Skip to main content

New Piano


We just bought a piano.  I feel like such a grownup.

Now, despite taking lessons from third grade through eleventh, and despite graduating from a conservatory with a two-year piano requirement, I cannot play the piano at all.  If it were just about me we would not have bothered.  A piano is a BIG piece of furniture, and it weighs you down and ties you down.  It's a commitment.

But I remember having a piano in my house when I was growing up. Unlike a keyboard, or a record player, or even a radio, which an adult has to operate for you when you are small, a piano is always right there.  I spent hours just fooling around on it, and picking out tunes, and figuring out how it worked.  I could play the M*A*S*H* theme by ear before I entered school, and could pick out melodies from Disney movies or Broadway shows.  I determined that there is only one place on the keyboard that you can start Chopsticks and have it work out with no black keys.  I discovered a dominant seven chord all by myself - G-Bb-C-E - and played it every time I sat down because it sounded so cool. I didn't discover any of the other inversions or any other keys - harmonies have never been my strength - but that one was mine and I felt a kinship to it.

We always sang around the house but it was the piano that taught me that pitches are specific and not nebulous. You can start a song on any note but the intervals after you start are fixed, and they look different in different parts of the keyboard but you can always find them.

In other words, before I ever began to take formal lessons and before I had even heard of an oboe I had an intuitive sense of keyboard theory and a visual way to understand high and low notes and an ear for melody, and I want Zoe to be able to play with a piano in the same idle, figuring-it-out-for-herself way.  She doesn't need to be a musician, but I need that option to be available for her as it was for me.

Labels:

Comments

  1. RobinDesHautboisDecember 9, 2011 at 6:18 AM

    Oh, this is SO COOL!
    "New"? It looks too well sculpted to be new! It kind of reminds me of my mother's Piano, which is probably over 120 years old, by now.

    This is seriously one of the 4 best gifts you can possibly give your children (the others being a yard to play in, a bicycle to explore the world with - provided the neighborhood is safe - and a dog to learn the wonders of life and simplicity of happiness).

    Having a piano to plink-and-ploink on is the greatest. Nevermind formal lessons or fingerings or tunes untill they show enough desire: just let them feel the wonder of the vibration of real strings and the reverb of the entire room, made possible by the big furniture! Exploring by themselves how notes sound together and in succession will be a thrill they will remember even in very old age!

    Seriously, CONGRATULATIONS and well done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JennetDecember 9, 2011 at 9:06 AM

    Thanks, Robin, and of course you are right - it is a Weber from maybe the turn of the century or so. We are very pleased with ourselves.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies.  Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked.  I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel.  If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance.  Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street.  She makes us sing along.  She loves it when we clap at the end.  When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later.  Her immediate interest is in ...
2 comments
Read more

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable.  You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time.  Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...
6 comments
Read more

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

We took a vacation this summer.   This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures.   We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon.   We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams.   We hiked.   Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out).   After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.   This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones.   In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...
6 comments
Read more