Intro

Learning to play an instrument was always a requirement in my family growing up. My parents had a few rules though… no violin, no piano, and if I wasn’t enjoying it after a year, I could quit. I played many instruments… for a year.

You may notice that I was not allowed to play the piano. My mother considered her piano lessons as a child to be absolute torture. To her, the piano represented everything that she hated about her upbringing. It was a British upper-class accomplishment to prove to her parents’ well-to-do friends that they were raising a lady worth marrying. Very 1700’s right? I picture Jane Austin when I think about my mother’s childhood. And alas, she didn’t have a musical bone in her body, and her knuckles were hit with a ruler every time she played a wrong note. The sound of a piano was not one she wanted in the house.

I didn’t like music lessons either. They weren’t torture, but I was an intensely shy child and was generally uncomfortable with all of my teachers, and absolutely terrified of the recitals. I never understood why a performance was required at the end of a lesson set. I wanted  to learn an instrument, not perform for other people to prove that I was learning an instrument! I LOVED playing the cello, but I quit after a hideously embarrassing recital in which I completely froze.

The misgivings of my musical education still don’t sit well with me, and so it’s time to reframe!

Something I was good at!

There is something I was pretty good at. Singing. I had a good ear as a child and would always sing to myself in my room. Never in front of anyone! I obsessed over musicals like the Sound of Music, Annie, Oliver, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins, Les Misérables… the list goes on. As I matured, so did my musical taste, although I do still love a good musical. It’s hard to find good ones though; revivals tend to be terrible, unless it’s Disney. Hello Moana! Singing is an instrument that I didn’t have to be nagged to practice. I never really considered my voice to be an instrument, and so it wasn’t something I took lessons in until later on.

In high school, I joined a bunch of music groups. Mainly for the easy A’s. Concert band, Jazz band, Concert choir, Chamber choir, Jazz choir. Chamber & Jazz choir were the two that I genuinely enjoyed. They were auditioned groups, and we were really good! We were invited to several conferences around North America to perform, and we got to meet and learn from some incredible musicians. Singing with a genuine, down-south gospel group around a piano in a hotel lobby was incredible. We sang Amazing Grace. I will never forget it.

So where does the piano fit in?

Piano is almost always the accompaniment to singing in learning settings. When you’re handed new music, you sit at the piano and plunk out your part. The piano is also used to check your pitch. I was never formally taught to play the piano, but I knew how to read music and so as long as I could find middle C, I could figure out the song, or the beginning of it until I could take over by ear. I didn’t have to do that myself very often though because there were some very accomplished pianists in my choirs and so they typically took over. One of these pianists is my best friend, Emily, who I will be introducing you to later on in the term. Once I convince her to let me record her on Zoom!

Something Emily always said was that she was envious of people who could sing at the same time as play an instrument. She could never do it, although she didn’t improvise very much with her music. She was classically trained, and had trouble playing by ear. I will be experimenting with different methods of teaching myself how to play the piano.

 

Photo by Andrew Schultz on Unsplash