I have never had a happy relationship with playing music. Like most Australian children in the 70’s, the first instrument I picked up at school was a recorder. I didn’t learn to play it well and eventually moving on to clarinet and guitar never helped! Although I will say that I had a brief stint with the xylophone that was outstanding at around age 8!
Xylophone aside I just never managed to connect with playing music. I was similarly handicapped when it came to mathematics. Both were banes of my childhood. I really wanted to be good at both, but unlike friends and family around me I didn’t have that musical knack, or intuition, or connection that they had.
Years passed.
Now, here I am at age 42 and the music is calling me! Have you ever had that feeling of looking at something and thinking: “I know I can do that!”. I bought an acoustic guitar some time ago and have enjoyed tinkering and teaching myself how to play it – and I genuinely feel that there is now something different in my brain, because for the first time I genuinely “feel” the music. Guitar is still proving a significant challenge and one that I will continue working on, because guitar is such a great instrument to be able to play. It’s portable, sounds great on its own and is always popular.
My new discovery though is that I love piano. If you have read previous posts you will know that my partner has a piano (I made a post here about tuning the one key that was out of tune). So two days ago I sat down and started learning to play the very beautiful classical piece of music (Beethoven’s Tempest 3rd movement) that featured in the remake of the movie Total Recall. It’s a stupendous challenge for someone who A. has never played piano and B. isn’t great an patting their head while rubbing their tummy! However I have discovered that I can still read music fairly well (even if I can’t make my fingers do what the notes say – yet!). The result is that with about four sessions of practice over two days, I can basically play the first line and a half.
I am under no illusions that what I am doing is any good really, but I just LOVE being able to sit down in front of a piano and produce from it, something that actually sounds like real music. It is a fabulous experience that makes life a richer and more enjoyable thing to live. As I write this, my partner is playing the theme song from the movie Amelie (by the composer Yann Tiersen) in the living room (she is much, much better than I am), filling the house with music that is beautiful and of her own making, imperfections, hesitations and all.
There is something about live music and the people who can create it that has always captured me. From seeing cover bands in Melbourne pubs when I was at university to an individual sitting down at the public pianos that occasionally get placed around Circular Quay in Sydney. It has been one of my lifelong desires to join those ranks. Even at this late stage in my life (relatively speaking) perhaps it’s possible.
I could segue into something about sex here and perhaps I should. A comparison between learning a new skill like playing an instrument and learning about sex and what we can enjoy with our bodies. I do think that it’s a fair comparison, since most of us never get the chance to learn about sex, we just go along with the general assumption that it is something that just happens and you don’t need to learn or practice.
Well, like any instrument, the human body needs to be tuned and the skills practised if you want to create really beautiful music.
John.
