Music Lessons

When Charlie was taking piano lessons once a week (from this teacher), he practiced almost every day. In the beginning, when he was just learning to identify the keys and read the notes, practices were 10 to 15 minutes and sometimes less. Charlie’s teacher emphasized that he hoped that Charlie would enjoy playing the piano, and not see it as some chore that he had to do, so we always (well, we always tried) to end on a good note. (I was not trying to pun.)

After about 9 months, when Charlie was clearly learning to read the notes and starting to play with both hands, he often barely had to look at the sheet music to play “Spinning” and “Oh Susanna” and the other short little songs in his book—-it was quite apparent that he’d more or less memorized many of the pieces and looking at the music was just an afterthought. As we practice less now — partially because Charlie’s also got to practice cello and also because he’s not taking piano lessons with a teacher anymore — Charlie has to pause and focus on what the notes say, so in some ways the piano practice has also been a good way to reinforce his reading skills. He can read the treble and bass clefs and a full octave of both starting from middle C.

I started taking piano lessons when I was six years old and played all through high school. I had weekly lessons, daily practice (with summers “off”—there was many a time that I detested nothing so much as practicing the piano), and a few entrances in the tryouts for the Junior Bach Festival in Berkeley. (I never made it past the tryouts; always had a memory block in the middle of the fugue I had so meticulously played a thousand times over.) I also started playing viola in the third grade and played in two youth orchestras.

To be honest, I often wished I had stuck with the violin: Charlie’s hands are already bigger than mine and because I’m 5 feet tall, I couldn’t use a bigger-sized viola that made a bigger, deeper sound. Charlie’s got long, slender fingers. I’ve always had to strain a bit to reach a full octave; Charlie can do this with ease. I figured cello would be a better match for him, plus he wouldn’t have to hold up an instrument on his shoulder. And, he definitely prefers low-pitched and deep sounds, so higher tones and sometimes squeakiness of a violin might not appeal to him at all (and especially as he’s been in a very sound-sensitive phase for the past year).

My goal for the next year is to try to teach Charlie to play sheet music—-to play music from a piano book bought in a store. Right now, we’re still using the songs his old teacher left us with. Those sheets just have the bare essentials on them, the notes of course, the clefs, some rests (though Charlie doesn’t really play them), sharps, maybe a time signature or some slurs. Too many distractions on the page tend to, well, distract; just on Sunday evening, Charlie sight-read a new song which had some measures in which the right and left hands play simultaneously. He paused at those measures and played the right hand part first, and then (following me pointing) the left hand.

And yes, I can’t be more glad that I had to practice piano and viola, every day, for all those years