When taking up a new endeavor, the word practice is thrown into the mix almost immediately. I’m familiar enough with the idea, and sure, I may even agree on its merits. Growing up playing classical music, practice was associated with work. It was the time spent working on learning, but it was absolutely work. A minimum amount of time was encouraged (or required, depending on your circumstance). As one who thinks a lot about language (I’m an interpreter, so it comes with the territory), I think about the word practice and compare it to the rehearsals of my theater days, and study time in college.
When I got interested in playing piano, it was because I wanted something to enjoy, to bring peace, and to play music which felt calming or good. I wanted to play the music which had been so helpful to listen to. There’s no doubt that dedicated, structured practice can lead to the ability to play, but the thought of working in such a manner has felt antithetical to why I wanted to learn piano in the first place. I want to learn in a calm way, which for me means learning in a way which is less rigidly structured, and more about what feels motivating and good. I had a few months in the spring of this year where I recognized that technique is important, and spent a good bit of time focusing on such skills. I realized soon enough that I was neglecting learning music in that time, and have since corrected course.
So where does that leave me as someone who likes to write, and has started a blog to write about my journey of learning piano? I note the irony here, of course, that the act of creating a website and blog itself seems to be a way to organize something I’m otherwise not fond of organizing. So I think of it this way: I quite enjoy reading about others’ experiences learning, so it might be interesting to write about and document my own. I want a scrapbook, in a way, of how I’ve learned what I’ve learned, and how I’m reflecting on what I’m learning. In other words, a study of my own study, one which I’m not concretely planning out but which I’d like to reflect on as I go. A way to show my work, and to think and learn out loud. I’m curious to see how I progress, and even to see how my philosophy of study may shift over time. In short, for me piano has been less about structure and formal practice and more about curiosity and study. I spend time playing, and indeed practicing what I learn, though I like to think of that time as being spent studying, learning music, learning to relax, learning to get in touch with how my fingers move, and I can create music and feeling through them.
I have no idea what this will ultimately look like, and that’s perhaps the most interesting thing of all.
In December of of 2021, I bought a digital piano. I’d spent a a few years wondering what it might be like to learn to play. As often happens as kids, music is something others suggest we try. In my case, my folks decided guitar lessons would be good, so at five years old, I started lessons. In the fourth grade, I got curious about violin, so I added that to the mix. Violin lessons carried me through high school and into college, from music camps to orchestra to playing solo just because I enjoyed it.
As life moved on, college gave way to graduate school, and gradually my musical endeavors subsided as graduate school gave way to a new field that required so much of my time and energy. “I’m so busy, I don’t have time for music,” I said, and believed at the time. My love for it remained, but for years I hardly played. Eventually, as I came to terms with my life’s many changes, I began to reevaluate my possessions in no small part of reading and taking in the wisdom of Marie Kondo. I realized that my guitar, and my violin, were sitting in my home and waiting to be played and enjoyed. I decided to thank my instruments for all they taught me, and let them seek new students to teach and help find joy in music.
In 2016, I donated my guitar to a local school that needed instruments for students to be able to practice in lessons and groups. In 2019, I took my violin to a local shop to be repaired and sold, and in the fall of 2021, my violin found a new home. In the intervening years, I had fostered a new enjoyment and fascination with piano, and a simmering idea started to emerge that maybe, someday, I might learn to play. But instruments are not cheap, and I also had a focus of paying off my graduate student loans, so I put the idea on the back burner and focused on getting out of debt. I had refinanced my loans long before the pandemic, so still kept up payments until, amazingly, I was able to pay them off at last in the summer of 2021. That fall, my violin finally sold, and suddenly I had just what I needed to start my piano journey.
In my area, many of our local music shops have closed since the advent of big box and chain retailers moved in, and I was determined not to order online or through a large chain store. I wanted to find a local music shop to support, and was fortunately able to find one about 50 miles away which carried a number of different types of digital pianos. I wanted something simple but decent, and after trying a number of floor models, decided to order a middle of the road Roland. The store didn’t have the model I had in mind, but I took a leap of faith and ordered it anyway. Conventional wisdom suggested trying out any instrument before purchasing, but two years into the pandemic, everything was in short supply. I trusted that the piano I ordered would be a great instrument for me, and I haven’t been disappointed. I ordered it in the first week of December 2021, and while it was estimated not to shop until March 2022, I got very lucky and it arrived by the end of December.
Elated, I put my piano together and set out to start learning. My only experience with piano was playing chopsticks with friends, and using it to find tones to tune my other instruments. My piano came with a few months of free access to an online platform called Pianote, and upon signing up and giving it a try, I was shocked to discover how quickly they taught simple chords, inversions, and popular chord progressions to songs. I have since been happily working my way through their curriculum, and have found it an excellent place to start my piano journey. I’ve gone from being very timid at the keys to confident in some scales, chords and inversions, arpeggios, some pop songs (and even more to my surprise, I’ve found I love to sing while I play; though I know my singing needs a lot of work, so perhaps with time, I’ll try to improve at that, too), and am now working on learning to read music for piano. Despite a break from playing for many years, I’ve discovered that my sight reading skills, while rusty from time away, are still there. Of course, learning to read bass clef with the same ease of treble clef is still taking a lot of effort, but I can tell I’m making progress.
I’m not a terribly organized student, so sometimes I’ve found my study to be a bit unfocused and haphazard. Hence, I decided that as a long-time old-school blogger, I’d start a blog dedicated to my study. It’ll serve as a nice way to see how I learn, perhaps occasionally show my work as I do, and to keep note of different music, learning tools, and resources I find along the way. I hope to also keep note of songs and pieces I learn as I build my repertoire, while also keeping note of future music I hope to learn down the road. Perhaps you, dear reader, might find something helpful on your own musical journey.
The world needs music, and art, and kindness, and love, and creativity, and empathy, and peace. I hope that by playing, and writing, I can find this peace within, and share and help others find this peace, too. Thanks for reading.