wolf notes, because some violins, especially old ones like mine, have one note that makes the whole instrument reverberate strangely, kind of eerily, like a wolf howling. When you learn which string and fingering produce your wolf note, you try to avoid it. The more nervous you are, the more danger there is of you playing it.
    “Almost every cello has a wolf note, even the modern ones. Don’t flutes have a dodgy note?”
    Juliet shrugged. “The flute doesn’t … but flute players can do. Every time I change register suddenly , one particular note cracks. It makes me really nervous when I see that note in a piece of music near a big change.”
    “Does that note have a name?” Helen