The Accidental Pianist
"I do not play this instrument so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my own fault because I would not take the trouble of practicing."
-Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (the BBC miniseries)
My father is one of those lucky people who have inborn talent as a pianist. As a child he progressed so rapidly that by age 12 he was called to play the piano for priesthood meetings, and as a teenager he earned spending money by playing the organ for one of the local Christian churches. He was eventually offered the chance to study under a "master," and who knows, maybe he could have been a professional musician.
However, my father preferred baseball to music, choosing high school baseball over further musical development.
Of course, once he had daughters my parents must have wondered if that talent would get passed down. We were all enrolled in piano lessons at a young age. However, my mother was not inclined to nag and force us to do something that we didn't want to do. So very early on both of my sisters quit. I continued-- I did want to learn how to play and I showed a tiny modicum of potential-- but I was adverse to practicing much. Well, practicing at all.
Like I said, my mom wasn't into forcing me to do it. So I did get the occasional reminder to practice, but she never sat me down with a clock and said, "You will practice for 30 minutes or you will not leave this piano bench!" or something equally inspiring. But for the most part, it meant I often went to my once a week piano lessons without having touched the piano once during the week.
Sometimes it took me a long, long time to pass off a song.
In fact, my piano teacher eventually tired of my inadequate (non-existent) effort and dropped me from her roster of students. It was very humiliating.
However, it prepared me for my future role as a church pianist in a very essential way. See, since I never practiced, most of my piano lessons consisted of me sight-reading. (Sight-reading in music is when you sit down and play a piece that you have never practiced-- sometimes never even having heard the song before.)
As a missionary serving in musician-deprived branches, and later living in Sanders, I have frequently been called on to just sit down and play whatever they tell me to play. It's not so bad in the small congregations like that-- nobody has high expectations and they don't care how badly you play as long as there is some music.
Now our ward in Florence is not a small congregation by any definition, and there are people who know what the music should sound like so it's a little more intimidating. But yesterday, as I was grabbed to play for a few minutes in Primary, and then later when I played for Relief Society, I realized that I had played three songs that I had never played before. (Two of them I had never even heard before.) And though I didn't play them perfectly, I still managed to get through them.
So you see, it was actually a good thing that I was too lazy to practice the piano! Right??? (Don't tell M that though.)
-Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (the BBC miniseries)
My father is one of those lucky people who have inborn talent as a pianist. As a child he progressed so rapidly that by age 12 he was called to play the piano for priesthood meetings, and as a teenager he earned spending money by playing the organ for one of the local Christian churches. He was eventually offered the chance to study under a "master," and who knows, maybe he could have been a professional musician.
However, my father preferred baseball to music, choosing high school baseball over further musical development.
Of course, once he had daughters my parents must have wondered if that talent would get passed down. We were all enrolled in piano lessons at a young age. However, my mother was not inclined to nag and force us to do something that we didn't want to do. So very early on both of my sisters quit. I continued-- I did want to learn how to play and I showed a tiny modicum of potential-- but I was adverse to practicing much. Well, practicing at all.
Like I said, my mom wasn't into forcing me to do it. So I did get the occasional reminder to practice, but she never sat me down with a clock and said, "You will practice for 30 minutes or you will not leave this piano bench!" or something equally inspiring. But for the most part, it meant I often went to my once a week piano lessons without having touched the piano once during the week.
Sometimes it took me a long, long time to pass off a song.
In fact, my piano teacher eventually tired of my inadequate (non-existent) effort and dropped me from her roster of students. It was very humiliating.
However, it prepared me for my future role as a church pianist in a very essential way. See, since I never practiced, most of my piano lessons consisted of me sight-reading. (Sight-reading in music is when you sit down and play a piece that you have never practiced-- sometimes never even having heard the song before.)
As a missionary serving in musician-deprived branches, and later living in Sanders, I have frequently been called on to just sit down and play whatever they tell me to play. It's not so bad in the small congregations like that-- nobody has high expectations and they don't care how badly you play as long as there is some music.
Now our ward in Florence is not a small congregation by any definition, and there are people who know what the music should sound like so it's a little more intimidating. But yesterday, as I was grabbed to play for a few minutes in Primary, and then later when I played for Relief Society, I realized that I had played three songs that I had never played before. (Two of them I had never even heard before.) And though I didn't play them perfectly, I still managed to get through them.
So you see, it was actually a good thing that I was too lazy to practice the piano! Right??? (Don't tell M that though.)
Comments
So while that's awesome, it presents an equally un-awesome problem in that I don't progress well at all. I can sight-read like crazy, but after that I don't get any better. I can practice and practice and perhaps I can improve my speed, but I make the same mistakes repeatedly that I made when I first played it. People tell me, "Oh, just get a couple of days of practice under your belt and it'll sound much better!" Uh, no it won't. What you're hearing now is exactly what it'll sound like a week from now, unfortunately. Practice does nothing for me.
So I kinda screwed myself with that one. But oh how I wow them with that first time! And then never thereafter!