The Sound of Music

Music has always been a part of my life. We had a baby grand piano in our living room (doesn’t every working class family?) because my father played. Beautifully, as I remember. A lot of what he played was hymns, which he sang along with in his rich baritone.

I’ll never forget one Christmas at my grandfather’s house, where he put on “Messiah” and started pointing out how closely it followed Scripture. A lesson for not only the grandchildren, although in retrospect I think it was primarily us he was addressing, but also for the adults in the room. (He was the choir director at his church.) I’m fairly certain it was verses from Isaiah that were being sung at the time.

As a child, I had a phonograph and several records, one of which was a collection of Sea Chanties. I remember it being a Christmas or birthday present, but not who gave it to me. I loved the lively tunes and clearly remember dancing around the room and singing aloud “What do you you do with a drunken sailor?”, totally unaware of how inappropriate it probably was for a six year old to be singing that particular song.

Anyway, when I was in third or fourth grade, my mother (who was/is tone deaf) arranged for a piano teacher to come to the house and give me lessons. Although I wanted to play the piano, I wasn’t enamored of those lessons. I hated to practice scales and such. Practice became such a chore, I stopped doing it, rushing home from school on lesson day to make sure I had some time to run through what I’d supposed to be playing all week. My mother got the message and the teacher stopped coming to our house.

That didn’t mean I stopped playing the piano. I never got great at it, but I did manage to learn to play Für Elise by Beethoven because I could pretend he wrote it for me.

After the piano, I decided to take clarinet lessons in school. I played for nine years before deciding I no longer wanted to play that either in my senior year in high school. (There’s a couple of reasons and a long story behind that.) I belonged to the church choir most of my school years. In college, of course, like every other student with any musical ability at all, I saved up $50 and bought a Harmony guitar. I took three lessons from a guy in my dorm, and then, short of money as always, I taught myself from listening to records and a songbook or two.

I enjoyed playing the guitar for quite a number of years. My repertoire was folk music, and I’d spend as long as it took to learn to strum the chords to my favorite songs by my favorite artists. But that didn’t last forever, either.

The last straw for that was when I was playing in the living room, passing the time until my husband came home from work. As soon as he entered the house, he complained, “Do you have to keep singing in that anemic voice of yours?”

That hurt.

Oh, lots of things he said hurt me over the years, but as a perfectionist who believed nothing she could do would ever be enough, the sting of that criticism has stuck with me all these years.

After he was out of my life, I tried picking up the guitar again, but by then I had a full-time job and was a single mom. I was too tired to practice. And there was that anemic voice of mine.

A whole bunch of years passed, years during which I learned to enjoy praise music and started going to coffeehouses and performances of folk music again. But I didn’t care to make music. I’d sing along, softly, with CDs I owned, but even that didn’t happen all that much.

And then this past year, my church was looking for more choir members, both vocal and bells. Not trusting my voice, which had by this time lost its range and gained a tendency to break at unexpected parts of a song, I went to a rehearsal of the bell choir. I mean, it was one (or two) bells and you were part of an ensemble, just like I was a part of the band when I played clarinet. It turned out that being part of a bell choir is a lot more difficult than it looks. I realized I’d have to spend an awful lot of time outside of rehearsals trying to learn what I was doing. And playing a bell or two on your own isn’t a whole lot of fun.

I have to say, this was not a high point in my life. I’d been writing and publishing novels for a decade and barely broke even, much less earned any income, every year. And music, which had been the thing that opened my heart even when it was breaking, seemed lost to me, except for listening to Casting Crowns and Matthew West and others on KLOVE and Family Life Radio. In fact, it was the music—and my Bible study partners—that carried me through that valley.

And, stubborn woman that I am, I wanted more music in my life than that. I would give it one more try. So I bought a cheap electronic keyboard, telling myself I used to be able to play the piano, so I stood a decent chance of doing it again. If it turned out to be a bust, I’d stick with the radio.

It was a relief to find out that I wasn’t as dumb as I thought I was when trying to master the bells. I could actually make something that sounded like music on the keyboard, and with practice, I just might be able to sing along with the songs I loved again.

That relief didn’t last too long. I’d bought the keyboard to be able to play music I liked, but the video instruction I signed up for (free for 3 months, then a recurring subscription fee) quickly became a chore. For one thing, you almost exclusively played with the right hand. It took months to get to use the left hand as well. Plus, there were things missing from the instruction—like hand position and how you were supposed to change it during the playing of a piece. I pulled out some sheet music for a song I wanted to play and discovered it would be months and months before I’d have the ability to even try it. I played less and less often.

But, stubborn me coming back again, I knew that the only way to do what I wanted to was to practice. So I gritted my teeth and tried to force myself to sit down at the keys on a regular basis.

It was kind of like me and that piano teacher.

There had to be a better way. And there was. I was looking around Udemy for a class on using ChatGPT and discovered they were having one of their hugely discounted sales. I thought, I wonder if they have piano classes?

And that was how I discovered Carl Eden’s “An Accelerated Piano Course for Beginners.” Right up front, it says the class is for adults, people who prefer standard piano teacher lessons to the clever numbers and colors and pictures that make up a lot of the online piano courses. Well, that sounded like me, so I splurged.

Best $30 I’ve spent in years (after a couple of lessons, I bought a second class of his on how to play 10 piano favorites, which is why it was that high). This man is a real teacher, very patient, and he reiterates to be patient with yourself. You start playing with both hands almost right from the start. He explains the clefs and note lengths and everything (most of which I already know from my prior experience), which tells me that when he gets to things that I don’t already know, I’ll be able to learn them from him.

I still have been reluctant to practice—too much else to do—but it’s not been as difficult to sit down at the keyboard. And today, after I’d told myself I really wanted to learn to play this time, so I’d better get my practice in, by the time I finished, I realized I had actually ENJOYED this time at the keyboard.

It was fun, just like playing the guitar used to be fun.

And now my heart is dancing.