My Musical Story

A five year old girl sits on the wooden piano bench, her chubby fingers poised stiffly on the white keys. A worn, well-used book rests on the music stand, it's yellowy pages bent with old age. The pout on the girl's face could curdle milk as she rebelliously stares down the notes. The endless ticking of the metronome is the only sound in the tiny room.

The oldish man sitting next to the girl sighs. "So. Are you going to play the piece for me?"

Reluctantly, the girl nods and starts plunking out the awkward notes, wishing she was somewhere else. Playing outside with her brother would be fun...even doing math would be better than piano lessons, in her opinion.

Yep. That was me at about age five. My mom signed me up for piano lessons at an old shop that no longer exists. And boy, oh boy, did I ever give her grief about it! She says that it was my idea to start piano lessons...but I don't ever remember saying that I wanted to. I'm not doubting my mom or anything (well, okay. Maybe I am) but I seriously don't remember.

So...did you get the picture that I didn't really want to be playing the piano? Basically everyone else did. My mom, my dad, my brother, my teacher, my friends...

I think it was because of the scales. My teacher made me practice C scale five times before we began music lessons. And D scale. And F scale. And A scale. And...

The point is, I couldn't see the point. I felt that it was a waste of time just running my fingers up and down the keyboard. And I didn't really feel that I was very good at it, anyway.

After about six more painful years of scales and exercises, I finally started to notice something. I was improving! I could do long scale runs very fast in songs, and generally move my fingers quicker. Now I had moved out of the boring lane and gotten to the point where things got really fun. I actually got a little enthusiastic about going to piano lessons.

And then the music shop closed down. So we decided to switch--to an actual music school. My old teacher was more of a composer (maybe he'll be Beethoven II someday! Who knows?) and this would be an actual official music school.

I was really, really nervous, because I still didn't consider myself that skilled at piano. Erestor and I (Erestor plays the guitar) both had the same music teacher, who majored in guitar. And he taught me piano. Seriously.

However, there was only a few months of that before that piano teacher's wife began to teach me. And she is a wonderfully skilled pianist, not to mention a lot of fun. Sometimes she brings her dog, Bo, with her to lessons, and he'll sit under my bench.

Mrs. Y-- is still my teacher today, and she's a very good one. Although I got a lot of technical skills with my first teacher, not to mention my basic training and the beginnings of appreciation for music, a lot of my enthusiasm comes from Mrs. Y--. She makes lessons a lot of fun, and we end up talking about half the time. XD

Now, I'm possibly considering majoring in music in college, and also teaching (that actually would start at age 16).

One thing I learned from all of this...

Do. Scales. Every. Single. Day. You'll go very far.

Izori