Relearning How to Play the Piano

I can’t remem­ber whether or not I bur­bled about this already, but if this is a repeat you can get extra hugs the next time I see you or some­thing. We have a work­ing, mar­velous, beau­ti­ful piano! It’s the freecy­cled Korg 88-key dig­i­tal that I men­tioned way back in Novem­ber, all clean and func­tion­al thanks to my sweet Sam. It sounds so good! It even feels right, unlike any elec­tron­ic key­board I’ve ever tried to play. I learned to play on an acoustic piano, and the feel is just dif­fer­ent. This piano has nice­ly weight­ed keys to help old­sters like me, and they’re even touch-sen­si­tive, like a “real” (acoustic) piano. And it has two ped­als! (There’s a pic­ture of a sim­i­lar mod­el down there under the “read more” link.)

It won’t go out of tune. We can record any­thing that’s played on it. There are not one, but two head jack ports, so that, say, a teacher and stu­dent could hear the stu­den­t’s attempts with­out both­er­ing any­one else in the household. 

Yes, I like it!

Now I need to find appro­pri­ate “learn to play” books writ­ten for the adult stu­dent, but the only ones I’ve seen in the past assume absolute­ly no musi­cal knowl­edge or expe­ri­ence. I think I’d like to take lessons again, but I’m almost afraid to do so. Still, does any­one know of a good teacher in the Decatur area? Have any rec­om­men­da­tions for appro­pri­ate instruc­tion books?

Katie took lessons for a cou­ple of years before her father died. He nev­er got a piano, but she did (and still does) have a key­board. I’m real­ly hop­ing she’ll decide to start lessons again. Of course, if she does we’ll have to find a teacher. The girl has such per­fect hands for the instru­ment, all slen­der and ele­gant, with such long fin­gers! She’s had bet­ter reach than I do for years, now.

Once upon a time, I was good enough to accom­pa­ny myself while prac­tic­ing voice pieces. I did­n’t play in pub­lic, gen­er­al­ly, but I did direct and accom­pa­ny a senior cit­i­zen’s choir a life­time or so ago. I haven’t had reg­u­lar access to a work­ing piano since I was 21 or so, and 20 years of no prac­tice real­ly shows. Add to that the fact that I lost most of the feel­ing in my left hand dur­ing that time, and you can prob­a­bly under­stand why I’m pret­ty much start­ing over.

It’s far more frus­trat­ing to start over. You know how the music should sound, you can remem­ber play­ing it well, you know how your mus­cles should work. But they don’t. It’s humiliating.

I had saved all of my “learn to play piano” books, but since nei­ther Moth­er nor I can find them, I believe that my sis­ter and/or broth­er “help­ful­ly” tossed them out at some point in the past, when my music was stored in my par­ents’ home. I had planned to go back through them until I found my cur­rent “lev­el,” then prac­tice the drills and songs and such ’til I could retrain my mus­cles. It isn’t as if I’ve for­got­ten how to read music, or any of the the­o­ry, after all. Okay, I haven’t for­got­ten much of the the­o­ry. I’m just rusty on it.