Pie-anna

As you know, the family music zone has been established, and in the weeks since, we've had some good times there - If anything we tend to get into competition about who gets the keyboard - everyone wants to play the keys:  I might need to get a second and third keyboard down there - rebuilding the deathstar from my old Harriet days?  Surely a nice Jupiter 8 and a PPG might be welcome?  (Did you hear that sound?  It's Pamela's teeth grinding, and she doesn't even know I'm writing this).

Moving the drums downstairs was easily the best idea - I can plug in my iPod and play along:  Tonight it was two Simple Minds songs, a Tears for Fears, and my new favorite love/hate song "Survival" by Muse.  Fun drums and a million fast fills.  And I can do it after everyone's asleep and nobody's the wiser.

As I've been playing the keys to accompany Bella's guitar playing, I have taken steps to actually start playing piano songs - I laid hands on my old Suzuki Method books, and am pleased to report that I am now playing approximately as well as I did when I was 10.  It was very strange to realize I still had muscle memory of a few of those songs.

It put me in the mind of my catastrophic experiences playing piano in college.  I had let my "chops" such as they were lapse well into high school and had fully embraced my new wave "pose over a two finger melody" method.  But part of me still thought I was good at piano:  I still went to piano lessons, but I forgot to practice, and thus I completely failed to advance.  In college, I kept trying to dodge the concept of piano, but had to take lessons as a part of the department...   and thinking back, again, I did not practice, and I did not advance in skills.

But since I was also mister synthesizer, I considered myself a good musician, just "in my own way"...   and if it was just that, it would have been fine, but some strange part of myself kept thinking of myself as a "Secretly excellent piano player if I just applied myself"  This delusion came to a head for me when a girl I liked who played Cello asked me if I played piano.  I said yes, and she said we should do a duet (which passes for courtship in a music department).  She gave me some sheet music and we set a date for a week later.

In that week, I did try to practice, and realized I really couldn't read music, I couldn't play those notes, my hands couldn't do those chords...  but somehow I still went to the date, with a strange feeling like I'd be able to pull it off.  It was some seriously deep delusion, and it was 15 minutes into the date and me not even able to play the first page, while she played very nicely...   I blocked out how I tried to pass it off, but I don't recall ever really fessing up.

I did try not to put myself into that position again - a flautist tried the "let's play a duet" thing a year later with me, and I was quick to say no, that's not what I do, and proudly played her one of my noise compositions.  She figured out I did music, but different music.

Long way around, but really some of those experiences have led to deep "piano shame" for me.  So I'm looking forward to re-approaching my the piano - getting back in at about the same place I was when I was good, and trying to have fun.  Also, it's a good and safe thing to be learning this with Isaac and Bella listening.

So my goal for this week is simple:  re-learn how to play Schumann's The Happy Farmer.