There may be hope!
For the past six months, I’ve been stuck in a box, albeit one with musical notes decorating it.
Today, I broke out of it!
During the past year since I retired from teaching high school English, I’ve had some grand plans. In the early days, my head was filled with projects I wanted to tackle: paint the kitchen cabinets, clean out the garage and sell all our unused, accumulated junk, reorganize every closet in the house, and make the garden a place of rejuvenation and inspiration. I was on a roll with my list!
After cleaning out the pantry closet, I sat in the living room resting and congratulating myself. My eyes settled on our ’60s-era blond Wurlitzer school piano that had sat unplayed for years since the last kid moved out. I had an inspiration: what if I took lessons, so I could play Christmas carols this year? I was retired with plenty of time! Why not?
When a colleague who retired with me announced that she was giving piano lessons, I took it as a heavenly sign. I reached out to book my lesson slot and then found a piano tuner willing to take on the old gal who hadn’t had a checkup in about twenty years. He pronounced her sound enough for a beginner, so I was all set.
Nervous about being a true novice– and perhaps reverting to a mild overachieving nature– before the lessons began, I dug out the kids’ twenty-year-old orange Alfred beginner books. I started to coach myself. It was a little rough at first. I didn’t know how to read music. Oh sure, I could recite the treble clef mnemonics that I learned when I took piano lessons for a few months in second grade. But to actually look at notes on a staff and name them, nope. That was out of reach.
A little daunted, but undeterred, I ordered musical notation flashcards and faithfully flipped through them a few times each night. I was a teacher, right? I knew that there were many ways to learn. Then I remembered the Note Speller books one of the kids had used. I ordered one of those, too.
Within a couple of weeks, I managed to name a few notes and play a simple song with each hand. I could even draw the treble clef sign! Progress! Now I wouldn’t seem so clueless at my first lesson.
After several months with my very patient teacher and after surviving a much-dreaded fall recital, spring eventually arrived. I was learning to read music better and play using both hands simultaneously! I ordered some simple three-chord songbooks from Hal Leonard and began pecking out Christmas carols, folksongs, and even a couple of hymns from my childhood.
Eventually, I explored the long-neglected music bookcase in the living room and pulled out a few more beginner books from the kids’ music lesson days. Some were way too hard, but I found a few with simple songs and a few simple chords that I could manage. I faithfully practiced my weekly assignment, but I was starting to enjoy being able to play other songs, too.
By now, it was time for me to choose a song to play, even though I wouldn’t be in the spring recital. I picked “Fairest Lord Jesus,” from the teacher’s songbooks. I remembered it fondly from my childhood. Surely, it couldn’t be that hard. My teacher made me a copy to take home.
Little did I know how little I knew!
Foolishly, I hadn’t looked closely enough at the chords to see how many there were … or how quickly they changed. I was sunk.
Initially, the melody was easy. But for weeks, I struggled to get my left hand to learn the chords. I was a broken record to my friends and my teacher. My friends and people on Facebook gave me advice: take it one measure at a time, play it with only the chords you know, ignore the 7’s and minors in the chords, and even play it from the end backward!
Eventually, I could play the beginning fairly well, but the last five measures always sunk me. I just couldn’t cut through the fog in my brain! My handwritten annotations reminding me to move up an octave didn’t help: I just couldn’t concentrate on all of it at once. I was so frustrated that I tucked the photocopy behind the other songbooks. I ignored it for weeks.
Then today, something happened as I was shuffling between books and saw that loathsome sheet of music. Maybe it means my anemia is getting better. I remembered that my teacher and my son told me that as long as I played the correct combination of notes, it didn’t matter which octave they were in. The order could even be mixed up. For example, I could make the same chord by having my pinkie on an F key in one octave or my pinkie on the C and another finger on a different F. Oh … yeah … the fog was lifting.
So I tried it out. I shifted my pinkie up an octave. That meant abandoning the way I’d been playing an F chord in all the fun songs, starting with my pinkie on the lower C. But it worked! My fingers managed to maneuver between the eight different notes and chords at the end of the song. And at the same time that I played the correct notes with my right hand!
I’ve been pondering it all morning.
I remember my freshman Algebra class and how my brain just wasn’t connecting the concepts. I was so confused and failing the class. My older brother reluctantly tutored me several times, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I needed to do to solve the equations. I’m sure I was bratty to him in all my frustration. Eventually, he said something a different way, and it just clicked. I even went on to take several advanced math classes.
But isn’t that what good teachers do? They give students options that make sense and will work for them.
What made the difference for me?
Several things. Giving myself some distance from the problem. Being willing to get outside my box to try a new approach. Remembering good coaching and putting it into practice. Accepting that there’s not always one right way.
Feeling empowered by my accomplishment, I’ve been mentally unboxing all morning. What opportunities does this open up? What other challenges can I conquer if I think in new ways?
I’m trying to shift away from having too many lists, but, golly, it’s tempting to grab a pen and paper!
I’m going to have to meditate on this one!
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