Learning to play the Piano...

Hi there, 

It occurred to me as I was leaving sixth form and school I had attended for a whole seven years that I have achieved many things that I wanted to do both academically and through sport, however, one metaphorical pie I never really stuck my abnormally long childhood fingers into was music. As long as I can remember I have wanted to play an instrument. 

Like most young girls my first insight into the world of music was learning to play the recorder in the free lessons that my teacher put on at my primary school. Unfortunately I had no natural ability with reading music and little patience with anything that took longer than half an hour to learn, so I gave up pretty swiftly. (But not until I begged my parents to buy me a tenor recorder. Oops.)

My second foray into music was singing in the school choir. I'll admit that the only reason I did this was so that I could keep up with my friends, all of which seemed to have some mystical ability to sing, and so that I could go on music trips. But I soon gave up on this after being told by a friend that I couldn't sing. (My dreams of becoming a rock star crushed forever! Oh the humanity!)

From then on I stuck to what I was good at, academia, art and sports. But there was a treble cleft shaped hole in my heart that needed to be filled!

At uni my gorgeous boyfriend ignited my passion for music once again. Listening to him play the piano brought back memories of being a child and watching many of my friends learn to play instruments. I was most jealous of my closest friend who was learning to play the piano. (This post sounds a bit dramatic now that I'm reading it back. Sorry about the back story. Nearly up to date.) So during the final months of uni I popped the question to my boyfriend and asked him to teach me piano, and he said yes! 

So I am learning piano!

It is possibly the hardest thing I have ever tried to learn in my whole life. Don't get me wrong the first couple of hours were full of success after success as I learnt the basics, but it soon got harder (harder than a thirteen year old boy after finding his older brothers Zoo Mag for the first time. That was disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself. Sorry.) But in all honesty, I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be so difficult to move my fingers to press the right keys at the right time, in the right time. Don't even get me started on trying to read the music. I feel like a tot trying to learn the alphabet for the first time, only this alphabet doesn't give you the letters to read, it wants you to know the order already and wants you then to convert this into actions. (As an English student I love my letters so being told I cant have then the paper confuses and frightens me to no end.) But I've been battling through it and I'm still making steady progress and have even become somewhat good at a grade one piece! 

One of the hardest things about learning to play the piano for me is not being instantly good at it like I have been with almost everything else. (I'm a modest person really, promise.) But the absolute hardest thing about learning piano is overcoming my anxiety at being thought of a stupid or useless at something and playing in front of Joe because I know that means getting it wrong maybe a hundred times before I get it right. My overwhelming desire to do everything perfect first time means that I often get overly stressed while playing and this makes me crap. I've already shed many a tear over piano and threatened to quit it altogether more than once and I am sure there is more to come. But I love it. I love being able to make music and when I am getting it right it makes me feel like I accomplished something amazing because I had to work for it. Working through my own kink in playing Creepy Crawly so that I now play it correctly is possibly my greatest moment. 

So yeah, expect more rants and updates as I continue to learn. Joe thinks I could be at grade five standard in six months but I'm not so sure. Either way I know that somewhere out there there is a two year old Chinese child who is already better at piano than me. (But then again there is always a Chinese child out there better than me at everything.) 

Thanks,
TheTinyBookworm
xx

Ps. I am learning to play Tale as Old as Time from Beauty and the Beast! My favorite Disney song from my favorite Disney film ever...I'm such a sad romantic. (I digress.)