A piano update

I haven't talked about piano lessons as much lately. They've kind of become a part of my life, and practicing - even though I have days when I really don't want to* - has also become a part of my life.

(*Of course, I also have days when I really don't want to work out, or really don't want to eat that salad with dinner, or any other number of things).

It's interesting. I think a person's progress in a skill like this isn't necessarily steady - that there are times of rapid increase, followed by plateaus, where you don't really see anything change. I think my skills recently went through (maybe still are going through) a "growth spurt;" seemingly-suddenly I'm able to play things with ease that I stumbled through a few months ago.

I've actually gone back to a few "earlier" pieces and tried playing them again - some of the simpler Bach learning pieces (the Anna Magdalena Book pieces). And I also dug out a few of the "beginner" books I had that had simple arrangements of stuff. I have one from the days when I FIRST took lessons (back in the early 80s) that was simple arrangements of some of the songs from Sound of Music. When I first started taking lessons, I couldn't quite play them. Maybe a year in, I could kind of play them, but it would take practice to be able to play them reasonably well. Now, when I pulled the book out this week, I can play through the pieces pretty much without a hitch**. I realize that they're simplified arrangements but it's just nice to be able to sit down and play something without having to toil and sweat over it. There's a nice arrangement in there of "Edelweiss" (probably my favorite of the ones in there) that pretty well captures the spirit of the song. And while "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is clearly a simplified arrangement, still, it does more or less get the feeling of the song. (They don't have an arrangement of "I Have Confidence," which is probably my favorite song out of the movie, but oh well).

I suppose there's not a lot of heuristic value in playing stuff that's much, much easier than what you're actually working on, but there's enjoyment value in being able to play something without great effort, and there's confidence value in being able to play something through mistake-free.

(**My teacher says I seem to be very good at sight-reading; that might be part of it.)

She asked me last week if I'd consider playing "Für Elise" at the spring recital. I kind of demurred, saying I didn't know...I'm still thinking of the previous recital I attempted and how THAT went, with a shorter simpler piece. I don't know. I think for me to do it what I'd have to do was first get a bunch of different people - people from church, maybe colleagues - and sit them down and play it for them - in a different venue than my own home or the piano classroom - to convince myself I could do it. And even then I might get stage fright. She didn't ask me this week (I was prepared to ask her if I could have a bit longer to think on it). I am still unsure. I didn't go into this with the plan of performing; I went into it for the joy of learning something new and for being able to play for myself. But, I don't know. A good recital performance would convince me that I actually COULD do it.

It's so bizarre. I can get up in front of a huge group of people and talk about my research or what I teach, no problems. I could get up in front of a huge group of people and talk about what I know of the history of knitting or quilting or crochet, no problems. I can pray out loud in front of other people. But I've NEVER been able to be comfortable playing an instrument (either back in the day, when I played the clarinet, or now, when I'm learning piano) in front of people. I don't know if it's that somewhere, deep down, I have a Nero Wolfe-like distrust of "machines" (though a piano is an awfully simple machine compared to some I use) and that they will somehow betray me, or what. Or maybe it's that I've been speaking since, I don't know, I was 10 months old or something (my parents tell me I spoke early, and what's more, spoke complete sentences early) and have been learning the instrument a much shorter time than that. What gets me is how that one time in the recital how the stage fright blindsided me - I was not planning on it, was not expecting it, but WHAM, there it hit me when I walked up on stage.