The Miracle of Singing Together

The chills were running up and down in the most predictable way; I just wanted to avoid melting onto the floor in a simpering, weeping puddle.  “Dona nobis pacem, pacem”.   The music was enveloping us; it almost sounded as if it were above us, and below us.  It surrounded us.  As a round, there would be no official ending to it; and I could see that no one wanted an ending.  It was taking on a life unto itself. “Dona nobis pacem, pacem”.  A beautiful sound from over one hundred college men.  Only a handful claimed to be singers, but it didn’t matter.  The singing was totally unself-conscious.  It was a revelation, and an important bonding for these young men, and for me.  I’ve not forgotten this experience, and I hope I never will.  But how did a piano-picker like me wind up in an auditorium with one hundred men I didn’t even know?  We were introduced by a common love.  We learned to know, respect and love each other through the one thing that we had in common… the love of music.  But, let me give you a little background.

I have always loved to practice the piano; well, let me rephrase that.  I’ve always loved to play the piano.  It was years before I really learned HOW to practice.  I enjoyed time at the piano, and by the laws of probability, I must have accomplished something, no matter how inefficient I might have been.

Of course I know, as a teacher, that I can’t count on my students to spend as much playing as I did, or still do.  Their practice needs to accomplish much in a short amount of time, so I work with them, offering the experience of my years.  I try to focus every student on the sound they are making, hoping and praying that this will lead them into a more eager and lengthy time at their pianos.

Practice is a lonely thing.  It is not for everyone, especially as students get to the “sociable” age of middle school.  Since I was never that sociable, and didn’t mind the loneliness, I became the prime example of a practice-room nerd.  That was my state of being when I entered college.  This is when I learned of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a professional music fraternity for men in music.

Lord!  A whole room full of people like me?  Guys, yet (!) who valued music above almost everything else.  This was quite a discovery.  This was not a concept in my personal experience; I came from a small town high school, and a charitable description of my place in the school would be… “he’s a little different!”  I wanted to be in this group.  The only problem was that you had to be invited.  It took me two years to really get to know enough people for that to happen.  An organ major that I knew only casually nominated me; the organ teacher’s studio was adjacent to my piano teacher, so we had chatted occasionally, waiting for our lessons to begin.

It’s hard for me to describe my experience in this fraternity; suffice it to say that Phi Mu Alpha has left a deep impression on me… on my heart and mind.  When I was hired as an assistant professor of piano at Louisiana Tech University, one of the first things I checked out was the chapter of Phi Mu Alpha.  The chapter already had a faculty advisor, but I got to know this man through our collaboration.  He played the trumpet, and I had learned almost all of the concert trumpet literature as a hired accompanist in graduate school.  Mr. Cheatham had the most beautiful trumpet sound, and I loved working with him.  He invited me to be an assistant faculty advisor, although there was no real position like that.  I got to know the members of Mu Nu chapter, and have enjoyed, to this day, keeping in touch with some of my Brothers.

It took about ten years before I briefly became the official faculty advisor.  One of my first duties was to confer with, and report to the Province Governor.  He was a pleasant man, but almost totally disengaged from the real life of the ten chapters of the Province.  When I learned that he wanted to be replaced, that he had assumed that the Province Governor was a ceremonial position, I told him I was definitely interested.  It was still a thrill to be contacted by the national executive director, and offered the position.

When I was appointed to the position, my first thought was, “I now know what it would be like to be a two-year old boy, standing naked, out in the snow, and wondering how he got there!”  I know, TMI!  It was easy to read the job description; but job descriptions don’t give a right-brained practice room nerd a clear idea about how to proceed.  I have learned, however, that just about everything I can do well relates to what I have learned practicing the piano.  I set about my job as if beginning a new, grand concert work of Franz Liszt. 

In my travels around the Province, to visit the individual chapters and meet the leadership, noted quite a disparity in the size and activity levels of the ten chapters.  The most common thing I learned was that the chapters that were very active had rebuilt themselves from ashes, usually with the leadership of one committed collegian. The chapters that were languishing had, almost in every case, formerly been very active, and had fallen into disrepair upon the graduation of one very motivated person.  I knew that these chapters needed to meet each other… to learn from each other, and to be inspired by each other.

I found that there had been no Province meetings in the recent past.  The chapters were isolated, and rarely felt any real adult support, advice or leadership.  My first goal, then, was to get these chapters to all meet together; many of these Province meetings tend to be a gathering of two or three leaders from each chapter, touching base, and possibly making plans for inter-chapter activities.  I had a completely different idea.  Everyone!  The chapters that I had visited all seemed to have their life vested in just a few individuals.  I wanted a huge gathering so that these young men could see how large my fraternity is.

I, and several college students organized an inspiring conference.  I was confident that all would leave, having met and befriended fraternity members from nine other Louisiana colleges.  We had designed an organizational structure that would help the chapters to perpetuate their successes by training everyone, and including everyone in the work of each chapter.  It was all to be SO glorious.  Except, how could I get these guys to work together?  And then it struck me… they would have to act like musicians.  Instrumental ensembles take rehearsal, but everyone can sing. “Dona nobis pacem, pacem”.  So easy to teach; so easy to do.  It was worth a try.

Yes… I can still hear it, or is it that I can feel it?  It was warm, and beautiful, and I certainly felt like crying.  But, as I looked around, scores of young college men had beaten me to that.  This is why we all loved music.  Music is the perfect.  A blend of mind and heart.  Music brings diverse elements together; music is always greater than the sum of its parts.  As were we.

Flexibility

Teaching seems to demand flexibility in us.  Extreme flexibility; sometime it seems like super-human flexibility.  I’ve been teaching for some time now, and have survived… maybe even prevailed.  That extreme flexibility is still a challenge. 

Piano teachers are perhaps unique, in that we meet our “class” often on an individual basis.  It is we, the teachers, that have to meet our students… their personalities, their moods, their intellects… and lead them to something new.  Some days it seems as if the gears were almost stripped! 

I remember once being asked what ages I teach.  “My youngest is six, and my oldest eighty-two”, was the response.  What merely seems amusing to the questioner is actually the heart of my profession.  I don’t teach piano, I teach people.  And it’s not about how well I teach, but about how well my students learn.

Yesterday, the beginning week of my winter term, I taught a first lesson to a little girl, five years old.  She’s very bright, reads and speaks on the level of, perhaps, a second-grade student.  It was no trouble to engage this bright, young mind.  She was able to participate in, and lead her lesson, and I merely grabbed hold of my seat and enjoyed the ride. 

Part of the fun is in learning how to speak to each new student.  In pursuing this, I like to have each student read a few directions from their method book.  “Circle a character at the bottom of the page each time you play this song.”  CHARACTER!  A flawless reading from a five-year-old!  One doesn’t talk down to a child that is that impressive.  But good teachers always remember that, no matter how precocious, a kindergartener is a child, too.

I always like to watch for two things with a new student:  First, what are they like at the conclusion of the first lesson.  My little prodigy was calm, and engaged through the entire lesson; when she finished, she was “pumped”.  She could hardly focus on finding her shoes, and when she did, she was out the door, leaving her mom to wonder where she went.  The second thing I will watch for, next week, and in the ensuing weeks, will be how she approaches my studio.  I expect that she will run ahead of her mother, and bounce into my house.

Yesterday, I also taught a last lesson to another young lady.  I think she was more than ready to leave piano behind.  I think the two of us got along well, but piano brought her no joy.  She was an exacting girl, and could never handle the constant frustrations of learning to play the piano.  Piano practice can be brutal; it’s an almost endless succession of self-criticism, if done properly.  That is sometimes my “downfall”, because I teach my students how to practice, how to criticize their playing, and how to solve their practice problems.  For this girl, who almost always came well prepared for her lessons, the joy of conquering her mistakes was not enough to override her exasperation and frustration at constantly having to criticize herself.

I once told a parent that, for some students, I would be the worst teacher in the world.  He was taken aback at that; he had been one of my “cheerleaders”, referring me to countless other families.  A psychologist by profession, he was curious how I could be a “worst teacher” for anyone.  I explained to him that I was most interested in the PROCESS of practicing.  I work hardest in every lesson to help students analyze what is wrong when they are having difficulties.  We work to link a process of solution to every problem.  We work, tirelessly, on the process of practicing.

I told the psychologist that I believe that for most individuals the discovery that they have the power to overcome their problems is compelling.  Learning to practice is a discovery that we can control our destiny.  This, added to the ultimate thrill of making music, and expressing ones self, sums up the joy of playing the piano.  However, not everyone wants to invest the time in self-criticism, even if they know that they can overcome their problems.  I think that for certain students, realizing that they know how to practice, that they have been taught what to do, and how to approach their music, makes piano lessons a worse experience for them.  If they have decided that they don’t want to work that hard, they will begin to hate the thought of approaching the piano. 

I don’t always know exactly why a student finds no joy in playing the piano.  For me, it has always been a joy.  Maybe this is one of the lessons I have yet to learn.  I do know that it takes much energy, and much flexibility to teach both a FIRST lesson and a LAST lesson on the same day.

  

A Teaching Story

I had a church pastor that used to lace his sermons with stories.  They were wonderful because he told them to US, as personal revelations.  Not from notes prepared ahead of time, but from memory, from experience with other people.  Personal stories about real people are compelling.  I believe that’s because we worry that we might be alone in our experiences, and that no one could possibly understand.  Personal stories place us comfortably in society with other strugglers. 

  

I find the telling of stories to be indispensable to my teaching.  If I can make a point by way of a story, I find I have the complete attention of my student, immediately, when I say the words, “I have a story to tell you…” Of course, the stories have to have a point, and they can’t be overly long.  Even my pastor would, at the conclusion of his stories, say, “Now, what am I trying to say?”  He made his point, with the story as his vehicle.  So, let me tell you a story…

I just had a lesson with one of my middle school girls; she performed Midnight Escapade by Melody Bober for me at the end of her lesson.  I listened with great interest as she came to the final cadence; such mastery!  She released the keys and placed her hands in her lap, the way I have showed her; I sat there silently, with my head down just a little.  She was unprepared for that.  “What’s wrong, Rory?”  “I’m just a little sad”, I said.  “You know this is a Contest piece, don’t you.  Even though you said you didn’t want to do any competitive events this year, I assigned a Contest piece, just to see how you’d do.  Now, when I know that you would have done so well, I’m just sad.”  

She looked very surprised, but immediately began to explain that performing just made her too nervous to enter the MMTA Contest, or the NFMC Festival.  I suspected that her real concern was that she wouldn’t be ready, considering the amount of preparation she intended to invest, and that a lack of preparation would, indeed make her nervous.  When I told her that she would actually be ready two months before the event, she didn’t know how to react.  I sensed that she was thinking hard about this idea, so I told her a story.

 “Vladimir Horowitz was, until he died, the absolute KING of pianists.  I once went to a concert of his; he was 10 minutes late coming onto stage.  When the lights dimmed, at 4:10 on a Sunday afternoon, it still took a full minute for Horowitz to come on stage.  Before that moment, I had never, and have never since heard that kind of silence.  A packed auditorium, the “hero” of the day that late, and there was no sound!  The audience held him in that kind of reverence.”

At that moment, I had 100% of my student’s attention.  A middle school girl, ready to go to school to see her friends, and get on with her day; and yet, she moved not a muscle.  “You may be interested to know,” I said, “that Vladimir Horowitz was world famous, and quite rich from playing piano concerts.  Then he abruptly ‘retired’ from performing.  He said he had paralyzing stage fright.” 

She was stunned.  We discussed his long absence, his return to the stage, and the coping mechanisms that he invented for himself.  She was interested, but I hadn’t ‘zinged’ her yet.  I knew that often stories have a greater impact if we tell the stories on ourselves.  Our students don’t always think of us a “normal” people, who were once students, and wrestled ourselves with practicing and performing.

“I also have had to combat stage fright”, I told her.  I’m sure you've seen the computer emoticon that represents astonishment… with the wide open mouth and big eyes.  That is exactly what her mouth and eyes looked like.  At first I thought maybe she was astonished that I, her teacher, ever had stage fright.  On second thought, I decided that she was simply astonished that I had ever had to perform in recitals, contests and festivals.  So, I told her another story.

“I had the good fortune, for several summers, to attend a special Piano Institute at Amherst College in Massachusetts.  The Institute met there every summer, with a master teacher named Dorothy Taubman.  Mrs. Taubman had taught many concert pianists, and was known for her abilities to help a pianist’s technique.  The second summer I attended, along with about 300 professional pianists from all over the world, I was selected to play in a public “master class” with Mrs. Taubman.  I would have to play for her, in front of all those people.  That was possibly the SCARIEST audience I could have imagined; everyone in the concert hall would be an accomplished performer, and I was worried if I would be good enough.  After the performance, I would have a mini-lesson, right in front of those pianists.” 

My girl was intrigued.  What did I do?  HOW did I do?  I told her that I decided to do my job.  I practiced with focus.  I told her the thing that helped the most was what one of my teachers told me:  “Practice like you’re performing, and perform like you’re practicing”.  At that moment, I knew I had her; nothing was decided right then about what she would do with her Contest piece; but I know we’ll have a chance to discuss this properly over the next weeks.  Once again, a story made real communication possible.

Geometry, Pool and Piano Playing

I’ve heard that music and mathematics are related; I might believe it, but I don’t feel it.  I don’t like math very much… well, let me rephrase that:  I don’t like REAL math.  Real math would be, in my mind, algebra, and all the related abstractions.  I could do algebra; I got B+ in most of my math courses, and I actually took more than four years of math in high school.  The kind of math that I did like was geometry.  Geometry is math, but it’s probably math for those people who don’t like math.  Thank you, whoever invented geometry.

What I feel is related to music, especially piano playing, is athletics.  Of course I was not very good at athletics, but I know and feel a real relationship to my piano playing and various sports at which I failed miserably.  Like baseball; and like basketball.  Or pool!  Now, that’s a sport for people like me.  I’ll never forget the little guy that showed me how to bank a shot, and actually plan where the cue ball would be after my shot.  That opened up new vistas in the noble sport of billiards for me, full of plane geometry.  The angles were beautiful to me; I could see them, almost as if they were holographic projections.  I assume that I was blessed with excellent eye-hand coordination.  That serves me well in both pool, and piano playing.

I was especially terrible at basketball.  It moves way too fast for me to process the plays.  I was driven to basketball, however.  Most of my friends played basketball.  I even, in my senior year in high school, went out for the basketball team.  I wasn’t even on the second team; my skills were reserved for one or two games, when we were either so far ahead I couldn’t hurt my team, or when we were so far behind it didn’t matter.  What drew me to basketball was shooting the ball.  If I didn’t have to dribble, and I didn’t have to put up with a defense, I really could shoot well.  I was the HORSE champion of Jesup, Iowa, for at least one short period of time.

It occurred to me, in my performances and in my teaching of piano, that pool and shooting basketballs and playing the piano have several things in common.  They all use geometry, they all require eye-hand coordination, and they all use rebound.  All are athletic in their use of efficient motion, controlled musculature, and the ability to be “in the zone”.  I use the athletic concepts of rebound, pivot and the geometric concept of angles in my playing and teaching of the piano.  All are indispensible.  I find myself teaching my students that the real problems in piano playing are not the notes and rhythms at all, but the balanced, aligned and free movements of their playing apparatus IN BETWEEN THE NOTES.  Every time I begin the process of communicating these concepts, I meet a blank stare.  Students think it IS about the notes, about their fingers, about those keys that they strike, one at a time, sequentially.  I do my best to convey that what they are thinking of is typing.

Ergonomics, the science of efficient motion is related equally to geometry, pool and piano playing.  I find that when I can teach my students how to move… what it feels like when they are balanced and relaxed in motion, and aligned properly upon landing, they begin to excel at playing.  The last concept that occurs to most students is that any journey has both a beginning and an end.  When they work with the concept of efficient movement at the piano, most students are fixated solely on their “landing spot”.  Unfortunately, this leaves a few holes in their movement process.  “First”, I say, “you have to know exactly where you’re coming from; then, you have to know the route to get where you’re going.  Find the landing spot with your eyes, before you begin any motion; then simply aim and bounce to your location!”  I have found that those who are trying to find their destination while they are moving stiffen and miss.

Two vignettes from my family are appropriate, somehow, to this whole discussion.  The first was when my dad and I were tossing a baseball around.  I went across the street to the school grounds, and my dad stayed in our yard.  He was trying to help me refine my catching abilities, I think.  As he threw the ball higher and higher, I got more and more afraid.  The last time, he threw the ball as high as he could… pop fly!  I like to think that the ball got lost in the sunlight.  But, actually I made The Big Mistake!  Trembling, wishing the ball would never fall, I stared at my glove.  The ball came down directly on my forehead.  You could see the indentations of the baseball’s seams on my forehead for a week.  Keep you eye on the ball, Rory, and keep your eye on the piano, where you intend to leap in virtuosic brilliance.  The baseball seams helped me with that.

The second vignette has to do with my poor mom getting lost on her trip to Minneapolis from small-town Iowa.  When I first moved to Minneapolis, I wrote out detailed direction to my house.  They worked for twelve years, until the Minnesota DOT tore up most of the highways that my mom was used to.  Due to poor signage, and the construction mess, mom ended up lost.  She called, and the first thing out of her mouth was, “I think I’m in Minneapolis, but I got lost.  How do I get to your house?”  “Where are you,” I asked.  That didn’t go over very well, since she was lost.  I tried to explain to her that I couldn’t tell her how to get here if I didn’t know where she was.  I guess she was too flustered to care about MY problem.  She finally found her way to a convenience store, and I talked to the manager.  When I found out where the store was, I knew what route to give.  My family got here, finally, in one piece, just a little the worse for wear.

This last story has been important in my teaching, and has made lots of sense to my students.  I usually don’t tell them that the “star” of the story is my mother (once in awhile, just for fun, though); but the story itself leaves an impression.  They get it!  Without considering their location on the keyboard, they can’t get proper bearings to get where they’re going. 

By the way, mom… the highway construction is done.  It’s safe to come back!

My Compliments

I have a difficult time receiving compliments.  Maybe I’m not the only one who has that as a personality flaw, but it does adversely affect those who are performers.  It’s not really a “humility thing”; I fully embrace my need for approval.  It’s at the moment of the compliment, that I have no idea how to respond. 

As performers, we a taught to bow; the lucky among us are actually taught how to bow.  We are told by our teachers that a simple "Thank You" is the proper phrase when, in a receiving line, we are told how well we did, how much the person enjoyed our playing, etc. etc. etc.  Of course, I can do those things.  But it feels so awkward, and artificial.  I often feel the urge to quickly leave.  Too often, I hear myself transform the compliment of my playing into a comment about the greatness of the piece, or of the composer.

I think the source of my feelings of discomfort is my college undergraduate years as a piano performance major.  I started school with a bang, went through a terrible second year, and found a way out of a slump the likes of which would have been nightmares for Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds.  But first, some background…

By ninth grade, I already knew what my career was going to be.  I loved practicing the piano.  I asked my piano teacher what kind of job I could get that would allow me to practice for hours during the day.  She replied that being an independent piano teacher, as she was, would not be the route to go; she told me that university professors not only were able to practice a great deal, but also were expected to practice and perform.  I wasn’t sure about the performing part, but since I would be guaranteed practice time… even paid for it (!), I knew definitively what my career would be.

Since I am born to naïveté, I had decided that during my first two years in college, I would be the best student pianist in the music department.  Quite a first goal, but it pales before my second goal:  I was determined to outplay the entire faculty by my graduation.  I knew that fours hours of practice per day would get me there.  And, I fulfilled my part.  I was at work at 6:00 a.m. in the food service 6 days a week, went to class, practiced two hours in the afternoon, and two hours after supper.  I practiced on the weekends, and sometimes hid in the music building around 11:00 p.m., so I could practice in the auditorium on the Steinway concert grand after the building closed.  My freshman year was great, and I was simply in heaven.

Unfortunately, in my sophomore year, I never had a successful performance.  I crashed every time.  We had studio performance classes, weekly seminars for all piano majors (in “my” auditorium!), and Recital Hour once each week; music majors were required to perform several times each semester, so my failures were there, for all of music-majorhood to witness!  Many students, in a situation like that, would have changed their major; but not me. 

I can’t really remember what was said, or who said it; but I realized that my problem was the way I thought about the whole matter of performing.  My focus was on ME.  What did they think of ME?  Did my peers think I was ever going to be a performer?  I realized that the focus was the problem.  I developed a little mind-game that helped.  I refocused… on the music!  I imagined that I had invited just a couple of my friends, into my practice room; that I had become excited about a piano piece that I LOVED, and I just wanted them to hear the greatest piece ever composed.  Sometimes, I would even focus on certain things about this piece that gave me “goose bumps”; those were the places that I especially wanted my friends to hear.  It was a sharing thing.  I thought only about the music, and… that whole change of focus revitalized my ability to perform.  My junior and senior years were glorious.  I had chances to play with orchestras twice, performed in small ensembles, got into a jazz band, and went on tour with the college orchestra…

I’ve often wondered if my discomfort at well-intended compliments had to do with avoiding a “jinx”.  I was determined that nothing would put me back on the ego track that led to failure.  I’ve not had a bad performance experience since I changed my attitude.  But, back to a point I’d like to make about compliments; I can still remember the time that a compliment touched me, heart and soul. 

I am a big fan of “trial performances”.  When I would get near to a recital date, I liked to arrange for small groups of people to hear me play brief sections of that recital.  I often arranged several small groups for each recital portion.  These informal performances were usually held in my studio.  This is the way that I gained total focus; they reinforced my mental game… “Come here, I’ve got this wonderful piece that I’d like to share with you”.

On this occasion, I was getting ready for a recital that included Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  This is a massive, thirty-minute work, originally written for the piano (although perhaps better known as an orchestra piece).  I invited a friend, who was also an adult student of mine.  She taught in the Foreign Language department at the university; she came to my studio to assist me with my “trial performances”, and after chatting about Mussorgsky, and composing of the Pictures, and some discussion about how I prepared my interpretation of the piece, I launched into the first Promenade.  The piece is very easy to get lost in, and I was aware of nothing else for the next thirty minutes.

When I finished, I turned to get her comments; she had been seated behind me, and slightly to the right, where she could see and hear everything.  I looked at her, and she was weeping.  That might be one of the most precious moments of my life.  No words, and no reason for me to respond verbally.  We just shared the moment.  Applause is nice, but it’s formal.  Tears are simply genuine, and they validated for me the musical focus that I chose as a college junior.

Black Forest Curve Signs

I’m pretty sure, looking back on over sixty years, that Thoreau was thinking of me when he mused that some people“…hear a different drummer”.  I do not warm up to regimentation, shall we say.  It is, then, no wonder that I did not love being in the U.S. Army.  I was very lucky, in several ways during this part of my life. 

I was in the Signal Corps, and worked in a CommCenter.  The walls were thick, the doors were extremely secure, and the droves of officers on my base were not even allowed into my workplace.  We were left alone, to do our jobs, without those nasty formations, kitchen duties, or even PE tests. 

And, I was stationed in Germany; I tell people that I “fought the battle of Stuttgart”.  It was such a lucky place for me to land, and I was blessed to take full advantage of being in Europe.  I had plenty of time and opportunity to travel throughout West Germany; due to the number of high-ranking officers on my base, I was even required to live off-base.  I lived in a small German town, 14 kilometers inside the fabled Black Forest!  Thank you, U.S. Army!  I really mean it.

One of the eventualities of living that far off base, and working from 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm, was that I had to drive through the Black Forest late at night.  In the dark.  With very curvy roads.  My road, I discovered, had no center-line.  Neither did it have the solid, painted lines on the sides of the road, the ones that define the outline of the road, and the shoulders.  My worst discovery was that this road, as charming as it was in the daytime, had NO CURVE SIGNS.

I had never realized how much help curve signs were; they alert you, and let you know which direction you will be turning.  They mean the difference between driving on the road, and plowing through the ditch!  Ultimately, I had to create my own “curve signs”, mental landmarks that would alert me to particularly auspicious events along my chosen path.  It took awhile to develop my landmarks, and in the meantime, I had to drive very slowly.  Add a little fog to this scenario, and anyone would soon learn patience.

Years later, it occurred to me quite clearly, when practicing a Chopin Ballade, that all my technical problems derived from the lack of curve signs in the music.  What we most often see are notes.  But, notes don’t tell the whole story when we are playing a Chopin Ballade.  Chopin's music can be quite physical, and unless the performer understands the physicality, they are lost, plowing through metaphorical, musical ditches.  I decided to develop my own curve signs for my Ballade.  I decided to practice patience.  When I broke tempo in a series of “tempo hiccups”, I forced myself to slow down.  I watched for curve signs.  I prevailed.

Building my own curve signs has become a regular part of my study with any new piece.  It’s exciting, because, music, more than any road in the Black Forest, can have surprising curves, dips, bumps, with virtually no warning.  With the proper respect, I can avoid most of the ditches.

Fingers Dancing

I think I was born to be a late bloomer.  I have little doubt that I was late, even in the "sport" of learning to walk.  Physical aptitude doesn't seem to be my thing!  Except, of course, for playing the piano.  I have absolutely no idea where this ability came from.  I did have a brief encounter with the accordion when I was quite young.  A test I took said I had musical aptitude; my parents thought the test results were probably a “come-on” for the expense of the classes.  I did love my little red accordion, but abandoned it when we moved.

My piano career started quite casually, when my mom asked me if I wanted to take some money I had saved, and buy a piano.  I was in sixth grade, about four or five years later than any of my peers had become chained to a piano bench.  I actually started lessons before I had a piano; I practiced at a local church.  I think it must be quite rare to have a set of abilities that make an avocation easy for a person; but, piano!!?  To learn to read music, beyond merely reading notes, requires a natural ability for foreign language, for decoding.  To learn to associate those symbols with complex movements at the piano requires other, high-level brain activity.  And, the high degree of fine motor coordination required might be daunting to a young boy, much less one that always knew he was quite uncoordinated.

It wasn’t until years later that I learned I had completed a series of piano method books usually taking 6-8 years, in one year flat.  I know I had no finesse, or real musical understanding, but I sure learned to process notes, rhythms, and flying piano keys.  It’s one of many blessings that we humans get; something that comes naturally, something we didn’t have to work at, or earn.  I have nothing else that has ever been that easy for me.  And to this day, I consider myself “just a piano player”.  Everything else I do, I’m just acting!