I know I should be saving this for Monday for the Makeover Monday update, but I can’t wait to reveal that I have nailed my piano piece! Actually I pretty much had it down on Monday evening, a shock to me I can tell you.
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the most demanding classical masterpiece – rather a simple, 16 bar Minuet in G by Johann Sebastian Bach – think ‘Baby Einstein’ music and you’ve pretty much got it. Still, I read the music and have been practicing so that I can play it without stumbling or hesitating.
To give you an idea of how much of a challenge this is for me. I can play the piano pretty well. I can listen to a melody and sit down and replicate it, adding my own harmonizing chords with the left hand. While this to any (non musical) passerby may sound good, I am never satisfied with it. I want to be able to play properly, but I’m lazy and impatient, and I just hate reading the music.
The Treble Clef music (played by the right hand, the one that looks like a squiggly ‘g’), is always easy for me to read and very easy to play right off. It’s reading the Bass Clef music (the one that looks like a backwards ‘c’ and is played by the left hand) that stumps me, and as for coordinating this with the right hand? Well, lets just say it’s always been quicker for me to ‘sound it out’ myself and come up with something which is ‘close enough’, but never good enough, hence my quest to Maestro-dom!
Determined to do this right – I sat down and played the right hand piece first – very easy. I then cheated, got my pen out and wrote the letter of each left hand note beside the music. This meant I didn’t have to mentally go through the F.A.C.E, and E.G.B.D.F (Every Good Boy Deserves Football) acronyms in order to identify the notes! It worked and stopped me from getting frustrated and abandoning it.
My husband returned last night, and proud of my accomplishment, I played the piece for him. His reaction was underwhelming to say the least – not being a classical music aficionado he didn’t recognize the ‘tune’ and therefore did not feel qualified to say if it was good or not! You would think this could have worked in my favour in that he would not have noticed the bum notes that may or may not have crept in as I was playing, but no. I explained to him that, for me, reading this music and playing it, is like reading two sentences of a book and speaking them, all at the same time – he still didn’t get it, and just gave me that sympathetic ‘whatever makes you happy, dear’ look.
Oh well, I’m pretty chuffed with it, and inspired to try something more challenging next time. My ultimate goal is to be able to sight read any piece of music and play - like a proper musician. This however will definitely be a long term goal!
Annie
