Great piece. I'm the opposite of the writer: a professional jazz player who can't find an agent for his first novel -- about a Caulfieldesque loser who finds himself in the middle of a small-town murder mystery.
To Ms. Weiner: I'll teach you a great blues scale and even help you with the Chopin -- you should try the Fantaisie-Impromptu next -- if you'll put me in touch with your agent!
Cheers from Paris....
19
Ms. Weiner, your gift in writing never fails to leave me smiling, inspired, and often falling out of my chair with laughter (Too Stupid to Cheat). You already make beautiful music with your words. Thanks for this column!
7
As someone who has always played popular music on the guitar I’ll never understand how people can play off the page. Do they even understand what they’re doing? Do they understand why the composer made the choices they did? What it all means? When a guitar player first starts off playing TAB and has no idea what the notes are they aren’t considered a real player....but for piano this seems de rigeur. It’s so weird to me.
Improvisation (and the deep thought processes hat come with it) has always been the height of creativity to me. Once you have jazz, why would anyone need classical? A machine can play any classical piece ever written....but will never be able to improvise chord voicings/substitutions and single note lines properly. In short: it is the act of composition that brings the human element to music.
All that said, I’m obviously glad whenever anyone take up music, whatever the music, whatever the level. Like the author I’ll never be ‘great’, not by a long stretch, but music makes life worth living. So, there’s that.
5
A self described "mediocre" hobby pianist writes and gets published an article about her pianism...How mediocre.
3
Picking up the cello at 72. Should be hopeless, but not bad so far!
14
At 49 I have started taking ballet classes. It’s been a month and I’ve taken a class every single day.* It’s all I think about. I know that I will never perform but something about trying to master this incredibly difficult art form is thrilling.
*When you start ballet, you cannot take a “Beginner” class. “Beginner” classes are for those who’ve been doing ballet for at least a year or two. You must take “Very Beginner,” also sometimes called “Basic” or “Intro,” which says everything!
8
"But that is good enough?" Having your teenage daughter say "That was really good, Mom," surpasses "good enough" by such an enormous margin that it should be measured in light years."
In the twilight of my own life, I found your op-ed inspiring and gently reassuring. You've written twelve novels, you say? I've written zero, and I have fancied myself as an amateur writer for decades. You won!
But did you, really? Maybe I won. After all, I get to read your twelve novels without having had to sweat over all the hard work of producing them. OK, OK; all that hard work is the point, I realize.
Keep playing those tunes Ms. Weiner. and into the bargain, hit the computer keyboard from time to time. The world needs the kind sanity of your insights.
There's no harm in missing a sharp now and then.
13
My 12-year-old son is in the other room getting his weekly guitar lesson, today on his 'new' electric guitar, a Christmas present.
Ten years ago he was a tiny guy in day care, with more than one teacher who brought a guitar in to sing with the kids. He loved those sessions and would come home every day to pick up a broom or a stick or a hobby horse to play HIS guitar. We got him a ukelele, then a 1/4 size guitar, then lessons.... My wife was inspired by him to learn guitar herself, and I, in turn, was inspired by her to try the violin again after not having touched it for more than forty years. I was astounded at the muscle memory. I had played from the age of 5 to nearly 13, but was not inspired by the classical music I was at that time "forced" to play. No bluegrass for me?! I'm out! Now I play what I want -- jazz, bluegrass, Irish fiddle, and classical too -- and it's only for me, though my family fortunately doesn't seem to mind.
I appreciate the author's experience. I'll never be Stephane Grappelli either, but would encourage any adult who has a desire to make music, whether for the first time or just the first time in a long time, to go for it!
9
I fell in love with music, and piano music in particular, at a young age - 2nd grade - after hearing classical music for the first time. That love of music took me to a very high level of ability in both piano and voice.
But life came along and my musical talent had to be put aside. Off and on over the years, I have sat down to play again. But after hearing how poorly I was now playing, I would stop. I no longer had those hours and hours to practice as I did in my youth. It seemed hopeless.
But now I am 84. I have found great pleasure in playing simplified versions of the music I love. I would never have considered doing such in earlier years - it's pride, you know. But now I have put that aside and am so glad I did.
18
Thanks, Jennifer Weiner, you got me thinking. I was a high-achieving, piano student in the 60s and 70s, winning high school competitions, and constantly coping with performance anxiety. One evening at a piano lesson prior to a concerto competition, I tearfully told my teacher I couldn't do it anymore. I could tell she was heart-broken, but she showed respect and compassion. Surprisingly, I went on to get a piano degree in college, then became a piano teacher, joined a jazz trio, became a composer. In time, my career shifted away from teaching, I played piano sporadically, then lost touch with it, and now, in my 60s, I have an inherited hand condition, which even after surgery, cannot restore my reach to a full octave. Not to worry, I say to myself. Playing piano has never been more enjoyable. To make music, to listen to music, to dance to it, whatever, is a beautiful way to be.
11
I fell in love with the harpsichord many years ago, but wasn't able to get one and learn to play until much later, in my 60s. I loved the literature, loved my instrument, cherished my practice time. My teacher told me I was very musical. I couldn't "hear" what she meant, but since she was a top-rated professional, I was overjoyed to take her word as gospel. Then disaster struck: arthritis, which began as carpal tunnel syndrome. Despite getting the best, most advanced care I reached a point of no return. My small-muscle control diminished; tuning my beloved hpsi was difficult, punctuated by what I began to call "Eine Kleine Sproing Musik" [apologies to WAM] and trying to wind on a replacement string was agony. Carving a new jack was impossible. I finally had to give up. One of the saddest days of my life was saying goodbye to my beloved hpsi. After a couple of years of deep mourning I realized that maybe even though I couldn't play, I still had a really good ear, and those who could play deserved a really knowledgeable audience, which I definitely was. And still am.
7
My paternal grandmother was my inspiration. She played for the silentmovies in Detroit and Saginaw, Michigan. At the age of three I would sit next to her on the piano as she played ragtime, completely mesmerized. At the age of six, I began piano lessons. Attending Catholic schools, I was selected by the nuns in the fourth grade to become the next grade school organist which I did the following year. So I switched from piano to organ and that work supported my education through high school and three college degrees. It even paid for my clothing beginning at the age of 11. I play only on occasion anymore, but is and always is been therapy. Am I great? No. But I am good enough to fool most people and can get the job done. Mostly it’s for me.
11
Thank you for this article - the roomba into a corner analogy is hilariously and yet tragically spot on, and I have been there. I have a similar, but slightly different, drive. When I become convinced that something is "right", I become like a dog with a bone and cannot let it go. Can. Not. Fortunately, this is a great quality in my profession (I am an attorney) but can be quite horrible on display in my personal life. I do love learning new things, and so thank you for the reminder that I can pursue learning something to death instead of driving my loved ones insane with my dogged pursuit of a point. Next time I feel the need to debate how many times a week one needs to wash ones clothes with my mother until she relents that she will be eternally damned if she does it any other way than mine, I am going to go learn how to wire a light instead.
3
Like the author of this article, I usually try to excel in all endeavors; however, then I started to play golf, which in my opinion is the most difficult of all sports to even play at a mediocre level; and unlike other sports (and most other skills) "back sliding" is the norm for almost all golfers - for the first five holes you are hitting the ball well, but on the sixth hole you completely flub a shot, and for rest of the round your play is awful. Recall that Tiger Woods, one of two greatest golfers of all time (the other is Jack Nicklaus), often says in post round interviews that he "didn't have his A game." So what playing golf teaches most people is that a round of wildly varying shots can still be quite enjoyable if you are with friends and the weather is nice.
3
Not bragging in the slightest, I swear, but I’m a very good, perhaps excellent, classical guitarist. People tell me I should have turned professional instead of picking alternative paths. But, music for me never was, never will be, about money, and it was never about ego. It was about connecting to a state of being far greater than me. Music has always been, as this lovely article alludes, about being somewhere with something that never tarnishes. In all of my fifty years of playing, I’ve never performed the same piece twice in exactly the same way. Music, although I cannot precisely define it even after all these years, has always been a voyage of exploration into the unknown. My greatest joys have frequently emerged from an accidental miracle of melody cum harmony that has occurred, say at an open mic, where I meet someone on a similar course who understands the abounding mystery as is not afraid to adventure.
Keep playing, don’t give up. There is a higher state of being to be aspired towards, however adept one might be. Music, I think, is humankind’s connection to the universe, putting us in sympathetic rhythm with a pulsar billions of light years away. Nearly everything makes sound in some circumstance and all sound is music in some form. All this sound, in conglomeration, is a celebration of existence. By partaking in the noise, we confirm that we exist.
8
Brava signora
5
Losing yourself in art will allow you to ignore the news and Donald Trump, as well as hating your fellow man, as he suggests.
9
About 4 years ago, I was walking through the Houston airport, and found myself softly whistling the into to AC/DC's 'Hell's Bells', and strangely enough, what popped up in my head was: I'm gonna play this. I've had some acoustic guitar lessons in 3rd grade, but then it got away from me. So, at 55, I picked up an electric guitar, and since then I had a guitar in my hands almost every day. I'll never be Angus, or Jimmy Page, but trying to play music (well, my wife debates that point, and I've got good headphones...) relaxes me in a way that simply listening to music has never done.
Playing creates its own stress, but I find it's a stress that shields me from everything else. I've never kept at something where I know I won't be any good for so long. Yet, those moments when I finally hit that riff just right are awesome, and that's the hook that'll make me try yet another one.
Probably worst of all, I've started playing Mozart - with distortion and high gain.
8
Ms. Weiner, you have described to a "T" my trials and tribulations with the...CD player.
OMG this is so me! Comments tell me I am not alone .. (Insert happy dance)
4
When I learned snowboarding at 44, it was incredibly difficult. I was in a high pressure job at the time and when I went to slide on snow I felt incredibly guilty. Over time I realized how therapeutic it was to focus completely on finding the right balance (!) and staying upright. To become completely lost in the moment somehow does settle the mind. When I would go back to work, I saw solutions with clarity. In a couple of years I was a snowboard instructor at a very large resort and did that on weekends while maintaining the demanding job. A co-worker noticed that I would pick up a new hobby and abandon it after a while. I insisted that would never happen I with snowboarding, I loved it too much. It was just as much as a physical activity as it was mental and spiritual.
My coworker was right. I held onto snowboarding for years, tho, much longer than other pursuits. I will still go out, but the conditions have to be perfect!
Last year at 57, the day after a late night (hiccup) online shopping spree, I purchased a bass guitar. I’ve never played a musical instrument, had tried and failed many times. This time I gave it a real go. Lessons, practicing, researching. I will always stink at it. I aspire to mediocrity. I play for my dogs who would rather play fetch. But I found a group of young folks who think it’s fantastic that I’m out there trying and play with them.
Thank you for this article. Let’s all get together and play!
3
Jennifer, I know exactly what you are talking about. I took lessons from the age of 12 to 17, and loved it but realized the concert stage is not in my future. It is now many years later and still play, hitting wrong notes but the love of playing has not gone away. One hour a day is my Zen meditation.
5
Most of the insights in the essay & comments could be summed up in a G.K. Chesterton quote: "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly." Echoed by many like-minded writers & philosopers since (e.g., Arendt), our tendency in the opposite direction is rooted in the philistine (intellectually shallow/soulless) idolization of success, achievement & efficiency of an industrial, money-centered culture. Though I disagree with a fair amount of the essay, its best points affirm the virtues of the "amateur" (i.e., "doing for love"; in this orientation, aims like "success," "achievement" or money get the taint of "ulterior motives" at odds with purer artistic purpose).
However, much of the essay (see my comment below about the so-called "minute waltz," Beethoven sonata, use of the word "song," Rachmaninov etc.) suggest a shallowness closer to the notion of "dilettante" (its connotation of mere dabbling or possible pretentiousness, though the latter's not really in evidence in this instance) than with the more Chestertonian "amateur" orientation. The latter systematically tries to follow the learning process of authentic artists, which involve disciplined learning, probing understanding, but these combined w/ love of the craft or medium (sine qua non), & deep engagement w/ an artistic tradition, aversion to shallowness.
I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend reading H. Becker's book "Art Worlds" on this; BACH, BACH, BACH, BACH, & the film"Chariots of Fire" (about "amateur vs. pro").
2
I’m a professional singer and studied flute through undergrad. I’m terrible at piano but love not being perfect at it, just trying and being OK. It’s very freeing to make mistakes and just try. An activity with no expectations.
6
Began figure skating lessons at age 60. Six years later ( despite breaking a shoulder after a fall) I’m still at it. It probably wouldn’t have been fun when I was younger and would have felt compelled to test and compete. It’s not a road to the Olympics but it’s my journey and I’m proud of it!
Way to go Jennifer - and I loved your book of essays BTW.
7
I am a professional violinist. I started to play at six, having wanted to even earlier. I loved Jennifer Weiner's opinion because contains insight and is a superb piece of writing. Since I already play music the article pushes me toward the question: What pursuit can I try so that I lose my ego with time speeding as if it never happened while living just in the moment?
Actually though it is my work, my dirge, my tormentor; I attain that 'in the moment' state by playing music. Though it's my work, and sometimes involves a lot of pressure, it's the magic of playing music that is itself intrinsic. Music is a substance within a dimension that enlightens and it's there for all who partake. As for releasing the ego: one must be humble if one is to learn. I hope that Jennifer's writing inspires more 'amateurs' to make the same discovery!
5
too bad the piano part is mixed with the vainglorious how great I am parts.
4
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." G.K. Chesterton
6
So American to give up if we can't excel or to consider time wasted if not moving towards a goal. You have a hobby, not a profession, not a calling, not even a side hustle. And this is a revelation! it's ok to relax and enjoy life.
3
Oh! Yes! The joy of knowing you’re creating neural pathways — let’s put aside for the moment the fact that the best way to stave off old age is to exercise, to keep that blood circulating. Because I’m learning French from an app, been doing it six months, fell for all their motivating carrots, like trying to keep my streaks of lessons going (except for paying to “mend” a broken streak, which is just a pretense that you can change the past. Been there, can’t do it.). So 11 minutes a day, most days, anyway, means that now je parle très très mal francais, and though at times I forget which is the new French or the high-school Spanish, it’s great fun and — well into middle age — a new little world for me to conquer. Reason enough.
1
I began taking jazz guitar lessons at the age of 49 with my 11 year old son, after being a mediocre classical piano student in my youth and several attempts to learn to play classical guitar {it's brutal}.
I was surprised how much easier it is to play an electric guitar with it's narrower neck and cut-away body giving access to an upper register that extends almost another octave. The steel strings are much easier on my fingers than the thick nylons that could leave them feeling numb.
Then I learned how easy it is to play along with almost anything using nothing but pentatonic scales. Next came a little music theory in order to understand what's happening in a tune (hint: it all goes back to primary chords - they're just disguised so you have to learn to recognize them).
I can't say I find it relaxing. It's hard work. It takes perseverance, dedication, and passion. I found out I have a lot more passion for The American Songbook and later compositions of the 60s and 70s than I ever had for Bach or Chopin.
One piece of advice for the author: Try memorizing tunes so you don't have to keep looking at a page while you play. You can't really feel the music when you have to look at a sheet of paper while you're playing. it gets in the way.
2) Learn to improvise. Start with simple pentatonic scales and arpegios. you'll be surprised how easy and fun it is.
3} Check our the YouTube channels of Aimee Nolte, NewJazz, and JazzDuets. They are amazing teachers and highly worth it
1
When you play the piano, play it with this in mind:
“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
Like you said, OK is good enough.
5
I knew I'd never be a Keith Moon, Alex Van Halen or Charlie Watts but I still keep at it. Philly Joe Jones, Joe Morello and the rest of those amazings? Nah. I'm not from that planet.
I loved this piece and commented earlier, but it's worth pointing out that Ms. Weiner picks up on the poplar synecdoche, as it were, that the first movement IS Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata.”
There are two more, and the third is very hard to play!
1
Ha! This is exactly what I thought. Most anyone can play the first (& 2nd) movements of the Moonlight Sonata, but the third requires some intense practice. I’ve played piano since I was 5 and this is one movement I have yet to master ( at 55). Still, practicing this from time to time if satisfying in a way but when I want to feel really accomplished I go back to play the Pathétique which I have played since I was 17.
1
From your fingers to God's ears.
Who says your work has no literary respectability? Your writing is an inspiration!
3
I see what you did there...
(Perhaps it is the innate critic in me, but one wonders if the author will ineed continue with her "mediocre" piano practicing now that she has "won" -- published a piece about doing an activity "just for herself" that somehow makes its way into the hearts and minds of NYT readers, and ending on a humblebrag parenting note to boot!)
My guess is: with the publication of this piece, the piano playing will not persist. The end goal has been achieved. She won, again.
2
‘I’ll never be Rachmaninoff” sounds a lot like “I could play like Rachmaninoff if only”.
Dear Jennifer,
Thank you for this piece! I, too, did something similar with the cello, and now, hope to be a mediocre musician who tries, and occasionally gets it all right! Because sometimes, things can just be fun.
Pablo Casals can Rest In Peace. I am no threat!
25
At age 70 I had my high school clarinet and alto sax re-padded, and what followed was painful. Stiff hands, weak embouchure, and insufficient wind. Sometime later I learned of an electronic wind instrument (call the Aerophone) that mitigates these problems. The sound of music ever since.
Nowadays I devote pretty much the same amount of time to reading the Times and playing my instrument. Fear and trembling when facing a new articulation exercise, but satisfaction weeks later when I’ve got it. On the Aerophone I can be an alto sax or clarinet, or baritone sax or recorder, or trumpet or harmonica. You should hear my rendition of “Good King Wenceslas” on the French horn, or my “Mona Lisa” on the tenor sax.
I find the practice as beneficial as working out at the gym, and once in a while my wife says I sound good.
1
So timely! This is me and the harp. Even with years of piano and organ under my belt (and as rusty on piano as you were when restarting your lessons), I find the harp a huge challenge. But it's FUN. And I'm enjoying it. And when I'm playing, I'm not worrying about the 80 tabs open in my brain browser. But I didn't realize it until reading this, so thanks!
Thank you Jennifer! I played the trombone when I was a teenager but, during college, I stopped playing and sold my instrument at a garage sale. As I grew older, I became more and more interested in the cello and have collected recordings of a large number of cello music. I finally decided to take up the cello this year. My goal is to learn as much of the music as I can but without going to the extreme commitment that I give up everything else. If I can gain an appreciation of the cello and music in general, I will be enriched.
1
I love this! I'm a piano instructor and specifically teach adults. I was a competitive pianist when I was younger and absolutely loved it. But my perfectionism spilled over into all areas of my life, and as I got older I realized how much I'd wished for someone to tell me "You know what? It's ok if you're not great at everything. It's ok to do things for fun." And so was born my philosophy of teaching.
I think a lot of adults dream about going back to lessons, but are worried that they won't be good enough. I'm here to tell you - you ARE good enough! Nothing makes me (and many instructors, I imagine) happier than sharing my life's passion with someone who wants to learn. There are all sorts of concepts and shortcuts that adults can understand and absorb in a different way than kids can. And once you understand the basics of how music works, so many things open up. For example, a lot of my students want to play pop music, but are frustrated by what they find online. Most sheet music is unnecessarily complicated, and I love to create easy-to-play arrangements that allow them to make music now.
Adults can choose. If they want to be pushed, I'll push them. If they want to play the same song for months because they don't have time to practice, that's fine too. There is so much joy in telling someone "Be where you are, do what you can, and it's all acceptable." I've found it incredibly therapeutic, and I think my students feel the same. It is never too late to play!
7
As for your books, you write books that women -- or at least this woman -- love to read. I'm sure it would be nice to write books that get literary acclaim, but I usually don't read those kinds of books. I read for pure enjoyment and to escape into a character's life, and your books do that for me.
Please keep writing books that people enjoy reading and don't worry about literary acclaim.
2
I am 79 years old and like Ms. Weiner, I've tended to focus of my life's failures rather than my successes. My "piano" has been mathematics, specifically, The Calculus. I've returned to study it knowing that I will never win a Fields medal or the Galois prize. I struggle with each theorem and I need to constantly review what I have learned. Nevertheless, each study session fills me with contentment. Indeed, O.K. is really good enough!
3
After playing piano through college as a secondary field to my beloved Spanish literature studies, I started taking lessons again on the day I retired. Now, six years later, I am so glad I did. It took a while to re-establish neurological connections in my hands and to relearn elements of technique, but now I wouldn't trade my piano lessons for the world. When I play Bach, Chopin, Schumann, and others,I feel that I have the opportunity to in some way commune with those great spirits. I make many mistakes, but I am consoled by what my teacher told me: that Beethoven said he'd rather there be a few mistakes than that the music be played without expression.
2
I have been an occasional guitar player for the last 20 years and finally took lessons last year. I’ve moved into OK territory and am very happy there, with continued progress and the ability to play more difficult pieces. What I have found through playing, even poorly, is a much greater appreciation ufor the songs and artists I’m learning. Trying to play something difficult inevitably gives one a deeper sense of the artist’s technical ability and musical sense, which sometimes leaves me in awe of the talent embodied in a song.
1
I think what is key about this article is the bridging of the music with the musician. Regardless of the instrument one choices to learn to play or how proficient one excels at it (or not), it's that musical marriage and magic that occurs, transforms and transcends a person from simply enjoying the music to actually being engaged to what the masters like Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and all the other geniuses created and wrote so many centuries ago. To think I play the same notes Bach wrote for his preludes and fugues or Mozart's piano sonatas - WOW - that notion alone stops me in my tracks - still.
It doesn't matter all that much how badly one butchers a piece of music with their instrument of choice because in the end, it's the desire and longing to learn to play that adds to the richness, enjoyment and fulfillment of the music. . . and the musician.
3
Let me suggest drawing with only pencil and paper. This requires very few "things", is inexpensive and you can probably start right away. Soon, you will be "seeing" the world in a new way and finding that as you work at it zen comes.
2
I took piano lessons from 2nd grade all the way thru high school. I ranked 2nd in TX in solo & ensemble competition my senior year. I played keyboard in jazz band, I accompanied my classmates who played other instruments in competition. During football season I played percussion instruments. Music consumed me and by the time I graduated, I was so burned out and quit when I went to college. I haven’t had the desire to play since I graduated HS in 1983. But now that I’m nearing retirement, I think more and more how I’d like to start taking lessons again, but this time, for ME. Not for my parents who said they didn’t spend all that money on a piano, only for me to quit (and dreamt of me being a professional concert pianist). I have always wondered if playing piano is like riding a bike...you never really forget. I type all day, at 80 words per minute, so I like to think my fingers could still “tickle the ivories”...although I doubt my reach is still just over an octave, as it was when I peaked out at the age of 17. I guess I’ll find out in a few years when I peace out and retire.
At my mother's insistence, I took violin lessons in the fourth grade - 9 years old, a full size violin without a chin rest - it didn't go well. I stuck it out for the school year and hardly practiced. During the spring concert my teacher put me in the back row and told me to move my arm in the same direction as everyone else but "never let your bow touch those strings. OK?" I quit the next day. For the next 59 years I learned guitar, mandolin, and a little piano. Then a month before I hit 68, On a whim I decided to revisit the violin. This time things have been different. I'm now almost 70. I practice daily for at least an hour or two. All I can play are little one page tunes, but I don't care - I love it. Last spring I decided to get some payback for not being allowed to really play in that concert when I was 9 years old. I found a pub with slow business on a Sunday afternoon, invited my friends and family, and for 25 minutes I played everything I knew. Of course, my intonation was off, some pieces were better than others, and my 6 year old grandson said to my wife, "Is it over yet?" Ouch. How was it? Well, as one of my friends said, "Um...the pizza was good." So the reviews were iffy, but I don't care. I'm better now than last spring, and I'll be better next year. I"m not going to be Josh Bell, but so what? I'm having a great time. Forget age, just jump right in there. Life is a limited run, and too short to worry about getting to Carnegie Hall. Wanna come to the next show?
83
For a recent milestone birthday ending in zero, my two daughters gave me a gift certificate for a month's worth of violin lessons. Though I'd played piano on and off for years and never well (my mother used to say I played with "more enthusiasm than accuracy"), I'd often said I'd like to try the violin and my kids finally gave me the opportunity. Five years later I'm still at it, and although I'm still terrible, I have a wonderfully patient teacher and don't plan on giving up. But I don't even practice if anyone is home to hear it--you are braver than I, so go for it!
8
@EA Do this - just get out there somewhere and play some songs. Don't think about it too much. After my first three lessons I found myself playing a short song in a violin recital. I got through it, but I noticed I was the tallest by at least a foot or two, and the oldest by a decade or two. So I asked my teacher, "Do you have any other adult students?" She replied, "Yes, but they are too afraid to play in public." So she and I set up a series of informal adult student recitals. Once every three months or so, we get together, have some dessert, wine, tea, etc. and play for each other. No audience. Just each other. Its fun and This has encouraged many of them to play in the full recitals in the autumn and the spring. Granted, those little kids can play rings around us, but so what? It's fun. Recently, I've started to play in some old-time and Bluegrass jams. I'm not all that great, but the group is very forgiving, and I'm having fun. Best wishes.
8
@Michael Kennedy KUDOS to you!!
8
Thank you - from another Type-A, have-to-be-perfect overachiever who has returned to piano lessons and is struggling for mediocrity. This describes my experience so perfectly - right down to the teacher who praises my stumbling efforts which would have embarrassed me when I was a 13-year-old to whom music still came easily. Yes, it is worth it.
My teacher asked me what my goal was. Instead of my usual top-of-the-pile goal, I said, "I just want to be able to play and enjoy it." And I do enjoy it, stumbling and always imperfect as it is. Probably I will never be good enough for anyone but my tolerant husband to hear (and I wouldn't let him hear if I could help it!) But it is my time to escape from the rest of the world and be immersed in my personal struggle and triumphs to remember which sharps the key I'm playing in has - and experience the joy when I finally play through a piece without mistakes and hear the music I created.
This article validates, for me, the worth of my "wasted" money on piano lessons for my less-than-nimble 66-year-old fingers. Again, thank you!
118
@Elaine Turner
This article touches on more than just accepting mediocrity. It is a perfect description of why talented kids too often fail to develop their full potential. They are so used to things coming relatively easily that when they hit the point that where they have to struggle to advance they think they can’t do it. Their experience is that things you are good at come easily so when you have to struggle it means you arena to aren’t supposed to be doing that activity. Our culture often reinforces that belief. For example studies have shown that American kids are much more apt to say that you have to have talent to be good at math. Asian kids say you need a kot of hard work to master it.
We should be teaching people that everyone, even the most gifted geniuses struggle to be their best and often have to relearn or rethink something.
Years ago when I was taking a graduate course in cognitive development I read the book “Mastery” by George Leonard. It describes how reaching real mastery requires a lot of practice and tolerating the frustration and boredom of plateaus you will repeatly experience. You may even have to start over relearning something like your golf swing which has served you well but only up to a point.
“If you want to truly master something, you must be willing to remain a beginner and look a fool. The beginner’s mind is required for learning anything new.”
https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/mastery
10
Inspiring words. Thank you for sharing. And thanks to the other commenters for their own inspiring stories.
I took piano lessons for a brief period as a child and showed some promise until sandlot baseball beckoned. Music would have better served me in the long run!
After many, many years of loving to hear blues guitar, I decided to take it up myself around age 50. I am now 61, and I will never be Duane Allman, but that's ok--I play only for my own release (and only when there is no one else around to hear). The great thing about blues is that you can play/sing them with authenticity (even if only with limited skill) at any stage of adulthood, because you can have the blues at any age. Blues are cathartic.
Of late, I have taken to carving stone--more specifically, carving inscriptions in slate. It is truly a zen activity, requiring intense focus and patience, with the only sound being the chisel chipping methodically into the stone. At this point, I consider two truly good letters per day an accomplishment. I will never be John Benson or David Kindersly, but that's OK, too. The joy is in creating and in leaving something of yourself behind.
19
My sister studied violin and piano, even majoring in the former. She was proficient and I enjoyed attending her performances. I studied piano for years - Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff. I was forced by my music-loving mother, and yet I came to appreciate it, even though I never attained my sister's level. I brought some semblance of skill to myself and joy to others, even teaching myself to play by ear at a basic level to help out in church services.
It is indeed a joy to read this article, which I plan to share with students. Several years ago, one of my students said, "Life without smart phones would be boring." I'm sure a number of my students would agree, forgetting that for many years, people were not bored: those who had leisure time, found time to do things, even at a mediocre level, to develop their minds, to socialize, to help others, whether it was collecting stamps, reading (even aloud), quilting, playing in bowling leagues, serving meals or playing an instrument. These activities enrich our lives and our communities in ways that social media cannot.
80
I, too, learned the value of being "mediocre" at something. As a child and young person, I had a lot of physical illness. I couldn't participate in sports, and knew I hadn't much ability in any of them, either. But I was always a straight-A student, getting my bachelors when I was 21 and my law degree when I was 23. I understand that competitive drive.
Fast forward many years, and my kid wanted to take tae kwon do. Well, I was taking her to lessons twice a week, and not getting any exercise myself. So I started the martial art, really as a way to start getting the exercise that I sorely needed.
Now in my 60's, I've never been able to kick much past my waist level, and flying, spinning moves were never in my repertoire... That said, I learned something very important -- that in an area where I had "no talent", I could still accomplish much more than I'd ever imagined I could. And I earned my 3rd dan black belt last year.
I still train, will never have all the flashy moves, but it is an area that develops my concentration, my balance and my physical strength. And I've done so much better at it than I thought I could have, when I started more than twenty years ago. That has led me to gaining confidence in other areas of my life -- areas that I thought I couldn't handle.
So I agree that there is value in taking up something as an adult, where one has little natural talent. Because each of us will take away an important lesson that we may apply to other areas of our lives.
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@Donegal Thank you for sharing. Inspiring and informative.
5
@Donegal
If you can't kick past your waist, you're no black belt, let alone 3rd degree.
You got a participation trophy.
That doesn't in any way imply you should give up participating.
1
I'm a pianist who has pursued other career avenues while notching up a few professional achievements, including performing Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto. Even if you can play the piece, hearing the composer's own recording is humbling. Professional pianists also know they'll "never be Rachmaninoff." The magic of music is that anyone can find satisfaction and sheer joy at whatever level of music making they're capable of. Enjoy!
26
Yes, I understand the desire to again learn an instrument that for various reasons one didn't adequately do so when the time was best for it.
But then I found that the effort of working hard to achieve minimum levels of mediocrity introduced a new neural path of frustration .
So, I stopped and took a different tack. I started to listen to more music by young talented performers of familiar pieces interpreted by the performers of my earlier years. Often, I found that these newer interpretations forced me to re-experience the piece entirely and in so doing feeling again stimulated and enthused as I had been when I was young.
And then I began to listen more to new composers and through them changing my thinking about music. In other words after decades of musical atrophy my tastes again began to grow and in that way entered a sort of "new youth" not to mention saving a packet on fruitless piano lessons.
7
Although I perfectly understand what you're saying about learning to truly listen to classical music (something each child and adult should be taught to do, knowing the tremendous neurological benefits of doing so), I'd disagree when you write that working hard to obtain a minimum level of mediocrity would somehow create new neuronal pathways.
Frustration arises when we didn't have the chance yet to develop so-called "self-care" brain networks, which are networks between the prefrontal cortex and the deeper lying amygdala, and that precisely help us to immediately activate the "everything is fine, I am fine" network when the amygdala start to flood your brain with stress hormones linked to a perceived threat (in this case, the perceived threat is that idea that "I'll never be good enough").
So it's not that frustration creates new brain networks, it's just that in the absence of self-regulation networks, each new frustration strengthens the brain networks that are responsible for those stress hormones in the first place.
The good news is that just like your brain networks for listening to and appreciating new composers or new interpretations start developing the more you do so, your brain networks for dealing with not being perfect or very good at something can be developed too.
For some, that happens through a piano teacher actively cultivating them, for others in a more direct way, through self-love and self-compassion meditations, or a specific approach to yoga.
3
We never had instruments in my family or had a chance to take lessons. But, upon entering college in 1952 one of the electives was piano lessons. I took the class. As the semester was ending, the instructor said if I did not return, I would be given a C. I was tone deaf; but I sure did enjoy pounding on the keyboard.
2
Sadly, I now have an empty bedroom in the house. In it, I have a flute, an acoustic guitar, a ukelele, three harmonicas and a pretty smart Yamaha keyboard. It plays by itself.
I also have three adult piano courses, The Wohltemperierte Klavier, four discs for guitar and uke, and several music theory treatises, all still very new.
One of these days, I'll turn this computer off and open that door.
2
I think music making should be like sex—do it for pleasure, not how it might appear to, or be judged by, others. And, as with sex, you can enjoy it alone, but it is infinitely more interesting to connect with others. The writer now has her teacher, but perhaps she can find a way to connect with other musicians, which will likely sustain a very long-term set of opportunities. For instance, play to accompany simple singing of songs, or find someone who wants to play simple solos.
1
I took the childhood piano lessons, always loved them, always terrible. I stopped playing for many decades out of self-consciousness, but now I've come to the conclusion that a digital piano is God's gift to the joyous but terrible amateur. With my headphones, I can love making music without worrying about the neighbors!
2
The dozens of comments here about “natural talent” insult every music and art student within shouting distance.
Music comes hard to you, because it is not as easily integrated into your life. Simply being competitive and wanting to be first at every activity is a mindset that transfers easily across disciplines, even when all it is doing is annoying people and ensuring that you get the trophy you covet.
There is interesting research into “flow”, the state where effort is supplanted by true integration. It is probably not part of the hyperfrantic life you inhabit, and it probably feels a long way from a yoga mat if being the best is your immediate goal.
I wanted to read the column with an open mind about humility, but I left feeling that most would see this as a way to jokingly disparage those who put in the time to become great musicians, artists or athletes. I have met more parents than I can count who want their children enrolled in Ivy League universities based on their SAT and AP scores and speak with contempt about the kid who plays linebacker or the harpist who was admitted with 630 SATs.
Your self-deprecating humor is humanizing, but I would live in that genre for all of 2019. Look at those “others” as new ideals, rather than heaping the self-praise for “busy-ness” which is the American credo we all dismiss jokingly while clinging to it with all of our self-identity.
Musicians are just naturally gifted. They engage in something that is not a race.
Try it once.
1
Lovely writing - I don’t know her novels but am going to seek them out. My version of this is weaving - i’m not very good, but find it absorbing, keep trying to get better. A bonus is that this hobby has provided a new group of friends who educate and inspire (but don’t arouse competitiveness in me).
3
I love this article probably because I relate to it so well. Music offered me opportunities from a small country town and I knew early on I required a more time with the piano then the trombone but it was an outlet that I needed. I learned to practice and sometimes I made and some not, but at least I tried and got the proverbial “that sounds pretty good “. Even though I haven’t played in 3 decades I not only listen to music , of some sort, each day but appreciate it’s creativity and an artists’s ability. Whether it’s a B52s minor melodic “Roam”, RuPaul’s “Sissy that Walk”, or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade I am truly thankful I played when I was younger.
Loved this article. I have had a similar experience but gave up playing a year ago because I didn’t feel I was making progress. This article inspires me to rethink that. So thank you. By the way, Chopin did NOT intend the ‘minute waltz’ to be played in 60 seconds. The publisher named it the minute waltz because it was very short, e.g., “minute” as in “mien-yoot”.
1
Moonlight Sonata capably? I'm sorry, but that makes no sense unless it's specified whether all 3 movements, and if not, which one/s. One would have to be relatively accomplished to merely get through the finale without it being obviously defective in technique or understanding, while the first movement could sound relatively competent by a complete novice who just "practiced" (mindless rote repetition) enough times, as probably has occurred a million times on this particular piece.
Even more confusing is calling the Burgmuller etude a "song"; if don't sing it, it's a "piece" or "composition." Finally, most students of piano or piano music enthusiasts know the so-called "minute waltz" was never designated that by Chopin, and isn't meant to be played in a minute. Oh, one more thing: the more you know music, the less interested you are in Rachmaninov; as pianist or composer, he is a bit in classical music what Hallmark is in literature.
2
In the words of all of us who make music largely for our own sake, thank you for your treatise on trying one's best at the keyboard.
No, virtually all of us who play piano will never be Rachmaninov, but we can listen to those like him, and there aren't many.
I hope it helps you to mention that you are doing far better than I, my being stuck with a few old ballads my wife loves, and "Moonlight Sonata." But it's a clear case of what MGM called, "Ars gracia artis." Art for its own sake. And such as it is.
I do believe it helps keep a few of the neural pathways salted and sanded, and I occasionally get an "attaboy" from my wife for my efforts. But most of all I enjoy what I can play and still work on what I think I can.
Cheers, and "play it again,"Jennifer!
2
I seriously doubt she ever played the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata.
1
You should read the article in the TImes Metro section about Sir Shadow. He has a great quote that helped my wife as she embarks on learning to play the violin: “Those who try to be great are cursed,” Sir Shadow said. “They have to worry about failure and perfection. No true artist says, ‘I’m great.’”
2
Satie wasn't Rachmaninoff either. But his music is so beautiful it's otherworldly.
Technical brilliance is NOT the end-all and be-all of pianism. Musicality is really all that matters.
This is a lovely reminder that we all need to play. And not worry so much about the critics.
I just started learning to play the ukulele. I truly stink! But it’s making my writing so much more enjoyable.
Great piece!
1
Saxplayer@57. No musical background. 8 years in, mediocre at best. Nonetheless, was accepted by local gospel band and have played in public, which has been accurately analogized to getting up without your pants. Many humiliations, all forgiven by my band mates, each one of whom understands music more than I ever likely will. Agonizingly slow progress. To be good, you must be relaxed. To be relaxed, you have to know what you’re doing. Playing a single note well takes skill. For however long your music lasts, you are in the moment, and in a community as old as humanity.
I have discovered, in my old age, what you have -- the serenity and peace of being entirely absorbed in "playing" my keyboard. As for the quality, or lack of it, The Underachiever's Handbook states that sometimes "good enough is good enough" and I admit I'm delighted whenever, however seldom, I get it right.
1
Great story, with the exception that the Minute Waltz was not meant to be played in under 60 seconds - it's the other meaning of minute, "diminutive."
2
Oh Jennifer, this piece hits the right note for me (pun intended). Around 10 years ago when my son started guitar lessons, I decided to pick one up and try myself - like you, I had tried as a child and it never stuck.
Ten years later, my son is an amazing guitarist. And me? Fumbling through pieces slowly until I make something passable resonate through the strings. Do I wish I could play like him? Absolutely. However, I still know the joy of using that part of my brain, and making music (of sorts) fill the air. And I wouldn't trade a minute of it.
1
You go sister! Keep practicing, keep learning, keep branching out! and you will probably find that many things in your life are affected ...from your 15 year old daughter's image of you to your understanding of your writing. Very impressive.
Music is a healer.
1
Steve Jobs once described the personal computer as a bicycle for the mind...
Perhaps the piano is the lap-pool for the mind – with 88 keys being an Olympic-sized one...
You don’t have to be in it to win gold – just going rhythmically from one end to the other and back again might do it...
Along this line, you might find your unique musical self in playing the Chopin in reverse, once you – finally – reach the end...
And – when your 15-year-old bursts into the room and asks who Paul is and when did he die...
Thank me then...
2
Good for you, Jennifer! Chopin’s waltzes are wonderful…not TOO technically demanding…and outright FUN to play!
I suggest that you add his “Adieu” Waltz in Ab Major (Opus 69, No. 1) to your daily practice.
Also: play on the best instrument you can afford! A Craigslist give-away is sure to hinder your progress.
Some excellent (new or refurbished) pianos can be had today for under $10,000. You don’t need a nine-foot grand.
It's good to slow down. Listen. If it's not slow enough go slower. Breathe in, play out. It's not about the fingers, it's about the music. And listen......hear.
I started taking voice lessons for exactly the same reasons: I’m TERRIBLE! And I LOVE it! Do re mi a go go!
2
Very good article, I'm a professional musician and play the piano myself, but with this article really speaks to it's just how far off what is important our culture is we come. We become insanely obsessed with competition and running around in circles like rats. It's very sad and telling that an article it just talks about playing music for the pure joy of it rather than trying to achieve something ... well. we've really gotten off track on what's important in this country in a lot of ways
27
I was a talented child musician but lacked the discipline and motivation to become an excellent musician. I still love playing the piano, and am delighted to have an electric keyboard with headphones. Nobody is subjected to my mistakes and I can hear myself as I wish I could play. Everybody wins!
2
Thank you for a wonderful article.
My story: I'm 70 years old and continue the weekly piano lessons I have been taking for 20 years.
Like you, I took lessons as a child but lost interest after a year. Returning to piano at the age of 50, and keeping at it for so long, has added immeasurably to my life. I'm still learning and enjoying every minute of it.
And I'm also still "just ok" at playing.
4
This piece speaks to me. I'm about to turn 50. I've been playing guitar on and off since high school. For the past couple of years, I have, for the first time, really taken the time to understand the theory and technique, rather than just aimlessly playing songs. I work hard at it every night - though "work" doesn't seem to be an apt term for something that is so satisfying on so many levels.
I know I'll never be great, but all that matters is that I'm getting better every day. Challenging one's mental capabilities is an end in itself.
And there's nothing like playing music. It truly gratifies the soul.
2
I so enjoyed this. I played the piano for 12 years and resisted it for the most part, most of the way. I got good enough to do a few competitions in high school but fell off for 20 yrs and now I wrestle with my own 10 yr old about practicing and why knowing just the basics of the notes and the pleasure of being able to sit and read music will be something she'll cherish later in life. I myself have tinkered around with the piano again (alas our NYC apt can't accommodate one b/c of sound issues) and when I play Bach exercises or a two page Mozart, I feel delighted, but concentrated and enthused as well. The pleasure of learning and creation is well worth it and there is no need to win, prove or achieve. Thank you for this reminder.
2
I retired thirteen years ago moved from Manhattan's Upper West Side to the Berkshires in western MA.
One of my activities is mentoring, which includes high school and community college students. I have them answer a short series of questions that gives me a sense of how to proceed with them.
One of my favorite and most telling questions is: "What do you enjoy doing that you are not good at?"
10
My answer to your ‘not good at’ question would be ‘racing sailboats.’ But, after nearly 40 years, I am still not good at it. Yet, I persist, loving every moment of it. I also play the piano and have much more success at that. It all comes down to two things: time on the keyboard and getting away from the music. Either memorize it and start from that point with your enjoyment or write your own stuff and play that. You will find the accomplishment with the piano that you are missing with writing, in my opinion. Your playing will become a reflection of where you are at that moment.
1
Have to agree, this is a wonderful piece. To find something that can slow you down and make trying more important than success at this point in our lives is wonderful. Of course my mind immediately went to 'maybe I shouldn't have bought the guitar, it should have been a piano.' Thank you for this wonderful piece of writing.
2
Ah, yes. I can relate. At 59 I, too, decided it was time to dust off my rusty childhood piano skills and start taking lessons again--but blues piano for me. Though I only aspire to mediocrity. I love the blues. I breathe the blues. But playing blues is pretty much the opposite of everything my 10 year old self learned about the piano.
And. so. much. harder.
Like you, I struggle on in my stumbling, gospel rendition of Amazing Grace; it's deeply satisfying in its awfulness when I can finally recognize the semblance of a tune. And with my headphones plugged in, no one else has to suffer through it...
5
I can completely relate. I've been feeling the same way about my professional work, often feeling a failure after receiving negative feedback even if there is just as much positive feedback. Earlier this year (2018) I started playing the piano again after only playing on and off since freshman year in high school (I'm 55 now). I'm still annoyed sometimes that I don't sound as good as I'd like, but I enjoy being engrossed in it and I'm not playing for anyone but for the fun of it. And I have the pleasure of saying "I don't really like that piece, so I'm going to move on to another" - no pressure to keep going with it. I still meditate with mixed success, but focusing on something fun helps more. I'm doing the same with dancing now too! Thank you for the article!
2
You picked the wrong target. Rachmaninoff wasn't human. No human could have written the second movement of his second piano concerto or the theme of the third movement. I sit in amazement each of the hundreds of times I listen. His hands weren't so human either. I can almost sense him sitting over my shoulder thinking, "go ahead, I dare you to play that measure!"
Aim for Mozart. You'll get closer. Great article.
5
I'm 55. and have been wanting to learn how to play banjo for a long time, but I'm full of excuses. After reading this piece and the lovely comments, I think in 2019 I will. Thank you!
9
Sadly, the only thing I can play is a CD player. But, I love all kinds of music and it is truly a different kind of language. So much can be communicated with sound, and without words to get in the way. I encouraged my daughter’s natural interest and talent in piano and she was growing in skill until college. Now, I am hoping she will rediscover her love of music beyond endless Spotify playlists. Creating is a fundamental human need. And modern society asks too little of our creative spirit and gifts. And music is a great antidote to the soul-crushing pace of modern American life.
2
@Rob Merrill
"Creating is a fundamental human need. And modern society asks too little of our creative spirit and gifts."
I love what you said there. As an art teacher all my life I saw this play out with every kid in my classes no matter how good each kid was at making things. They just loved it no matter the results. All I had to do was set up the art room so that they could explore on their own. So much fun and so gratifying to see these kids immerse themselves in the art of creation.
1
Thank you.
I started guitar lessons about 2 years ago, at age 70.
I too have an instructor, much younger, whose skill and patience are inspiring.
Since I started, I have purchased guitars that deserve much greater skill than I will ever achieve. Believing that playing a beautiful instrument would imbue my hands with the skills I was trying to develop. Epiphany: beautiful guitars don’t respond well to stiff, old hands that haven’t danced on a fretboard for decades.
Being similarly driven to succeed, the hours of practice with minimal progress has, at times, been frustrating. Then comes a minor breakthrough and I’m hooked again.
So, I too, will persist. There is something comforting in the fact that my dog no longer runs from the room when I start to practice.
Making music (loosely defined) truly is a joyful experience.
6
This is exactly the way i feel playing the guitar which i took up at the age of 61. i love playing and singing. i don’t sound great and never will but i sound mediocre and it makes me feel great. sometimes, i have to pull myself away from practicing. that’s how much i love it and the idea that i can play a fair to middlin’ version of ‘8 days a week’ or ‘don’t think twice’ is nothing short of astonishing to me. i practice almost every day for an hour or so and it takes me out of whatever mood i’m in to a new place. and btw, it’s not just the playing of the instrument. for me, it’s the singing. as adults, we almost never sing with regularity or seriously belt it out. it’s great fun. try it.
6
At almost 77 I am almost six months into learning to play the piano for the first time. I also have been run by the competitive spirit, and need for perfection, or more accurately the fear of making mistakes. My memory is not great and my eyes are challenged after cataract surgery and etc. My teacher tells me to call it playing the piano not practicing. “Practicing is a bore.” It surely keeps me in the present moment and makes everything else disappear. I feel so accomplished when I can get through a new song without mistakes and in some relationship to the correct rhythm. I am thrilled when I begin to feel the music. I am also grateful (today) that Idid not learn earlier. I might have been good at it, driven and insufferable. Knowing I will always be a beginner is such a relief.
5
I will be forever grateful to my parents, who when I and my sisters were children, had the wisdom to buy a home replete with grand piano in the living room, and whom engaged all of us children in piano lessons.
I'll never be Rachmaninoff either, but there is a spiritual transformation that lifts my soul in just knowing that I might, just might, be able to pull off, say, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C-Minor if I really, really worked at it, or (more realistically) learn to play-by-ear George Winston's 'December' album in its entirety. If the Rach 2 is Mt. Everest, my performance might achieve Base-Camp. With Winston, a much more primitive effort but no less spiritually rewarding trek, I can achieve 'summit' (no offense, George!).
Just those two possibilities alone have gotten me through many a trying time in my life. And back when it mattered, playing piano and singing were the skills-du-jour in impressing women. But that...is another story.
3
For my sixtieth birthday, a friend gave me a gift certificate for a few guitar lessons. Learning to play guitar wasn't something I'd even remotely been thinking of doing, but I went to the lessons. Two years later, I'm still taking lessons. Of course I'll never be concert quality, but I 've definitely seen progress. And yes, practicing music is so much more absorbing than it was when I was a child taking piano lessons. And I know exactly what you're talking about when you miss a sharp, believe me!
5
Lovely, true piece. Would also love to hear more about your piano teacher, how he imparts such wisdom and acts with patience. I would like to understand how he, too, accepts the less than perfect in his students' musicianship. Thanks!
9
A true musician—and a true artist-teacher—realizes that perfection in music doesn’t exist. It is an ideal which musicians at every level strive to attain. That is why the author’s teacher’s patience is not extraordinary; it is, in fact completely natural.
1
I finally decided to take violin lessons for the first time in my long life. I wanted a new challenge and it is a challenge. I will never be able to play chopin or Mozart but I love the challenge, at least until I hear the sound of something like a cat in agony.
Keep up the practice and continue to inspire us to try.
3
@AV Chopin never wrote for the violin, so you're safe there. ;o)
1
Thank you very much for crystallizing some of my own passing thoughts. This is what great writing does for us.
I, too, am a half-bad musician though I've hacked at the guitar and piano for most of my 70 years. My practice and lesson (yes, I still have formal lessons) time is my time to push aside the cares of the day and concentrate of something lovely and mostly for me alone.
6
Dear Jennifer Weiner,
Many thanks for an inspiring piece -- I hope to take it seriously and follow in your footsteps, but with a guitar. What you wrote is also a confirmation of what my partner often says to me. I´ve started several times, but maybe your thoughts will make the difference, and -- if it works -- I´ll let you know!
To use a commercialized slogan -- "just do it!" (By the way, I´m 74!!)
8
I restarted serious piano studies 10 years ago, at age 49, after having had lessons from age seven to 16 while growing up in Chicago. After two years I was able to pass the Grade 8 exam of the ABRSM (Associated Boards of the Royal Schools of Music), but not without blood, sweat and tears (and a zillion new neural pathways).
However, it was only in the last year that the wisdom of my latest and young (to me) 32-year-old piano teacher hit home, when he finally convinced me to play and express love of music as best I can, and not lament the lack of concert pianist talent. He also took me into a deeper level of the beauty and genius of Bach's preludes and fugues, which one could spend a lifetime learning and refining and rediscovering.........
Finally, as for lamenting the lack of world-class musicianship, I always think of the line in the 1998 film "Hilary and Jackie," when Jacqueline du Pre, who is beginning to resent the cello dominating her life, exclaims to husband Daniel Barenboim, "We're just trained freaks." Perhaps better to be a true amateur!
9
Did the piano lessons thing as a kid. Enjoyed it and for a kid wasn't bad. Even as a college student, long past lessons, learned some new classical pieces.
And have kept them for fifty years.
But the really delightful moment was when I was able to bring home some old sheet music from my late aunt's piano bench. Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Gershwin -- and now when I visit antique shops, I leaf through boxes of old sheet music. Some, too, are available on eBay if you know what you want.
Totally easy and gratifying to play. Every old 1930s film has terrific music in it. How about "Tomorrow Is Forever"? A lovely waltz, courtesy of Max Steiner. Or the "Alice Adams" waltz.
(And both splendid films. Try them!)
9
I played the piano as a child for several years.
Did the whole thing — lessons, recitals, the whole routine.
Music came so easily to me — reading it was a snap, understanding the tempo, syntax, nuances of all the pieces — all instinctive.
At some point I decided that boys and horses were a lot more exciting that sitting in front of this piano for hours, practicing music . So I walked away .
During my marriage my husband decided he wanted to play the guitar. He knew nothing and would ask me questions - and at some point, while explaining how to read music, I thought I wanted to play again.
First piano in the house was an upright- although it had unbelievable limitations, it helped me to realize that I could still read music, could still play and that I deeply loved playing.
I now have a Mason Hamlin grand that I deeply love ( you should hear the bass range - such sensuality) and have lessoned for several years with professionals. I will never be as good as one of them - what they can do is a whole other level of playing - but through them and resulting from what they have taught me I have re-discovered the pure and unfettered joy of playing the piano, of being taken out of yourself and losing yourself in the sounds and creation of music.
I am now playing Chopin OP. 27 No 2 and the fact that I can experience the beauty of this incredible music through my playing is a wonder to me.
I love the piano - music is a gift to be cherished .
15
@dog lover I feel the same way about Op27#2. It's one of Chopin's most beautiful. I play it just to enjoy the wonder. It never ceases.
I too am learning musical instruments. Seven or eight years ago I had two dusty guitars. Now I have four guitars, including an electric one, three banjos and a violin. I also have a couple of dozen new musically inclined acquaintances. I am not very good but I am terrifically entertained.
4
@Jane Menard Get a ukulele and sing 60's and 70's pop songs at the top of your lungs in a bar with 10 others. The best of amateur music!
Inspiring (& thank you). Although Rachmaninoff might be a bad example: I'd read that he had unusually large hands, so even professional pianists have trouble with his pieces [which he wrote for himself to play]). But, that aside, this opinion piece motivates me to keep trying (in my case, an endeavor other than music), and reminds me that true 'calming' comes from concentration (so 'mindfulness' & yoga, which are unable to elicit - in my case - deep concentration, just won't cut it).
7
My sister enjoys playing piano, is no expert,
playing mostly popular music with hesitation,
thinking about what's next on the page,
creating slow, beautiful, thoughtful spaces,
rather than only the notes.
12
When downsizing two years ago, decided we needed to sell my childhood piano. Used to sit down at it a couple of times a year, play Mozart Sonata in C, and then dust it weekly.
This year, realized how much I missed it. Bought a keyboard and now run scales, chords and Czerny exercise about an hour a day. Never had aspirations of being “good”, but loving the challenge and accepting that whatever the music that comes out of this instrument is mine and perfect for me!
12
People have written such wonderful comments.
I can’t do better.
Just a quick note.
Playing guitar over 50 years.
Still out there rocking.
Hearing the music in my head.
Occasionally get a round of applause
Then the audience returns to beer and conversation.
16
I was captivated when I heard my first rock and roll guitar riff in the 1970s. I took guitar lessons but quit out of frustration because I didn't have more natural talent. I decided to pick up that electric guitar again in my forties. Since then I have been playing regularly for the last 15 years. I decided that even though I am powerless over the level of talent I have, and even though adult responsibilities limited my ability to practice, I could practice 15 minutes a day. I now play in a band and we have about one gig per month. It is more fun than I ever could have imagined. I am so glad I picked that thing back up and that I did not let my ego and frustration get in the way of the music. Even if it is mediocre, music is magical.
20
I read your article with a big smile on my face. I strated piano, two years ago, at 53!!! I face many of challenges you have so elequently mentioned in your writing. I have come to accept that I will never be able to play Chopin, like it should be played. But, I am happy if I could just finish all the measures correctly.
I wish you the best of luck in your writing and piano playing endeavor.
17
The line that appears in the otherwise empty comment box is:
"Share your thoughts."
If the column is concerned with an element of the downfall of my country of birth, formulating a thought or two can be challenging.
If the column is, however, a personal story, writing a comment text is easy - the anecdotal approach is acceptable. The possible reward for us readers is that we learn a bit more about one or another comment writer whom we have followed for years. My comment friend Blackmamba has been revealing his family tree for years and it keeps getting better.
Here is mine: In the 1940s my brother and I heard big bands, notably Harry James, trumpet virtuoso, in a radio hidden under a pillow. We never got the chance to take music lessons but briefly, as a junior at Brown, I used my own money to buy a not-good trumpet and pay for lessons with Julio Tancredi in Providence. We lived in cramped quarters in Seekonk MA, so trumpet sounds were not welcomed. Then I bought a beautiful Rafael Mendez Olds but one parent - you choose - did not think much of that idea. With no place to practice and no encouragement, I was forced to give up but years later, in my own home in Rochester NY I got a second chance,bought a Bach Stradivarius, took lessons with Nate Rawls. Late starter, no orchestra, but I loved doing it all ending at age 83 when a satisfactory embouchure was no longer feasible, after years with AM Bläs church orchestra in Linköping SE.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
15
Thank you for this! Tonight I revisited my keyboard for the first time in months. Some people call me a great pianist, but I know I’m mearly competent. Still there is something about playing a new song that connects me to the piece. Tonight I played Kenny Rogers’ “Lady” for the first time and learned Lionel Ritchie actually wrote it. I played along with a YouTube video of the two of them singing it together and felt as if I was there accompanying them. The lyrics took on deeper meaning, I thought “what an incredible love song!” If you can get to a point where playing connects you to a song, who cares how good you are?
12
I started playing the oboe at the age 18, when I was a sophomore in college. It was HARD. I got to where I could join a band--and playing in an ensemble presents a whole new set of skills to accomplish beyond the instrument itself. Eventually, I figured I had to go to music school if I really wanted to get decent at it. Which I did, even though, starting at 25, I was among the worst players in school. I was played at a professional level, only for semipro community orchestras or ensembles for religious services. And it's hard to maintain even that level. Work and family responsibilities often mean the instrument stays in the case for a while. But: I know the language of music after my education. I can read scores. I can understand complex rhythms. I can understand Andras Schiff's lectures on Beethoven piano sonatas, which are amazing. My ego was crushed a million times on this journey, but I got what I wanted--the ability to understand what I loved at a level I did not think I'd ever reach.
25
Half of success is showing up. Who knows who will be a success until you try. While my story is almost exactly like Jennifer’s (except that I’m really old, so learning pieces now takes a lot more work) and I don’t expect to be successful, I don’t think all really great musicians - or people successful in other endeavors - did what they did just to be successful. They did what they did because they loved it, had talent and the ability to work hard. Success and acclimation were the frosting on the cake. We live in a very, very materialistic society where money is the measure of all things. It’s not like that everywhere. We all need to do something we love and know won’t make us rich - ever.
21
Great concept. We are all NOT genius.
My thing is my Darkroom where I relax in the dark making soso B&W wet prints from huge film.
My mind calms and that is good.
Zen hours are the best.
14
@NotJammer, the darkroom was also my sanctuary. I was a serious photographer, exhibited in museums and publications, even this one. Then came digital, which took me away from the darkroom. Now, the sink that I built, is used to wash my trumpet. I somehow wish digital photograph never came along.
10
@DavidJ
I shoot DSLR, iPhone, 35mm, 120, amd sheet up to 11X14. Even a few modern glass plates.
I enjoy it all.
My new Darkroom is almost ready. Plumbing done. 5 enlargers.
Now back to working on it.
I'm 68 and having a good time.
Some years ago at a party I was introduced to the game Rock Band, where a group of people all play mock instruments together to on-screen song instructions. I was given the guitar and did terribly of course since this was my first time playing. But I was most distraught when the song ended and I learned that the point of the game was for everyone in the band to play well, together. My mind couldn't process the idea of a cooperative game being fun! How could something be worthwhile if I'm not winning? I promptly "quit" the band/game.
I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Weiner's article and related to many of her experiences (and hilarious depictions) with knowing laughter. I'm slowly learning that not everything has to be a competition for me to win, that I can enjoy tackling a new skill even if I'll never be great at it, that the quest for perfection is often a convenient excuse for quitting pursuits at the first sign of struggle. What a wonderful reminder as we all consider what endeavors we'd like to undertake in the new year! Perhaps success can be measured as contented mediocrity rather than constant perfection.
P.S. I took piano lessons for many years growing up, and was quite good at the time. But I'll also never be Rachmaninoff unless my fingers grow a few inches!
6
Wonderful piece. I, also am taking piano, after a lapse of 60 years and love it. I ran across an article recently that illustrated how wonderful playing piano is for the mind. But that aside, I thank God my parents gave me lessons as a child in the 50s Midwest). What better way to entertain yourself, for openers.
16
Lovely and inspiring writing. I, too, had piano lessons as a child (for 7 years ). My mother sold our baby grand after I stopped playing in junior high (understandable, since it took up a great deal of living room space). In my late 20s, I bought myself an "apartment-size" grand that has followed me from a condo to a house and then to another house. Every year, I resolve to practice and play for my own enjoyment but never seem to find the time. At age 59, I'm still determined to do so. Thank you for helping me think that 2019 will be the year I finally do it!
16
Ms. Weiner may not be Mitsuko Uchida or Murray Perahia but it sounds as if she's more than a capable amateur pianist. I'm delighted for her.
I've minimal piano skills and have been contemplating resuming lessons after more than 50 years. Ms. Weiner has given me additional motivation. I'll never play the "Moonlight" Sonata capably - but could sit down now and play some very basic melodies from the operatic and Broadway worlds.
Can I even approach Ms. Weiner's skill? I doubt it. Can I rediscover the enjoyment of playing the piano again - albeit in the autumn of my life? I hope so.
Thanks for the inspiration, Ms. Weiner - happy 2019!
13
@Muleman happy playing! go for it!
Tonight I nearly cried when my husband told me that he liked having the keyboard in the living room and hearing me play.
I have kept the piano in the guest room for years & only moved it out for the holidays to accommodate an extra bed for visitors.
My level of play is about what you'd expect for a 72 year old who hasn't had lessons since about 1960 and has trouble sight reading and getting the rhythms right. Even when I was taking lessons I needed the instructor to play something for me so that I could handle the timing!
Fortunately, I've discovered country/western easy piano books and can 'hear' the music in my head as I play songs I recognize.
Kudos to all the commenters here. Keep playing and enjoy your music!
28
I took piano lessons from age 6 to 18 and was OK but was never a technically excellent player. I too stopped playing regularly in college and did not start again until I retired. I have played that same Chopin Waltz in C Sharp minor for years. I imagine I have played it ten thousand times and never once played it perfectly but I've learned to be thrilled by those times when play a half page or so without a mistake. There is a joy in making music, no matter how good you are at it.
20
In reading the comments on this article, I’m pleased to find so many kindred spirits with similar experiences.
Having studied voice in my teens and twenties, some decades later I missed the pleasure of music as an everyday part of my life. An impulse led me at 58 to purchase a flute—the closest instrumental analogue to singing—and then I started taking lessons with an excellent teacher.
Now in my fifth year of studying the flute, how grateful I am for this decision, one of the best I have ever made. The thrill of every modest improvement; the expansion and deepening of musical knowledge; the delight of creating harmony in duets; the solace of focused practice in the midst of life’s sorrow or chaos—what wonderful gifts. I don’t even mind participating in recitals in which all the other student performers are a fraction of my age.
Realizing that one’s aspirations must be limited does cause a twinge of regret, but it’s also liberating, because external expectations/pressures are minimal and the focus is (usually) less on one’s own vanity than on the music itself. And strangely enough, that inspires this 62-year-old student to work even more diligently!
20
Like some other commenters, I started taking piano lessons around 30 years after college graduation, moved by a strong love of music and a wish to play dating from childhood.
I had a real job, I had the means, I had the desire. So I bought a very respectable new piano and convinced the most wonderful teacher I could have found to take me on.
I had read the research : I knew going in that even if I were to find 5 hours a day to practice, I would never really impress anyone musically, especially since, unlike the author, I had not had the benefit of childhood lessons. Something can happen in children which apparently can wire the brain for an ability to execute a "left and right hand plus musical notes" movement that you are simply not able to acquire as an adult.
I had also learned that most serious teachers won't take on adults (fortunately mine was an exception), not only because they don't have the potential to develop into stars thus spreading glory onto the teacher, but mostly because : they ALWAYS quit out of frustration.
I have had some low moments. Almost all the other adults in the studio studied as children and are way more advanced than I am. But after 15 years I'm still trying to plug on. Adult friends ask me occasionally about starting piano and I tell them, It will work ONLY if you can let go of all the expectations you have developed from listening to professionals over decades; just set realistic goals and do your best. And... let the music lift your soul.
16
My parents started me on the piano at the age of six. I was petite and had small hands. We lived in a small town, with teachers who were not trained to handle all comers, try as they might. I also didn't understand persistence. Big surprise: by the mutual agreement of my last teacher, my mother, and me, I quit piano at the age of ten. I got a fresh start with flute lessons through the school. By the time I hit puberty, my hands had grown, as had my self-discipline. I regretted ditching piano lessons, but we had had financial reverses. Years passed. I became a Suzuki piano parent and watched my child's teacher patiently working with a student who could have been me at the same age. At about that time I went to an adult flute camp, only to find myself no longer at home with the instrument. Eventually, when we acquired a piano that could take three people practicing regularly (my spouse has always played), I realized --thanks to an interview with a newspaper reporter-- that I could reach a certain birthday with or without the piano. I was able to find an excellent teacher and started lessons, with the goal of playing a piece at thus and such a level by that birthday. My spouse and I are part of an adult music "performance class." All of us have or have had careers in other walks of life and enjoy our hobby, despite no pretensions of becoming the next Angela Hewitt or Daniel Barenboim. Oh: I had that birthday a few months ago and play at a higher level.
7
This essay brought back many memories of my half-hearted piano performances in high school and college. My life's greatest misfortune is that I never tried harder to maintain a life where I could afford a piano - and have the time to play it - after moving away from my family. Even though I struggled with technique, speed, etc., some of my favorite moments were spent "banging on the noise machine" as my father referred to it. The piano comforted me, let me release pent-up anger and sadness, and helped me see the ways in which we humans could convey thought and feeling through music. I felt happier and more at peace, and as a result more human. The sheet music to Bach's French Suites, Scott Joplin's ragtime, and Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin still lays in a bookcase, waiting for the day my life stabilizes and a piano once again graces the space of my home. I, too, will never be as great as Rachmaninov, but for an hour or so, I will be as great as my heart can reach and my fingers can pluck the keys.
8
@David C - perhaps volunteer to play for the elderly at a nursing home for some free practice time?
1
When I was a teenager, I spent hours playing an unplugged electric guitar. I know I was terrible, but I could play along with my favorite records (on headphones) alone in my room and just feel the vibrations.
I didn’t bring it with me to college. My mother gave it away during my first semester (thinking I had never played it, and also having absolutely no respect for me or my personal space and property).
My wife bought me an acoustic at some point. She had a high school boyfriend who was a serious musician, and, to her, an electric guitar meant amps, pedals, wires everywhere. But as soon as she heard me play... I could tell she was disappointed. I never really played it (our neighborhood didn’t deserve the punishment). Sold it later.
Now I keep a set of drum sticks in my office and air-drum to the music when I need to clear my head.
6
I started piano when I was in my mid-to-late twenties. It's true what they say about younger minds being more flexible and, therefore, able to learn more easily. I loved classical piano with a passion and it hurt that I couldn't even finger pick a melody. I eventually gave it up. For one thing, it was embarrassing playing the same thing over and over again without gaining any fluency. The other thing, it was embarrassing that my neighbors said, why don't you try something else, we've been listening to that same piece forever. If I ever try it again, it will be with a good piano that I can play with headphones.
3
@Nova yos Galan
Yep, good plan. I can't entertain anyone with my playing (let alone my practicing), and having a keyboard I can play with headphones has been a real life-saver.
3
As usual, the comment section is amazing. NYT thank you so much for having such well-moderated comments and for offering up this space that often enriches even a terrific essay as this.
49
Very often I have but a cursory glance at the story itself, then I enjoy the comments. I hate to say that the comments are often more interesting than what the NYTIMES reporter wrote. Thank God for the comments.
3
It happened with me, with guitar. I was determined, in the early 1970s, to be in the vanguard of women rock and rollers who weren't relegated only to singing (my prejudice back then, coming to know later about the voice as an instrument in its own right) but as a member of the band like the boys were. Or somewhere in between, like singer-songwriter-keyboardist Christine McVie. I was going to rock them all to the sky with my electric guitars.
I was a gifted guitar student - until my young adulthood. Then I hit a wall. I would never be Hendrix; Clapton, or Joni Mitchell with her unique and unusual tunings, or Heart's Nancy Wilson, lyric poet of the fretted strings. I gave it up in bitterness and sorrow. Sometimes I think about opening up my old guitar case (still have the thing, in storage). Sometimes I think it's better left alone. I married a Cape Verdean whom for decades now has regaled me with his gift of playing the cavaquinho.
8
@PrairieFlax I know I am not the only one here that would enjoy hearing you play! But I do know it is of course your choice and we all have our vey valid reasons.
This article could not have appeared at a better time for me. I have been taking cello lessons for 8 years and had been thinking last week that maybe it just wasn’t working out. The first of the Bach Suites is better than a year ago but still clunky.
But my teacher says, “ when life drains you out, music fills you up.”
I cling to that thought but sometimes the seeming slowness of the progression wears on a person.
Your article along with the comments here will bring me back to the cello. Sometimes you just have to do something that makes you feel whole...even if it makes the dog crazy.
25
@Wolfe Forget the dog. You’re not Pablo Casals, and neither am I. Just keep working on those Bach cello suites. They’re amazing.
Playing the piano always came so easy for me. I had perfect pitch and I was able to play anything by ear. I thought I was special so I decided to major in music. Then I heard and saw the REAL pianists perform rather than simply play. How illuminating yet humbling that moment was. They were as brilliant as they were arrogant. Right then and there I realized that the best I would ever be was the accompanist to the vocal stars in the department. But I was okay with that. Every so often I would throw in a jazz chord at the end of Mozart or Robert Schumann lieder song for vocal and piano just to shake up the audience and to see if they were really paying attention. I guess I was doing Peter Schickele's P. D. Q. Bach before he made it famous.
What I truly realized is that two kinds of people play piano - those who play every note perfectly, like a robot, and then those who miss a note every so often but play with passion and conviction and heart. I was in the that group. Bach has always been my hero and my compass in the piano world. Every piece he wrote is a mathematical and musical masterpiece. There is order, precision and definition in every piece.
Rachmaninoff and Chopin have always been way over my pay grade. Just studying the notes, the massive amount of notes at roadrunner speeds made my head spin. I marvel at people who even attempt to play their works.
Thank you for this great article Ms. Weiner. Keep playing for it's food for the soul and the heart.
27
@Marge Keller
Yay Bach!!! But there is MUCH more to Bach than order, precision and definition. I remember working with my piano teacher on a piece from the French Suites. I had learned "hands separately" and it was time to put the hands together; I had dutifully held off on trying that at home. As I played along slowly, I reached a moment in the counterpoint, a spot where the two voices wove together in such a magical way that it brought sudden tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat, so much so that I had to stop for a moment. The beauty of it was almost heartbreaking.
22
@VPM
Your teacher's method of "hands separately" must have been cut from the same cloth as mine. To this day, that is the only way I know how to learn a piece of music.
I completely agree with your assessment that there is so much more to Bach than what I simply described. He creations are complex and rich and beautifully woven tapestries of genius. I just like, I just need his order and structure. He was always my foundation and basics in which I was able to build upon when learning other composers' pieces. For me, he was represented the DNA of music composition.
Thank you for your beautiful comment. It is wonderful to read about the enjoyment, appreciation and effect that Bach had on another musician.
5
@Marge Keller
Bach is exquisite-so much more than tempo and precision.
I play Bach for warm-up - he soothes my soul, settles my mind and soul.
When my piano and I have reached an accord and Bach begins to sound exquisite, I know that I can move on to Chopin.
4
A truly beautiful essay.
I love music, but I did not attempt to play the piano until I was in my late forties. It took me five years before I could strike keys simultaneously with my left and right hand, so strongly had the discipline of QWERTY governed the pathways of my brain. Even now, I tend to dwell unreasonably on the left-hand keystrokes.
Or perhaps there is something else. If you use a keyboard to write novels, for example, or to compose computer programs, there must be a different set of relationships between the ideas in your mind and the actions of your fingers striking the keys. The idioms and abstractions must be different than they are for musical expression.
So I don’t think it’s easy for any adult learner.
13
I'm a professional musician and play piano. It is so clear to me that the benefits in your life complying music are tremendous whether or not you're the most successful in your field or just someone learning music. It really does open up Pathways in your brain in your muscles, I mean it just creates such a joy in your life to have music and to be able to play music.
19
Sounds like the author is practicing by playing actual pieces, instead of doing pure practice. The pros do the latter for hours a day, but an amateur devoting half an hour a day will notice vast improvement.
I'm talking scales and arpeggios, and boring finger exercises like one can find in the basic drill book by Hanon.
There are no shortcuts.
As Frank Zappa said, "music is the best."
10
"I can quiet my mind and focus entirely on something: not my breath, but the music."
Just a quick tip: the breath IS the music.
11
I too started piano lessons almost 30 years after I stopped when I started college.
While I know I’ll never be an accomplished pianist I enjoy the challenge that it brings me.
And after 6 mos of practicing a Chopin piece I still get the notes wrong 9 times out of 10....but oh those rare moments when I get them right! Pure bliss!!!
7
Great article.
We are a musical species. Before writing, poets and bards kept track of oour history with song. Everyone sings as kids only to drop it as voices change, taste develops and teachers frown. My wish for everyone is to find the song that courses through you and express it. Crudely, with finesses, expertly, fumbling, and tumbling, make music. Don't let the perfect pitch people stare you down.
14
This article is a gift, not only to me but to many others given the wonderful comments. This my second such reminder of joy in the past week alone.
Our small community just welcomed our second refugee family; I was clothing organizer. While the five were going around choosing clothing, I happened upon the (very quiet) 12-year old girl sitting at the old ship's Steinway with both hands on the keys; it sounded almost musical. This child was born in a refugee camp in Ghana, and had known nothing else.
I told a musician friend about this, and he donated an ancient Korg keyboard for her.
When she saw it their home, she let out a shriek which must have roused all the gulls and crows from here to New Brunswick. She will begin lessons in January!
104
@Paula from Nova Scotia Love this! May she know music and happiness and safety all her days.
5
@Paula from Nova Scotia - you brought pure joy to a child who just lost everything. When you do your next gut check on how you're doing as a human being - put a HUGE checkmark in the "Awesome" column!
3
Has everyone missed the point of this piece? Her thing wasn't meditation or yoga. It was quieting her mind with music...more precisely --rediscovering something. Then working on it not to perfection but just "good enough". Very different. I use meditation and yoga...lately concentrating on expanding the gap between the thoughts that my mind is quite adept at generating. Some factual, most not. With woodworking I quiet an otherwise restless mind. With whatever project I am able to absolutely lose myself while being present. My dad, a CPA always at the beck and call of his clients, sketched every second he wasn't working. His drawings adorn all of his children's and grandchildren's homes. Drawing brought him incredible calm and peace. It was truly meditative and healing. And signed Chili Bud.
18
I began playing the flute in grade school and played on and off my whole life (I'm now 60), but was never very good: I lacked talent or discipline, probably both. Ten years after last putting my flute to bed, I resurrected it today after reading your piece, amazed to discover I could still sight-read music. Even my embouchure was not the disaster I'd expected! So thank you for the inspiration; I realize now that I don't have to be great just to enjoy playing.
15
It is, in my view, about the process, not the destination. I related to, and enjoyed, your article.
17
Inspiring piece. Thank you. A year ago, after a 40 year hiatus making any kind of music I returned to voice and piano. Both are deeply satisfying and creative outlets. I suspect in another year I’ll surpass what I achieved as a devoted teenage piano and choral student. With even more joy.
7
@Shellie Winkler “Joy” is the operative word here. Go for it!
I grew up in a musical family. Some members were very successful, winning Grammy Awards, and my father had a composition he wrote in college performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski.
But by the time I came along, my father was a very bitter and angry man. Music had not been kind to him. He steadfastly refused to give me music lessons, preferring to nurture my interest in science.
Determined, I finally took my first piano lessons in college. I enjoyed them immensely, though majoring in physics gave me little extra time to practice.
In graduate school I became involved with a woman who was a doctoral student in piano performance at Juilliard. For the better part of a year she begged me to play something for her. I finally relented, and started to pound out a Bach prelude. Four or five bars in she said, "Sweetheart, you have no talent!"
Of course, she was right.
But thirty-five years later, my girlfriend somehow managed to disappear entirely from the music scene, my father, who spent over forty years hating his profession, is dead. And most of my other musician-friends from my youth haven't played a note in decades.
Me? I still love music. That fact that I never had to be good at it has made that possible.
67
Thanks, Jennifer. I returned to the piano in my forties after a 30 year hiatus. Thirty years later I am still not ready for prime time, but I have a friend who plays French horn and we have a wonderful time playing duets. I like to pretend we are kind of like Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, but on different instruments. And I almost always love my practice time.
8
You just described how it feels to learn a new language. I'm trying to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. Just OK would be great right now.
12
Your piece struck a resonant chord. I started piano in my mid 60's with the support of a talented and incredibly tolerant teacher. While my progress has been........glacial, there are a wide variety of entry level pieces I can play including music of Bach, Handel, Bartok, Schubert, Kabalevsky, and Shostakovich to name a few. I am in a group that meets every 6-8 weeks and welcomes late starters as well as pianists who have returned to the fold. The group enthusiastically welcomes anyone who wants to play and all 'performances' are met with generous applause.
13
Great piece! I always loved music and played the guitar from a young age, but wanted to learn the keyboard. When I turned 65 I bought a digital keyboard and took some lessons, graduated to an acoustic piano but haven't gone beyond level 3 in ten years of playing, and it doesn't matter. After causing much grave turning by Mozart and Bach, I decided I'd stick to simpler tunes with lots of left hand chords and right hand melodies. It's fun, it's challenging, and I always walk away feeling good.
12
An inspiring piece as the season of grand resolutions for failure looms again.
10
Loved the article Jennifer and your willingness to consider “good enough.” I made this point many times in my book The Vintage Years: Finding your Inner Artist After Sixty.” I started playing the cello at age 70 after a lifetime of achievement. At 78 I’ve accepted the fact that I play because I want to and it gives me pleasure even though I will never sound like Yo-Yo Ma.
21
An encouraging article and something to remind oneself about often. I started music lessons at 9 but always resisted practicing the hour a day my parents tried to mandate. It was amateur level teaching. When I went to college I gave up lessons, but, inspired by jazz and the joy of playing, I would sit down to deconstruct the few songs I knew until I was totally improvising way past the songs. I've done this now for decades. Although I could say I didn't progress over the years and my physical ability deteriorates constantly from infrequent use, each time I've played I found emotional satisfaction and release. Finally, I traded the acoustic piano for an electronic keyboard which enables me to explore computer based improvisation. Last year I posted a first simple effort on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOr56UjTLEg) ... music and text combined with travel pictures taken by my mother in China in 1982. No one excepting email friends saw this and it doesn't matter at all: ok, I haven't gone viral !. I'm working very slowly on a second piece: pictures and text are now waiting for music. Nowhere near Rachmaninoff and still restricted by the demands of other activities like working for a living...can't get that hour together too often. But...I'm creating something and thinking about composing much of the time and that seems to be sufficient to "make my day". Thank you again, Ms. Weiner.
6
True story that reflects my love of pianos.
I grew up with baby grands in my house. Good but not great pianos. When I was first married we lived in a house that would only accommodate an upright.
Time passed. Bigger house. Spent a year going to every piano store in the area. Read books (Larry Fine's Piano Book). Played grands from Yamaha and Kawai to Steinways and a wonderful Bosendorfer that made a sound like perfectly struck glass. I finally annoyed one store owner enough so that he made me an offer an a midrange grand that I couldn't pass up (below market, my playing may have annoyed other customers. I was in so often so it was probably a smart business move).
Scheduled delivery for a Monday in January. The day before a massive snow storm, maybe four feet of snow. So I knew they'd never get it up the front steps or through the garage -- it had to come in through a rear entrance. But there was four feet of snow they could never get through. So I had a choice -- cancel or shovel snow.
So I grabbed my snow shovel and carved a path from the end of my drive around to the back entrance. I don't know how long it was -- 50 or 60 feet give or take. It took hours to get to ground level. But I got the delivery.
To finance, I postponed buying a new car.
For those who love pianos, get the best you can afford. There are good uprights, but a good grand is a different world. Do your research. Take your time. It's like a marriage.
46
What a lovely article. I am over 70 and take piano lessons from a talented piano teacher who inspires me every time I go for a lesson. In the summer time I play at the cottage as well with the loons. Just love it. Have a great day and thanks for sharing this with us.
18
Wonderful article! I encouraged my piano (and harp) students to play by ear, and fake. That way you start making music. As an over-competitive person, I like learning new things: right now, Kathak dance. At age 72, and with some coordination issues, it's wonderful to take class, enjoy new moves and new classmates, listen to different music, and feel new skills slowly come in, and not worry about being great.
4
I begged for a piano. Mama found an old upright and said “I won’t make you practice. If you decide you don’t want to play piano, say so, as we don’t have money to spare.” Before the 1st lesson, I worked thru “Teaching Little Fingers To Play.” A friend in the neighborhood gave us reduced rates on piano lessons, never raising the price over ten years.
The first week of 5th grade, grouchy Mrs. Nicholson shouted that I was in trouble, yelled at me to run to room 38 in the basement. By the time I got there, I was sobbing, not knowing why I was in trouble. A kind lady met me at the door with a little violin in her hands. She laughed and said “you’re not in trouble! You’re going to play violin in the orchestra!” I was very confused, thinking that the world had gone crazy. “But I don’t play violin!”
She said “But you will. You already know how to read music, and we don’t have enough violin players. We provide the instruments, so what do you have to lose?” She had heard me sneakily playing a piano after school hours in the hallway upstairs.
After 4 yrs as 2nd chair, the school had to take back the instrument which I had outgrown. The jr high conductor said I could keep playing, but that I would have to get my own violin.
Mama offered to sell the piano to buy a violin, but I couldn’t give up piano, so I gave up violin. 25 yrs later a lovely violin was given to me. Never top talent, but I still love both.
I credit the music hobbies with honing my memory for pre-med and medschool.
24
It’s good to be a dilettante when you recognize it and accept it, But aspiring to mediocrity is a a path to failure.
3
What a generous gift - this article! I am about to go into our den and pick up that infernal instrument, the fiddle. I will fumble my way through sixteenth notes, setting the metronome a bit faster each time. I will mess up a lot. This is usually a solitary endeavor, and I don’t mind that at all. But it’s nice to know I’m part of a community, Jennifer and the rest of us commenters all puttering away at our instruments. Thanks so much for putting us all in touch, Jennifer Weiner!
29
The Tao says, “the fingers control the universe.”
You call it playing the piano, but there’s something else happening, it’s happening at the same time.
The fingers control the universe.
You call it piano playing, but there’s something else going on.
:)
15
@chi
Well done!
@chi how can you get a quality site like this, I am very impressed with the article in itagen bola tangkas
What a simply wonderful story. I taught maths and physics for most of my life and at 56 went to live in the country and started teaching the piano in a very small rural town. My qualifications were a scrape-through at grade 5 so I started learning again, in case the parents asked about my qualifications!! At 59 became a registered music teacher and at 65 passed a Royal Schools teaching diploma. At 70 years old I am still teaching the violin, piano and guitar and still having occasional lessons for myself for piano and violin. The satisfaction I have had from teaching and especially playing has been tremendous. I play at least an hour a day, always pleased about the improvement. I know I will never be a great player, but the personal satisfaction that I have daily is one the greatest blessings in my life. And occasionally there is a real thrill of amazement at my playing and I have created that. And being able to understand great music more than I could before is also exciting. For me the effort I have put into learning music so I can play and teach better has doubled or tripled my quality of life.
19
There's no such thing as mediocre. Read "The Inner Game of Tennis", the best book about reclaiming one's excellence. Studying music is about allowing things to come to you at your own honest pace, not about the industry of producing predictable outcomes. That's for the assembly line, not the piece-worker. If you're less judgmental and more aware, you'll make progress. If not, then you'll just reinforce your comfort zone among the mediocre. It's about depolarizing work and play.
18
I disagree with the idea that doing something just for the pleasure of it is wonderful, regardless of whether you're any good or not,
Take golf. Or tennis. Or squash. A lot of people can play these games into their later years. But who would if you weren't reasonably competent. Doesn't mean you have to play at a competitive level, but if aren't competent why bother? Who would continue heading to the links every chance possible if you never experienced the thrill of hitting that great T shot where you can tell by the sound it's going a long way straight down the fairway? OR hitting an ace.
Now it may be intermittent reinforcement that keeps you hooked. Sometimes you slice the ball out of bounds -- you're not a pro -- but you hit it well enough often enough that the game is enjoyable. Who would continue on if all you could do was roll the ball along the ground, slicing and hooking from out of bounds on one side to the other?
In short, for a hobby to be enjoyable, doesn't there have to be some form of competence? And continuous improvement. The author isn't just playing for fun. She's playing to get better. She's practicing. Today a waltz. Tomorrow the etudes. Else why bother?
Making music well is reinforcing. The better you play, the more reinforcing it becomes. And you can't improve without being self-critical. It would be nice to remove achievement and competence from the equation, but that's not really possible, is it?
6
@Ralphie Well, it isn't a good comparison....golf versus music. It might be better to compare reading Tolstoy in the original Russian, slowly and painstakingly, with mastering a work of Beethoven on the piano. The physical effort of decoding the words, or the physical effort of playing a Chopin waltz is just the basis for understanding the meaning of the novel or the music. It doesn't matter that your read quickly, or play quickly. It is the comprehension and the sound of the music that matter. If one considers practicing the piano as a sport, one must recognize that the athletic endeavor is only a means to an end in music or in any intellectual occupation.
Ms. Weiner, I love your writing. Keep up the good work.
5
I'm good at learning instrumentsd. I play more instruments than I care to name. I'm no virtuoso because I lack a finger on my fretting hand (I play strings, mostly), and that puts me out of the running for that sort of perfection. Over the years I've learned to play the music I hear inside, and I'm content with that.
In recent years I've taken up art, and if I do say so myself, I'm not very good at it. Nevertheless, painting (and drawing) relaxes my mind and clears my thoughts. That's why my moniker is Art Likely. Art Likely? Yep. Likely not great!
That's okay, I'll settle for satisfying.
9
During high school, I had many years of piano lessons and ended up playing the Apassionata at graduation. And then I stopped, never touched a piano again. Why ? Because the piano instructor taught me to hammer down a piece, but not to understand music. I could not sit down and play, by ear, the simplest little tune, song, anything. The only benefit was that the piano skills helped me play the typewriter real fast. The lesson: get a piano teacher (for yourself or for your kids) who is a jazz musician and will teach you to understand and create music. Who will help you become a musician, at your level.
13
You are so right. It’s that intuitive understanding of what you’re playing that makes you feel like you’re making music and not punching keys like a trained monkey. Jazz demands that intuitive comprehension. 18th century music did as well - in the 18th century, but not now. Look up ‘John Mortensen piano’. He’s on a mission to resurrect improvisation in the classical domain. He’s a professor of music with lots of educational material on YouTube.
1
@sissifus -- I think that playing by ear is (like perfect pitch) an inherited 'defect' -- I can say that since, having both, I'm still a lousy pianist.
1
I have a similar story--i took up clarinet after about 35 years away. it has been a joy and a challenge. i too take weekly lessons and have joined our local community orchestra.
my issue is having enough breath support to get a good tone. my 58 year old lungs aren't quite what they used to be.
the greatest joy is exploring the world of music with my fellow musicians. best wishes to all of the musicians restarting on their instruments after many years away. may the road be full of good friends and beautiful music!
13
Such a lovely reminder about the arts and how they make our lives better. Or any skill which one wants to "practice". This essay echoes our ancestors desire to make music, solo, a cappella, in community, because it feels good. It may even sound good.
I struggled in college to learn piano, as it was a requirement for all music performance majors (clarinet). Sitting down at an instrument already tuned and ready to play was wondrous for a woodwind player. But I was not successful. Maybe in my next decade.
I second the suggestion that everyone should be in a musical group. I found it a remarkable way to experience creating something larger than any of us as individuals.
6
I have played the piano since I was very young. I had a wonderful teacher who was a Russian Emigre and who knew Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, back in the days. I'm married to a man who restores pianos and we have over three dozen pianos in our home, including two Steinways that we play - a 7 foot and a 9 foot Concert Grand.
But I am writing here because of the love of the piano - the sounds the notes make, the simple melodies you can pick out and play at different volumes of sound. For all that learned how to play the piano and are sorry that they dropped it, and for all those who have always wanted to play the piano, no matter your age, it's NEVER TOO LATE!! Play a few notes on the piano at a church - or at a meeting place. My brother, who wishes he could play and thinks he's "not any good" nevertheless keeps taking piano lessons.
Look for someone who does play and ask them to show you some simple melodies that you can try out. There is nothing as enriching as the sound and feel of making live music. I encourage any and all of you to keep doing it!
19
After I left for college years ago the piano in our house had been left unplayed. Then, my mother picked up playing the piano herself and started to take weekly lessons with my former teacher.
Sometimes when I return home to visit I can catch her practicing and get a glimpse of the joy it is giving her. I love to watch and listen as she practices with such patience and poise, both I didn’t have when I played our beautiful black piano as a child.
My mother was a stay-home mom, raised and nourished me and my older brother. I guess when both kids left the house and she had more time for herself she decided to pick it up. She hasn’t stopped since and it makes me happy knowing that my old beloved piano is still being used to make music and not just sitting in the corner.
20
Regarding the Minute Waltz (which entranced me when I first heard it in the 50s on the record Rusty in Orchestraville), a popular theory is that Chopin didn’t mean “minute,” as in time, but rather “min-UTE,” as in little. I hope that’s true, because I’ve never had the facility to play it that fast.
I’ve been playing for 60 of my 70 years, and I can’t imagine going through life without being musical. If you’re a music person and/or a theatre person, you’ll always be that, I am happy to say. Those are conditions for which there are no cures, and I am overjoyed to have been so afflicted for life.
8
@Susan Gerber
I remember Rusty in Orchestraville! Grace, in the Minute Waltz, is more important. Similarly, Mozart's Turkish Rondo. His notation is "Allegretto," not 100 mph. Races can be fun, but they're not really music.
3
I have sole custody of the upright Sohmer family piano. After 5 years of adolescent lessons the piano has remained musically untouched for half a century. It is a beautiful piece of 700 pound furniture that I have schlepped from apartment to apartment, house to house and across state lines.
The piano symbolizes much of how my relationship is with my mother. To this day she insists I practiced and played wonderfully. She claims my piano teacher was terrific.
Practicing was torture, my piano teacher was a nasty woman and uninspirational and my so called music was noise to me.
I recently opened the piano bench and discarded some of the scores. Everything is on line if and when I ever feel like banging out some West Side Story or Beach Boys.
I kept all of the classical music books & assignment pads. My teacher left thick blunt pencil TS (trouble spot) scars on every page. I endured the TS awards weekly. It finally ended after 5 years when she retired. To this day the TS tattoos on the pages and my psyche repel me from hammering the ivories.
One very fond piano memory keeps hope alive that one day I’ll summon the courage to try to make music for once in my life.
My dad made a family recording of his musical prodigy progeny. My older brother tooted his trumpet, my baby brother burped and when it was my turn my dad inserted 5 minutes of Van Cliburn playing a Rachmaninoff concerto followed by live audience clapping and bravos.
This is why I still keep the piano.
7
Jennifer, I’ve never read any of your novels but I find you, as a columnist, to be serious, engaged and humane, a pleasure to read. Thanks. Will look for your collection of essays.
4
I have sole custody of the upright Sohmer family piano. After 5 years of adolescent lessons the piano has remained musically untouched for half a century. It is a beautiful piece of 700 pound furniture that I have schlepped from apartment to apartment, house to house and across state lines.
The piano symbolizes much of how my relationship is with my mother. To this day she insists I practiced and played wonderfully. She claims my piano teacher was terrific.
Practicing was torture, my piano teacher was a nasty woman and uninspirational and my so called music was noise to me.
I recently opened the piano bench and discarded some of the scores. Everything is on line if and when I ever feel like banging out some West Side Story or Beach Boys.
I kept all of the classical music books & assignment pads. My teacher left thick blunt pencil TS (trouble spot) scars on every page. I endured the TS awards weekly. It finally ended after 5 years when she retired. To this day the TS tattoos on the pages and my psyche repel me from hammering the ivories.
One very fond piano memory keeps hope alive that one day I’ll summon the courage to try to make music for once in my life.
My dad made a family recording of his musical prodigy progeny. My older brother tooted his trumpet, my baby brother burped and when it was my turn my dad inserted 5 minutes of Van Cliburn playing a Rachmaninoff concerto followed by live audience clapping and bravos.
This is why I still keep the piano.
A message for for everyone. Thank you for sharing. An enjoyable read, too.
6
Ah, neural pathways. For little kids, creating new ones is like making a path through three inches of snow. For someone in their fifties like me, it is like mak
2
Thanks for writing this. Like you, I studied piano for many years and then haven't played in 35 years or so. You've inspired me to go out and buy a keyboard...the Yamaha P71-88 at Amazon caught my eye. Hopefully everything works out. Keep practicing.
4
With humility comes wisdom.
With wisdom, living in the present.
6
I play third french horn in a local orchestra. My goal is to be good enough to make the group better than if I were not there. We all can't be first chair, there needs to be a supporting cast.
22
I see that I am not alone. I learned to play the guitar with I was 6 years old from an older cousin who taught his way through college. When I was 15, I discovered classical guitar and was once good enough to get into conservatory. What I quickly discovered was that while I was a pretty good freshman, I was not nearly as good as the seniors - and they weren't world class. I was going to starve as a guitar player. That was 1974, and instead, I ended up becoming a magazine writer and editor. And, in an industry that's pretty ruthless, I didn't starve.
Fast forward and I'm now 62. Music is the one thing that relaxes me and clears my mind. I play a little bit every day, even if it's annoying my wife when I pick up a guitar and play along with the commercials on TV. I've been working on a Bach piece for a year that I could probably have memorized in a month back in the day, but I enjoy the process. Heck, I'll probably be working on it a year from now. The same goes with plugging in my jazz guitar and trying to figure out - and keep up - with Charlie Parker on a bebop tune. It's no longer about trying to be great, but working at it.
9
Bravo, Ms. Weiner. At a good bit over 70, I find the same pleasures and challenges with my little Celtic harp. Painful, arthritic fingers on my left hand make it tough. but I find the pain leaves - and range increases - after an application of CBD balm. As for neural pathways improving, I can hardly think of anything more challenging than this.
18
OMG. I am not alone.
We have a Steinway "baby grand" which has been in the family for over 90 years. My wife took lessons on it as a child and our younger daughter took lessons when she was in middle school. Several years after I retired having practiced neurosurgery for 35 I began taking lessons. I have never regretted it although I would be flattering myself to say that I am even mediocre. It is the hardest thing I have ever done and teaches you humility. When I told my teacher that starting piano in my late sixties was infinitely harder than neurosurgery he thought I was pulling his leg. But it is true; trying to re-form neural pathways in late adulthood is a herculean task and takes much more time and effort than is the case for a child. I have more to say but I have to go now to get back to a Polonaise in G Minor which Chopin is said to have written when he was seven.
71
@Paul Smiling!
2
Jennifer Weiner, I so enjoy your writing, novels as well as essays. But this piece was simply extraordinary. Thank you.
With music my chief passion, I always wanted to sing. More than 10 years ago, I decided to join choir that didn't require auditions, but thought some lessons would be useful, so signed up with a recent voice major from Boston Conservatory (now merged with Berklee) who needed extra money.
After telling me I was a mezzo soprano, she had me perform squeaky scales over and over. I sounded awful, and wondered why she didn't say I was an alto as I was as a teen.
I stopped the lessons because I couldn't stand listening to myself. And I never joined that choir.
Three years ago, I decided to try again, after a good friend told me church choirs like female voices as low as mine. It helped I was friends with the Music Director, who was thrilled to have anyone join his rather rag-tag choir.
I sing with the tenors. No I'm not good, able to hit all the high notes, and yes, I'm the weakest link in the choir chain.
And yet I absolutely love it, rarely miss practice, sing every Sunday, and derive great joy.
Isn't that what it's all about?
38
What a nice essay and comments!
My musical background is years of clarinet study, rudimentary piano, college choir, and a lifelong love of classical music (thanks, Dad), which both our kids picked up.
I've sung with an auditioned amateur chorus for 32 years. During a recent concert, I felt my vocal technique come together better than at any time I can remember. As one of 50 singers trying to blend together, this experience had to be a private one, perhaps paradoxically, known only to me, and greatly satisfying.
8
“Except playing the piano has accomplished what all that yoga and meditation never could. I can quiet my mind and focus entirely on something: not my breath, but the music.”
It’s as if you took these words out of my thoughts. When I play the piano (I started teaching myself in my forties) I’m in touch with something big, awesome and serene. It’s as close to god as I’ll ever get.
12
I've played in a community orchestra for years; for me, it's the perfect antidote to the stresses of everyday work and life, allowing one to revel in the joy of music and use one's brain in a different way, without feeling very pressured to "perform." The social aspect is also a plus; being with a community of people in similar circumstances - adults from various walks of life who enjoy playing as amateurs - expands one's social circle as well. I've become friends with people I never would have met in my daily routine. Personally, I prefer this way to experience music to simply practicing on my own but that is of course a completely individual preference. I do think there is value to engaging in a variety of endeavors -- assuming, of course, that one has the time or wherewithal, not something that is available to everyone.
Here may be a good opportunity to note the recent article on the "happiest town in the world," where the availability of free activities for all the community was highlighted as an important aspect of what makes people in Finland feel so content (note people singing in the opening photo): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/europe/finland-happiness-social-services.html
4
At the ripe age of 57, I find the two activities that keep me mentally sharp are learning French and playing the piano.
I have been playing on an off since I was a teenager and never really became proficient. Just enough to suit my own needs. I can sit for an hour or two at night with Gershwin, Beethoven or any other composer in the stack of music books by the piano, and noodle my way through.
It is truly therapeutic. I can usually gauge my mental state by the quality of my playing. The clearer my head, the more I can focus, the better I play. It has kept me sane.
I can never imagine life without a piano in the house. When my younger son (who is a music teacher) and his wife bought a house after years of apartment dwelling in the city, he took back the Yamaha baby grand that I had been warehousing for him. I promptly went out and bough a replacement Yamaha.
I used to tell my friends that I realized that the less I practiced, the better I played, so if I never played again I would be great!
That's never going to happen. I'll settle for mediocre.
8
@Larry
I started playing piano when I was nine years old. Never stopped. I'm 83 now. I was never great, but it has given me great pleasure. Arthritis in the fingers kicks in every six or seven days for a while, though. You write "I'll settle for mediocre." I take the "o" and change it to an "a," moving it after the "c." I'll settle for medicare.
4
@Alan Levitan
Love the "medicare"
I'm right there with you, Alan. My hands are stiffening as well and 12 years ago I had my left index finger reattached after a misstep with a circular saw, rendering it effectively useless, though I have managed to work with it.
I have continued to play with external fixators and casts on more than one occasion. Nothing short of bilateral amputation or death will stop me.
"And the beat goes on..."
@Larry
For some odd reason I gave my age as 57. Fake News!
I'm actually 67. Can't imagine what I must have been thinking... Or can i?
A wonderful article! Last year my younger son gave me Hebrew lessons via Rosetta Stone. I know I'll never be fluent but every week I know more than I did before. I told him it's the first gift I ever got that I use every day and I look forward to lessons every day.
8
@Gordon Bronitsky
That is great Gordon. Learning a foreign language is the best mental stimulus money can buy. We have been told that once we past a certain age it becomes impossible to learn a new language.
C'est ne vrais pas!
I failed French in High School. Fifty years later, I find it so much easier to grasp.
My older son is a linguist and teaches English as a second language in Europe. He has taught himself a number of languages the most recent being classical Hebrew.
Keep it up and don't settle for just one.
11 years of lessons. When I stopped taking them in college, I didn't touch a piano for 30 years. I can't go back to it. But I really want a Taylor 214 ce and guitar lessons.
3
This article and the ensuing comments ring so many bells for me. I grew up as the child of a professional pianist; my brother and I automatically had piano lessons. Though I was never better than mediocre I continued off and on with lessons and playing throughout my adult life, and it gave me enormous pleasure and fulfillment.
About ten years ago (I'm now almost 89) my fingers began to stiffen and my eyesight to deteriorate, so that now I cannot get past six or seven measures of a piece before giving up in despair. I cannot express how much I miss playing, and I envy those of you who can still carry on with it.
31
Learn to improvise without paper in front of you. Start with simple pentatonic scales and arps. Don't think about it too much. Just listen. it's easier than you think.
10
I've been playing the piano for about 55 years, and it still has the same therapeutic effect. I can't think of anything else while I'm practicing. What a relief that is.
12
Thanks for your sharing your self exploration. I heard George HW Bush took up sky diving at the age of 90. As a confirmed coward I would never do that unless someone blind folded me and pushed me out the door. So I admire that and wonder at it am a little bit envious to tell the truth.
I will at my age never write 12 books, good, bod or indifferent. It is an accomplishment that to me is truly mind blowing, but perhaps this article might or will! inspire me to write something longer than this little post. But even here I could use a lot of improvement.
I am sure that most of us could share something from their lives which I or someone would find admirable, but in our quest to prove something or other to ourselves we or I must do something out of the ordinary. And this is fine, but perhaps I and we can find that something of which we can be proud and stop worrying so much about everything else that we can not or will not do.
8
Bush was a naval aviator and skydived as a young man.
My father played the piano for a hobby and if I do say so was pretty darn good. He took piano lessons from a cousin and had the ability to play by ear. He wrote the song for his junior high school graduation and his music teacher often had him play in class.
They wrote an article about his music talents and even incorrectly stated he was the cousin of Eddie Duchin. He was that good but it never went to his head. He was humble to a fault so I would on occasion sing his praises.
I begged my parents to take piano lessons and I then begged to stop. My parents were so disappointed when I gave up the piano but like most young people I hated to practice. If I had to do it again, I would have stayed with it. My father had the talent and drive and I loved to listen to him playing on the grand piano while he was alive. My sister now has his piano and nobody plays. My father is now deceased and how I would love to hear him play one more time.
12
It can be complicated to have a parent gifted in an activity, or even a prodigy, as it sounds like your father was as a pianist.
On the one hand, the parent's example can instill interest and motivate a child to master a skill. But at the same time, it can be fraught.
Some parents will hope that their children will share their skill set and not understand why things are different with the next generation. My late father loved and was gifted in math; he never saw how it was hard for me and why I found it unappealing.
Then sometimes it's tempting to leave an area as the parent's 'thing.' My neighbor's late mother was a professional chef and the daughter never wanted to compete with the mom. She wanted her mother to be the cook in the family, period! It has been years and years since her mother was alive, let alone preparing food. But she still craves her mother's masterpieces and says that every restaurant dish she tries falls short of what her mother would have done.
Thanks for what you wrote.
4
Thank you, wise and funny Jennifer Weiner. It is not only ok but expanding to be mediocre at something that brings one joy.
Resuming figure skating after a 35 year hiatus imbued me with humility (i.e. falling down), persistence (getting up!), new perspectives on goal setting (not falling down), and gratitude (I didn't fall down!). A whole airport bookstore full of self help books can't beat the Minute Waltz or a Waltz Eight. Brava.
24
This is me and my guitar, hoping I am someday worthy of plunking down more than a few dollars on a “real” guitar so I don’t totally look like he poseur.
6
I jokingly tell family and friends that I am studying at ‘La Conservatoire de YouTube’. I’m having a ball and learning from countless generous musical souls whose accumulated wisdom I am glad to receive in distilled and anecdotal form. I remain thankful not to have been herded through the gauntlet of set pieces (Für Elise, Moonlight Sonata...) and recitals that replace joy with anxiety and instill automatonic delivery as an end in itself. ‘Gaudeo.’
11
I loved that book. Also, 3 years ago, I started learning piano, at 61.
Here's my 5-star review, BTW, of Hungry Heart. You keep on, girl. You're great. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19420556-hungry-heart
9
I get the impression that the author will inevitably resume her sense of competition or abandon her playing once again. It’s hard to change who we are.
1
@Ruben Quintero I am not sure about that. Most adults fail within a month when they try to get back to the piano. They practice for a week or so, and then their life intrudes. Kids, or their job, or everything else just demands their time. And their mom isn't there to make them practice, so it slips away. The author has stuck with it long enough to find the fun, which is the key for sticking with anything. That's not to say her competitive side won't reappear, but there aren't many middle-aged beginners to compete with, so maybe she won't bother.
9
Not everyone can be outstanding at everything. Bob Dylan can't really sing. Carson Wentz misses open receivers. The question is, do you enjoy playing the piano, and does it make the world a little bit happier when you do it? If the answer is yes, you should keep on playing. However it sounds.
35
I fumbled along with a guitar through my thirties, never coming close to getting some simple chord progressions. Then a burglar, along with many other items, took my guitar and that was that.
Skip ahead 25 years and my junior high daughter takes up guitar. I pick it up one day and chord changes that used to baffle my fingers happen as if I could always do them. “I didn’t know you could play the guitar”, my wife said. “I didn’t either”, was my honest reply. The human brain. Go figure.
13
Kurt Vonnegut was never more correct than when he said everyone should practice an art at which he is an amateur, even if it's just singing in the shower.
28
Tales of the self absorbed, very nicely delivered. I'm not sure I care about that. And, classical music? Really? I think I know what this is all about, and I hope you find him and stay together forever. Signed, A Friend.
I think this approach to making music--returning to learning skills that can take us beyond the self given time--is something I share and many others do so, too (see comments). Jennifer, I appreciate your writing!
5
Doing art is one of the consolations of life. The "level" at which we do it really does not matter. And if I may add: of Rachmaninoff's there are maybe a dozen a century. Players like him, and actually any top international level concert player, are not normal people. They are borderline savants. If the yardstick to be allowed to do music was Rachmaninoff nobody would ever play!!!!
4
"I’ll Never Be Rachmaninoff" --
That's okay -- it could have been worse --
You could have been Glenn Gould...
7
@Howard G
So funny, so true!
@Howard G: Oh, as a Canadian, that hurts.
Sorry.
What a triumphant column! I love this and I love Jennifer Weiner! Happy 2019 Ms. Weiner!
6
What an extraordinary article. I have read thousands of NYT articles and read enough comments to know there will always be a few contrarians, a few know-it-all’s, a few angry people, a few people with an insight that nobody else had, and on and on.
But this article . . . . Not one sour note in the bunch. It struck something in everyone’s soul that was soothing, calming, non-competitive, friendly, reassuring. A rare contribution. I took piano lessons as a child, was hopelessly inept, gave it up, do not have a piano and have no intention of trying again. Still, what a great article.
16
For the non-musical: try knitting. Sends you into the same state of flow. And even if you never get very good, you'll amass a goodly collection of lumpy scarves.
8
I have the opposite problem. I am easily thrilled by my own efforts. As soon as I get a piece roughly under control I am ready for another. Obviously this has prevented me from reaching a level that any audience would tolerate, but I am able to thrill myself for several hours every day without the pressure of performance anxiety.
Bravo for mediocrity!
9
We are our own harshest critics and toughest competition. That is the problem but also the answer: no one else judges us as harshly as ourselves.
7
Mrs. Pettitte loved Rachmaninoff. She taught me a C# minor prelude. I won a gold cup or two, then people got better and the pieces got even harder. I went on to other things I was better at and ones that I wouldn't get heckled about by the varsity seniors on the swim team that I was trying to survive the practices of as a skinny sophomore. "Sorry", Mrs. Pettitte, "I quit."
Then, it's 10 years later. I went back and helped coach that swim team with my old coach for a dozen years after three championship seasons swimming for him. That ended fifteen years ago. I loved working with those boys (and teaching history), but I left that behind for marriage and a horse farm.
The marriage ended after fifteen years (had cancer twice). Still at the farm. What's my private solace? I returned to the piano. Practice, instead of being tedious, is hours of blessed "not thinking" while playing, not so well, my restored piano. It's just for me, no gold cup required.
Then, I was at my sister's and sat down to played that Rachmaninoff prelude, learned and re-learned, on her piano when I thought everyone else was out. How I banged away that day! A now grown niece had snuck in behind and secretly listened...when I struck the last chord ("Not bad," I'm thinking) she revealed herself and I received a standing, enthusiastic, prolonged ovation for a musical performance from that most wonderful audience of one...
I was so beside myself with joy I couldn't speak.
Thank you, Mrs. Pettitte.
11
Loved this line: "a kicked sack of potatoes thudding discordantly down the stairs."
The soccer field is my piano--nothing clears my mind like chasing a ball for a couple hours. Even though I'm getting slower and older, it's just as much fun as it was the very first time.
6
Good for you, I share your story. Keep it up. However, the title of Chopin's "minute waltz" (I never understood that title) indeed has nothing to do with timing/duration, rather size: named by George Sand in honor of her small pooch. Supposedly Chopin was inspired by the mutt's chasing its tail. The mispronunciation "minute" apparently a product of some Brit's mis-translation either of 'mineur' or of 'menu'. Dunno which.
AM
4
I love this article. Speaks to me. Been playing piano for 67 years, mediocre-ally (???), and have never enjoyed it more. Go Jennifer.
6
Your arms, hands and fingers are the branches, twigs and leaves of your body's instrument. The music is the wind. You can search high and low, but a dance partner more willing and creative than the wind you will never find. Let it fly ! Risk is its own reward. I look forward to never hearing you play Carnegie Hall, but you can play my piano any day. And get a better piano, you deserve it.
8
@Kip Leitner,
Beautifully expressed, Kip! and yes, this is such a great article, Jennifer, thank you.
Music is for anyone and everyone (check out "This is your Brain on Music, by Daniel Levitin.)
1
I have been playing the piano since I was eight years old. My parents bought me a beautiful walnut Kranich and Bach console that I can still see in my mind's eye. Although I never exceeded being an average player, I can understand and visualize every error you make while practicing that Edvard Grieg piece you spoke about.
I am now 68 years old and I still enjoy "tinkering" the keys of my new Essex Baby Grand piano. You know, this love/hate relationship with playing the piano has never left me. I hope you and other piano players never lose that feeling.........
4
How wonderful that you are modelling this for your children!
4
I too have made my peace with mediocrity (from the standpoint of entertaining others), but the joy of slipping into an intense state of flow at the piano is calming and at times even a bit exhilarating. And it's a muscle! The more you practice the stronger you get, and the longer that state can last.
I can also strongly recommend "cross-training" sight-reading with improvisation practice. Improvisation demands the development of an intuitive and reflexive understanding of the music we play. Furthermore, like a fast-paced game of tennis or basketball, it demands intense focus and anticipation. You develop a toolbox of skills that you employ in each "game", but no two games are ever the same. Perhaps best of all, it can be learned! This professor of music is on a mission to resurrect the art of improvisation in the classical domain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwp_NnQwrBE. He has a great deal of teaching material on Youtube, as well as a Patreon site containing even more instructional detail. Spread your wings!
6
Kurt Vonnegut could not have been more correct than when he said everyone should have an art at which he is an amateur, even if it's just singing in the shower.
4
When considering what you’re able to play - I’d venture to say that judging yourself as “terrible” discourages others to attempt piano lessons.
2
There is no success without failure. Keep on keepin' on, and enjoy.
2
You need to find a jazz teacher. You will understand more about music than you ever thought existed, and you mind will be free to truly express yourself.
5
Great piece, really. I get it, but in a slightly different way. Everything I do, whether hike, climb, play an instrument, work, eat - I’ve long felt I had to do for a reason. Like to make money or grow my mind or be the best or help people or improve the community or feed my body the right dose of protein or riboflavin. I can’t take a walk unless it’s for a purpose - to buy milk or mail a letter. Never just walk. Or drink- I can’t have a glass of wine unless it’s to promote cardio health....etc. As I get older, I’m trying to wean myself off of that way of thinking, and do things merely because I want to, sometimes for frivolous reasons. Getting there is intended to be liberating, and it requires humility- I’m one of six billion people and what I do doesn’t really move the needle. So I say to myself, just do what you’d like, don’t be selfish or a jerk, and relax.
5
This article is so timely because I'm about to sell the Sohmer upright that the adult kids don't want.
But maybe , maybe. this nearing 80 year old should start lessons with my acclaimed piano teacher neighbor.
What have I got to lose?
22
@Jane Slater Brava! It's never too late when one sits down at an instrument and plays the notes. There is something physically (and biochemically) transformational about making music in person.
3
@Jane Slater. Do it! At least try it for a while. It may enliven you in ways you cannot imagine! And if you decide you don’t enjoy it, quit and find something else.
3
@Jane Slater
Do it.!! You will regret not doing it but never regret at least trying. the satisfaction is amazing and keeps you going.
1
I would venture to say that 90%, or more, of your new found acceptance of the peace you describe is because you chose music as the vehicle. I doubt you would have this if you'd taken up bowling or home brewing.
Music has unique effect on people when they listen to it; the effect from playing music on an instrument is even more profound, regardless of your skill level. The act of making musical sounds starts with infants before they can even talk. There is a subliminal joy in making music that is unlike any other, precisely because it occurs in equal measure at all levels of accomplishment. I can assure you that Horowitz felt no greater degree of this joy than you do.
Everyone should play a musical instrument. Just like everyone can sing, some not as well as others, everyone can make music, some not as well as others. But the peace and satisfaction you've found? That's universal.
13
One of the problems in contemporary Western culture is that we've been taught to link our self-worth to our achievements.
That's how we only give ourselves the permission to love ourselves as the truly special individuals we are IF we've accomplished something extraordinary.
And how do we define "extraordinary"? By comparing with what others achieved!
And of course, with 8 billion people on this planet, it's quite easy to always find someone who in this or that regard actually did better than we just did. Then we use that as an excuse to push ourselves harder, and, unfortunately, to suspend any unconditional self-love that we might feel once in a while.
Meditation and yoga, when taught well, allow you to FEEL how false this narrative is, and how each and every human being deserves to be fully loved, just because she exists.
As Jack Kornfield calls it, mindfulness is loving-awareness, whereas all too often, Western classes separate both notions and propose "cold" awareness instead. But if you take out the "heart" part, mindfulness because so hard that you cannot but start believing that "this is not for me". You notice what's happening, AND immediately evaluate and judge it, telling yourself that you're not doing it good (enough). Real mindfulness, however, teaches the exact opposite: you are worthy of love independently from how "good" you perform.
You have to suspend judging yourself too when you try to (learn to) play an instrument, but meditation is much "directer".
4
Too many readers with a cursory knowledge of Beethoven won't know that the Moonlight sonata has three movements. Presumably you played the first, adagio sostenuto. But if you managed the third, presto agitato, even at half speed, well, my hat's off to you.
5
@Ulisse Aldrovandi
Yes. I did know it had three movements, and was assuming Weiner was referring to the first. Thanks for calling this to our attention--
2
That’s not why it’s called the “minute waltz!”
But otherwise a very nice article
1
It took me over 70 years to figure out that OK was good enough for life’s pleasures.
I, too, gave up on playing an instrument when I was no longer the big fish in the small pond. Coming up against the better violinists in college was too much for me to face.
I tried playing the violin again when I was in my 60’s and worked really, really hard at it. I practiced so much that I developed a trigger finger. And, then, at age 68 I picked up the double bass and started to play bluegrass music.
Here I am at 79 and loving every minute that I can play my bass with friends. I am mediocre…oh, so mediocre, but I am having the time of my life. I wish I had learned the lesson of being content with your own limits when I was young.
20
I began playing the piano about 15 years ago, when I was in my 50’s. I hadn’t really played much at all as a child, but my father was, and my brother is, a professional musician. I was inspired by PBS’s Scott “the piano guy” Houston, who advocates that adults learn what I think is called “chord style” piano playing popular music. Your music is found in “fake books” which contain only the treble staff, with only one note at a time, with the chords written as letters above (e., “C”). Scott has fake books, and there are “the easy fake book”, “my first fake book”, and “how to play from a fake book” as well as many more. The music is in the key of C, meaning few if any black notes (sharps and flats). Most pieces at this stage have only four chords. Within an hour or two you can play “Earth Angel” or “Something” to name just two popular songs. It is recommended that you play 30 minutes or more per day but that isn’t necessary. It depends on how much you want to progress. Whether you call it “practicing” is up to you. You progress at your own speed. You can buy books like the Alfred’s series with CD’s to hear how the music should sound, and learn to play with both hands. All I can say is that the music is fun to play and hear, and it is interesting to learn the notes and chord sequences that comprise music we love. As you advance you can dip your toe into jazz, the blues, and classical. Supposedly it is also good for the brain. Give it a try.
7
I don't know many indifferent junior high school piano students who can get through the third movement of the "Moonlight", that's for sure. And a Burgmuller etude is not a song - it's a piece. Other that that, thanks for the article! *grumpy pianist signs off
2
I'll never be Jeff Beck. So whom, exactly cares?
4
Bach two part inventions. also, "Das buch der klange" by Henck. also, Satie -- almost anything (except the stuff for typewriters and fire sirens).
we're many of us too hard on ourselves in terms of performance criteria and not kind enough to ourselves on the heartsong criteria.
has something to do with tying self worth to money, fame, awards, career. or maybe we're just all nuts.
2
Hi Jennifer,
I love your story! As a performing, recording and teaching concert guitarist, I often tell my students, "I sometimes wish I could just play a piece and not HAVE TO learn it for a recording or concert where it will be held to the highest standard." You're enjoying music for music's sake. Bathe in it, loose yourself and enjoy music. How beautiful.
Happy New Year
6
Great story that tells truth to the soul. But the one thing you didnt mention in all the piano playing is that you play because you love the music. You talk about leaning to play the piano but not a word about the music except to take it slow. Isnt it the music that soothes the soul and empties the stress, slows the insane rushing about of the mind, gives perspective from 30,000 feet? Music can be transformative when one sips rather than gulps, which I think is EXACTLY what you said.
2
Great piece inspiration to keep me banging away at the guitar just because I'm driven to do it. I may never be even good but I can reach immersion in music, which I love, to a point that is almost Zen like. Thanks for sharing.
3
Nice. This aspiring clarinetist can relate. I don't know about your piano playing, but you write well. Don't stop doing either.
3
Yea! Far too few of us do something just for us. As Ms Weiner has found, it matters not how well or poorly we do, we enjoy it. The rest of the world can go do something else for the next hour or so, this is for me.
3
Jennifer, you're in good company. No one else will ever be Rachmaninoff.
5
Lovely piece! Suggest not calling that etude a "song," though.
2
Delightful article! I am also, at best, a mediocre pianist. I like knowing that we're part of the same club.
3
Flow.
Pushing one's limits is totally captivating, as long as one is okay with failure.
Bravo!
2
I have always been a mediocre pianist, but I thrill that I can pick up a piece by Mozart and Beethoven and muck my way through the music. Every now and again the music comes through and is stunningly and awsomely beautiful that I think Mozart may just be smiling a bit. I don't play for a human audience, but my animals are a wonderous audince listening quietly as I manage to get through the adagio movement of a Beethoven sonata. We don't all have to be practically perfect in every way to enjoy the wonders of playing the piano.
7
Beautiful column today! Thank you Ms Weiner!
2
Hilarious--as soon as you say things like "I'm way more Zen than she is" you're the antithesis of Zen. However you may justly bask in the glow of a 15 year old daughter's compliment. Receiving one is tremendous accomplishment. Bravo!
5
I sold my piano thirty years ago to pay for my son to be born and I always regretted it. I finally got a keyboard for Christmas after asking for one for nearly as long. The neural pathways are still there, albeit rusty, and I'm enjoying my mediocrity.
Perfectionism, drilled into me by my parents who declared that mediocrity would get me disowned, nearly killed me. I learned that it is okay to be good--you don't have to be great. Adequate is fine with me now.
I think I'll go practice my piano.
5
I feel much more liberated and I experience much less angst when I do activities where I have never been told by anyone that I am "good". Like music. However, in areas where I have been told I have natural talent, I hesitate. I get in my own way. I procrastinate. I block. Because if I fail in those, then I am really no good at anything, right? Better to never have to discover I might not be such a natural talent after all. At least that is what my brain thinks, even though I know it's wrong.
2
Our culture admires talent, achievement and excellence. There has to be room for enjoying activities for their own sake; without hype, without racing to be first, without striving to be a super star. Many give up valuable activities - sport, music - when it becomes obvious they are not going to be the best and / or will not receive adulation from an admiring public.
Whats wrong with tinkering around on the piano, bouncing a basketball around, cooking a somewhat hard cookie? Let's enjoy each other's company as we eat hard cookies, mangle Chopin and miss the goal. It's fun!
11
Thanks, so much. You just validated the exact same reason I dragged my 88-key keyboard back out of semi-storage into my bedroom (I’m waiting on a vacancy to move) so I can learn to play (again) and soothe my thoughts in a way that works wonders. I’ll never be ready for prime time, nor even parlor time but I love it.
5
I had always wanted to play the piano as a child but we could not afford one. My mother, however, had been a professional cellist and did give me lessons for a while but I did not stick with it for more than a few weeks because it was always the piano that I wanted. Now, of course, I am kicking myself for not sticking with the cello all these years.
Many years later in middle age, though, I inherited an upright from my grandmother. My wife came home one day and announced that she had hired a woman to give me lessons! When the teacher showed up for my first lesson, standing before me was a twenty-something blond goddess. I can't begin to describe the performance anxiety I experienced playing for this teacher! If she had only been an 80-year old he. I gave up these lessons, too, after a few weeks.
So I must be content to enjoy music through listening. But as far as your playing of the "Minute Waltz" is concerned, you are being needlessly hard on yourself. Contrary to what most people believe, the waltz is NOT meant to be played in under 60 seconds. The word "minute" in the title should be pronounce my-NOOT with the second syllable getting the accent. In other words, this is an extremely small waltz.
3
"But I have come to believe in the value of doing something where I know I will never be better than O.K."
Isn't that what we used to call a hobby, back in the days before rampant perfectionism and competitiveness overran the culture?
To enjoy an activity solely for its own sake is deeply satisfying.
10
I've been taking piano lessons for three years since I retired. It's a wonderful hobby. I have a great teacher who knows how to use all kinds of music from classical to jazz, Bach and blues and even the opening chords to Good Vibrations and Randy Newman's Short People. My father played piano for more than 70s years...he was always the guy at the piano as everyone gathered around to sing along with the show tunes and hits of the day. I have his last piano and amy humbly trying to follow in his fingersteps, even though I know I will never master the piano as he did.
All that aside, as Dirty Harry said, "a man must know his limitations." Occasionally when I stand outside my piano teacher's door listening to the student ahead of me, I hear these amazing cantatas, sonatas, etc. and I think I'm listening to my teacher practice. Imagine my amazement when I see it was actually a 12-year old girl ripping though that Bach piece! I know I'll never play as well as that student, but the piano is indeed a wonderful instrument that with some effort yields wonderful rewards. Thanks for your story. You've inspired me to start practicing my next lessons forthwith!
10
I too had piano lessons as a kid and despite a couple of certificates for having passed exams I remained mediocre. As a teenager I discovered the guitar and began singing, like so many of my generation. People usually listened and quite liked what I did. But it was only much later that I wrote musicals for my school students which were quite satisfying - but of course I had to keep teaching in order to pay the rent.
Now I have retired and we have two pianos and several guitars: three of my five kids also play. It doesn't matter that I am not a star - music has been a great part of my life and a feel-good factor. So let music be good enough for you, too.
5
I've been playing banjo -- badly -- for over thirty years. I keep at it because when I pick it up, my wife and children leave the house. I'm alone. Loving it. I recommend the banjo to anyone who craves solitude.
8
Me, too, Rich! Banjo. Over 30 years. The most fun thing I do. I'll never be Earl Scruggs, and I don't care. I also play golf but I'll never break ... whatever. That's OK too. And I plan to take up painting this coming year. Will I be any good? I doubt it, but I hope it's fun.
6
I live in a town where everybody is in at least one band. Except for me that is. I’ve tried to become fluent in guitar since age 13. I am now facing 70. I will probably never feel comfortable playing in front of others. But what I have learned about music and composition over the years has improved my appreciation of musicians and composers in a way I can’t imaging happening any way else.
9
I'm 66 years old and music has always moved me like nothing else in life. My father loved music as much but there was no musical meeting of the minds. I couldn't understand his passion for Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and he couldn't understand what he called the boom, ching, ching simplicity of the Beatles and rock and roll.
Like you I took piano lessons for 6 years growing up. But my teachers assigned songs that turned my attention away from the piano to the pickup football game in the side yard or the basketball hoop in the driveway. One of the songs was titled "Ach My Little Foreign Car!" I often wonder what would have happened if the teacher had shown me the pentatonic "blues scale".
My sister focused early on music to the exclusion of all else, attended New England Conservatory and is a composer and a member of the American Institute of Arts and Letters.
What got me started playing again was the death of a close friend. With few exceptions for 15+ years prior to retiring in 2012 I woke extra early every day to play. I learned to play about half of the Chopin Nocturnes - eventually at tempo - and a pretty wide swath of music from that period.
When I retired I stopped playing and now wonder if I'll re-start,
3
@Steve Why did you stop when you retired? Especially since you say that music moved you like nothing else? Me too! But I didn't have a proper piano again till age 70. I've been playing every day, simply because I love it to death, it's what I live for--the piano! I'm playing Chopin Nocturnes too & other things that I don't remember how I played years ago. Tho I'm pretty certain I'm playing them in a different way than I did in high school...I have more time now to focus on details, for one thing. I'm 75 now & I'm still improving, still finding such joy in it. I'd like to encourage you to start again! There's nothing like the piano! And you played for so long...don't you miss it?
3
Something in the back of my head says the Minute Waltz was nicknamed that because it was a short piece. Sixty seconds had nothing to do with it. Perhaps I am wrong. Either way, it would take me great pains to play it within the purported time constraint. Enjoyed your piece. I never stopped playing. The music transports me back to wonderful memories.
3
I took piano lessons for a year as a child. Then we left the house that had the piano and it was three years (an eternity when you are a child!) till we once more had access to a keyboard. I was almost 12. I dug out my old music and re-taught myself up to the level where I had stopped, and I taught my kid brother, age 8, to read music. We both fooled around on the piano but our parents didn't start either of us with lessons. A few months later, a school friend came over, sat down at our piano, and played the first page of "Fuer Elise." He begged her for the sheet music, and worked on it like crazy all weekend till he had taught himself not only the first page but most of the rest of it. Impressed, our parents found a teacher for both of us. In just a few months it became obvious that kid brother was extremely talented and also that I was not.
He went on to a professional career in classical music. I quit piano partly because I couldn't get at the keyboard -- he was always there -- and partly because it was discouraging to realize I would never be anywhere near as good as he was.
Years later as an adult I took it up again (self-taught) and enjoyed playing for my own pleasure, but quit again because, after sitting at a computer keyboard all day for work, I needed to do something else with my leisure than sit at a different keyboard squinting at a paper. If computers hadn't taken over the workplace, who knows? I might have stuck with the piano this time.
3
Music is so powerful and healing indeed.
As I lean over my kitchen counter this afternoon, painstakingly learning how to sort of pronounce the German lyrics to Mozart's Queen of the Night aria. I forget the laundry and emails that should be answered.
Just like you, I have teenagers. I giggled at your mention of sarcasm and doors shut. Eyes rolling. Hearing a heartfelt compliment from them is better than any Nobel prize or public recognition ( but what do I know...)
Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece.
PS And now the competitive type A in me resurfaces and hopes to get some “recommend” in the NYT. But why should I care? Back to music.
55
I've been playing the piano for 60 years, and I could fool you into thinking I can really play that sucker for about 30 seconds or so.
As a kid, I played the Chopin minute waltz, the one in C sharp minor and the one in E flat major. I could stumble through a Polonaise or two. But the best compliment I could get was "good recovery."
I watch people play who are really, really good and I feel a strange combination of admiration and irritation. How do they do that? How can they not make a mistake? What's wrong with those people?
Watching someone sight read a piece of music gives me a feeling of inadequacy that I don't need. I'm pushing 70, and if I haven't gotten it now, I never will get it. So I've abandoned trying, and play by ear.
I've never been happier. I don't share my happiness by playing on a real piano. I've got a old Casio PX-100 with nice weighted keys and, for the safety of bystanders, earphones.
8
What a great read and message and I can totally relate. I, too, had an easy time with the piano until around junior high and then along came the harder pieces requiring real practice and that was it for me until - retirement last year and, like you, I returned to Settlement Music School and began piano lessons again with a wonderful teacher who understands I’m not planning on ever making it to Carnegie Hall but am finding joy in the music and the discipline. Settlement has a program for amateur adults who want to play chamber music that is also no pressure but very fulfilling on a noncompetetive level.
4
A lifelong clarinet player, inspired by Benny, I started fooling around on the piano a few years ago, but my mind kept resisting the challenge of reading two lines of music at once. So I started learning the chords that correspond to each chord symbol, and can now play some of my favorite songs from a fake book. My other hobby is abstract painting, which is another workaround for my resistance to learning the discipline of drawing. Having dabbled in various art forms, I believe that creating any form of art stems from the same place deep within us. For example, the writer of this inspiring article is an artist, one who has focused on the art of creative writing by drawing on personal experiences and feelings. I believe if she could connect with that same personal resource for other art forms--poetry, photography, painting, acting, music--she would achieve satisfying results. Participation in any of the arts is a great way to get in touch with ourselves.
12
I can relate. I started piano lessons again at age 35 and found it so therapeutic, but now, at age 71, don't have a piano. A loss. However, I started learning calligraphy three years ago. Went to an international conference and realized how bad I was. But I get such pleasure out of doing it that I don't mind being only half-good!
4
Please, does anyone know of a source of money to help pay for piano lessons? I never learned to play music and I NEED to learn to play piano. Work is gone and all there is caregiving. I need to know I can still learn something new!
2
@Past, Present, Future Start by playing by ear. It's the best way anyway. Take a recording of something you like, or even just a song you like that you can sing, and then take the first few seconds of it and try to hum it. Then try to find the first note of it on the piano. Then the second. Try to clap the rhythm of it. Etc. This is very time-consuming but has an extremely high payoff. Some people who learn to read music never learn to do this, and it's really of the essence. Reading music is just a tool.
If you're looking for cheap piano lessons, you'll probably get what you pay for - unless you can find a non-profit community music center in your area with some dedicated musicians who essentially donate their time.
There are also some online piano courses and some are worse, some are better than others. The problem is that it would be hard for you to evaluate, since all the teachers in them tend to speak with authority. But if you can find something simple and engaging that you can do, it might be a third option.
Good luck!
3
@Past, Present, Future: If you are well-motivated and have even a cheap keyboard, you can cycle thru several "beginner piano lessons" on YouTube. Sample quite a few of them, and bookmark the ones that seem helpful to you. Not as good as coaching from a regular piano instructor, but self-motivation and attention to detail can't be bought anyway. It comes from within. Just start with easy pop tunes.
3
@Past, Present, Future
Have you visited the Front Porch in Charlottesville? Its nonprofit mission is focused on roots music, but they may be able to refer you to some teachers or resources.
Best of luck finding help--it's never too late to learn!
Gayla Mills
2
As a piano teacher who has taught both children and adult students for many years, this piece made me smile. The only difference between teaching children and adults, is that kids aren’t afraid to make mistakes. Adults often freeze, unable to play a single note until they are sure they are doing it right. My advice is, play with joy and confidence, and no one in your audience will know it wasn’t perfect.
16
@Stevie Nelson I kind of thought that that was what jazz was for.
2
@Jackie, lol! Reminds me of an old joke. "What do you call it when you play a wrong note in a piece of music?" Answer: A mistake. "What do you call it when you play the wrong note twice?" Answer: Jazz
For those of us who don't have the gift of tongues, the piano can be an outlet. I like to play in a room by myself. Years of instruction and theory were to no avail until I began playing by ear. It isn't Van Cliburn by any means. But it is an utterance that brings me to tears and release sometimes.
8
Jennifer, you've brought a lot of joy with your piece today...and a healthy dose of inspiration!
6
I am so happy for you! I'm also back at the piano after years of not practicing - super slow Chopin and Bach are still beautiful.
10
It's always nice to be reminded that we are none of us perfect. We all make mistakes. The differences between us lie elsewhere. Some of us hide our flaws, and some don't. Some of us fess up to our mistakes, some won't.
Second, thank you, Ms. Weiner, for the music. Thank you especially for the suggestion that taking up music, again or for the first time, can redo the rutted and potholed mental roadways. I had discovered the very same thing for myself.
However, my own little editorial angel is whispering something in my ear. "The Moonlight Sonata" is straightforward. Chopin, on the other hand, is something else altogether. By mentioning Chopin aren't you still trying to win? Maybe just a little?
“Hey, Mom, that was really good!” Heaven and earth moved when your 15 year old said that. That rare and lovely sentiment from a young person was about much more than the music or your Chopin. Though you know that already.
5
Play Canon in D and everyone will call you brilliant and a true artist. Took me 50 years to learn that ;-)
3
@Shirlee
Thanks for your reply. I always liked to play the original (?) version of the very different but equally impressive "Mission Impossible" theme.
3
I played and performed professionally as a pianist and composer for 35 years until I was exhausted and stopped altogether. Strange sounding I know.
In all those years the most enjoyment I ever found in playing the piano came when a pure meditative state of calm and a complete nonjudgmental self came over me. Those moments were rare. Nirvana was momentarily visited. It's true.
To play for the sheer joy of it is a blessing. Embrace that. I eventually lost all enthusiasm. I keep hoping it will return. The funny thing is I quit at a point where my facility on the piano was at it's highest.
So, what I am saying? As someone who started at 7 and quit at 55, the biggest hurdle I was able to jump over was when mistakes (made nightly) no longer mattered in light of the joy of the music itself.
As a famous jazz musician I played with at a historic jazz club at the tender age of 21 said to me, as I was clearly struggling on stage, "Hey, relax, it's only music". It took me 30 years to finally own what he meant. Enjoy. Don't worry, be happy.
9
Bravo!
I did something similar with art. I grew up with a pencil in my hand until college and being an adult got in the way. A couple years ago, when I turned 50, I signed up for a Life Drawing class at our local Museum of Fine Art and fell in love with drawing again!
I'll never be Sargent or Rembrandt. Nor do I want to be! (ok - maybe I would like to be like Rembrandt...) But more important I want to develop my own style and talent, my own voice. It's a life long endeavor and a joy.
I think I'll go grab my pencils right now!
10
You gave yourself the answer early in this artical: wanting to win, getting acclaim, achieving literary (or any other) respectability. Those are all goals related to the Collective. And they will never bring you happiness, contentment or peace. The goals of the Being, the heart, the soul -- whatever you choose to call that ancient understanding inside each of us(if we choose to listen to it!) -- are always driven by what increases happiness, what increases love, what increases worthiness in us and everything else we touch. Acclaim and ego are never the answer.
11
It is OK to be mediocre at a hobby but not in your profession. Just imagine if medical doctors, nurses or engineers would be OK with mediocrity. Just imagine if educators were to be OK with mediocrity. Already this country has a leadership elected by the concept that mediocrity is OK.
I am 52 and I started self studying the piano a year ago. My biggest accomplishment is that I learned to play a very short dodecaphonic piece by Anton Webern, while I am still struggling (yet slowly progressing) with sight reading. It feels good on a personal level. It is good for the self to find an enjoyable hobby, specially if this hobby is intellectually or artistically challenging. But it is very important to distinguish between a personal hobby and a profession. Hobbies are for self enjoyment, but professions (including the professions of musicians, artists and writers) should profess a level of excellence for the improvement and evolution of humanity. I won't want to hear a mediocre musician or read a mediocre novel. For that I have my own piano and my own diary.
14
An inspiring piece. One might add that anybody who can play a piano is welcome at a party.
5
You wrote my article. I took lessons from ages 11-17 and resumed in my late 30s. I’ve been taking them again for 5-6 years now. I’m always the oldest - but not the tallest - at the annual recitAl. I also work on theory, including jazz theory, what ch is the best brain exercise ever. I always loved practicing and still do. I may not become great but I become better. It’s very satisfying.
13
I loved this piece. There is so much pleasure to be had by losing youself in your 'art'. I have taken piano lessons off an on but never consistently enough to get anywhere. Full disclosure - I never could practice for long enough periods. Period.
Even so I remember one of those times I was working on a simple Bach piece and my right hand and left hand clicked. It was a terrific, transcendent feeling!
As often is the case, the comments here were as enjoyable as the essay.
Maybe I'll reconsider my keyboard which mocks me today even as I type this.
15
Jennifer -- we are kindred souls. I restarted piano after a 40 year hiatus, playing, guess what, the Chopin Waltz. And now, a dozen years later, I practice every day and have a decent repertoire of Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, etc. plus a lot of Phillip Glass. But where we are truly linked is that Type A personality adjusting to mediocre performance. (Also true for me in golf, which I took up late in life). It is actually is very liberating. Just making music is a wonderful experience.
8
I can meditate but I cannot play the piano. The author's ability to play the piano but not be able to meditate is normal. It is much harder to watch the mind, mindfully. If one changes emphasis from building concentration to just wanting to know oneself by observing thoughts, meditation becomes easier. Perfection has no place in meditation, maybe that is why the author could not meditate initially. After getting that insight through piano, she should retry meditating. A whole new world of self-knowledge will arise...
5
Thank you for this, Ms. Weiner! I am a big fan of yours and now even more so. I learned just enough piano 20 years ago to pass proficiency exams for a voice degree. Music school was so competitive that it took me ages to enjoy singing again, even while I sang professionally. I gave up piano more or less because I couldn’t stand to hear my own mistakes. My dad was an ardent amateur pianist (with some early professional study) for at least 70 years. As the word amateur implies, he played simply because he truly loved music and playing. Mistakes were nothing to be ashamed of—practice was the key. At the time he passed, I decided that I would honor Dad’s memory and play for the love of it, however long it took to learn a piece of music. Like you, I have found the act of playing meditative and calming. And, with practice, I am improving, bit by bit. And the side benefit is that it is teaching me patience in other aspects of my life.
10
Instead of Rachmaninoff, perhaps try your hand at improvisation - if your teacher can help you do that. This way you will be making your own music - uniquely your own - instead of comparing yourself to concert pianists.
I’ve taught piano for 40 years, and try to get students to play by ear, get rid of all the papers with little dots - instead create an environment for people to listen, explore and feel music. It works.
17
@Sam Kanter
Sam, it is so refreshing to read your comments. I, too, am a piano teacher and share your philosophy. The joy of feeling and hearing the music is enhanced by losing the paper! Editing arrangements is also a skill that my students learn to employ. This way the piece becomes personalized by their own creative input, Your students are lucky to have you!
3
@maureen fischer Thanks, Maureen. I get so many rejected, depressed students from old-style classical teachers who still use reading as the basis for learning to make music. We all have music within us, it needs to be brought out.
Music is an aural art form, we do not need visual dots on paper to make music. Students need to start hearing and feeling -and PLAYING (in the true sense of the word). I have students improvising their own music at the first lesson - very exciting!
2
Another returnee comes back while more than a few "Late Starters" pick up an instrument as an adult. I've been one of them for over 40 years. My instrument of choice is the violin and the one I play was my wife's great-grandfather's that I had repaired and restored to playable condition over those 40 years. I'll never be Paganini, or Stern, or Pearlman, I will only be myself largely playing for myself, my wife and the cats.
I found that I have a talent for teaching complex material that I had to struggle to learn; so now I have students launching their musical lives. I can see that my first, now a High School Freshman, will probably drop the instrument for now but perhaps return as an adult.
I play a lot of the pedagogical materials all from the old masters. For myself, its show tunes, hymnody, and the occasional tune I hear and think: I can play that. Mistakes abound, corrected slowly over days and days. And that 30 to 45 minutes a day are a tonic that feeds my soul.
I'll never be in the pantheon of great violinists, just one of the millions that get joy from playing and that alone is sufficient.
8
Ah, type A personalities. Now retired, after a good career as an attorney, I am constantly arguing with rising sourdough loaves, and wondering if my cookies are good enough! Enjoy the music!
69
I'll never be Art Tatum.
I was a small time prodigy as a kid. But hated performing (anxiety). I started at 6, by 12 was forced to play recitals on Sunday afternoon for the local gentry. At 13 won a contest then had to perform in a large concert hall in front of a larger audience than I deserved
Then I discovered girls & football and quit. In HS I took up beer. But in my last year in college I decided to play again. Sometimes classical, sometimes wild improvisations. I played in a good rock band (briefly) before heading off to grad school. Over the years I've played most of the classical solo piano lit, learned the great American songbook, accompanied singers and invested in a grand piano.
Then one day I heard an Art Tatum recording and knew that's how I wanted to play. I love the freedom of jazz. Never have to play anything the same way twice. You can play "My funny valentine" in an infinite number of ways. And performance anxiety is not an issue.
But I'll never play as well or as creatively as Art Tatum. And that's frustrating. Maddening. I'm good. Some say I'm better than good. But I'm not Tatum. If you practice hard, with a reasonable level of talent one can learn to play much of the classical oeuvre at a high level. One can hope to rip through Chopin's Butterfly Etude well enough so that you sound professional.
But play at Tatum's level? No. My only solace is I know that all jazz pianist share my frustration.
20
@Ralphie
Art Tatum was indeed unique. Perhaps you might consider Keith Jarrett as a model, who once said of Tatum, "Too many notes." One (hopefully) gains wisdom with age, which musically can substitute touch for speed. And "touching" describes Jarrett's duos with Charlie Haden in Haden's final months. On the album Jasmine, Jarrett's reading of Don't Ever Leave Me is a shining specimen of beauty borne of restraint and wisdom.
7
@Tim Clark I like Jarrett, Correa, Monk and many others-- they are all great in their own way. And worthy of emulation. You could make the argument that Tatum sometimes played too many notes -- but -- as a virtuoso jazz pianist - I believe Tatum stands alone.
7
Twenty-one years after stopping piano lessons, I was watching Sesame Street with my toddlers when I suddenly was transported to another world by Chopin's Waltz in C sharp minor, which was featured in a short nature segment on the program. Like you, I also knew the piece from my childhood classical ballet lessons. Practically on the spot, I arranged to take piano lessons again during the short hours my children were in preschool. Those lessons were such good medicine for my soul. This time, though, the goal was to never play in a recital or competition and to refuse all demands of visitors who spy the piano and command you to "Play something." That made making music a very personal and joyous labor of love.Thirty years later, that Chopin Waltz still speaks to me even as I continue to mangle it. Play on, my dear kindred spirit Jennifer, and let's promise each other we will NEVER play "our waltz" for one another.
16
I absolutely loved your essay collection -- I recommended it to all my friends. I wish my resounding endorsement was enough to wash away your disappointment at what I guess you saw as some kind of a failure. But I'm glad you found piano lessons.
As a gym-class washout who started taking figure skating lessons the week that I turned 55, I can attest to the benefits of leaving your comfort zone and learning something new when you're at an age when you can just coast and never challenge yourself again. I signed up for skating after eight weeks humiliating myself in Introduction to Aerial Acrobatics, a class I very reluctantly agreed to take because my then-19-year-old daughter asked me to, and how many 19-year-old daughters want to do anything with their mothers?) I stunk at aerial acrobatics, but realizing that I'd humiliated myself for eight weeks doing something I didn't even really want to do spurred me to finally stop making excuses and do what I had been thinking about (and afraid to do) for years: learn to skate. I'm still taking lessons. Students have come and go and surpassed me many times over, but I won't quit until my legs do. There is something wonderful about realizing that you are truly never too old to learn something. Yay you. Enjoy the lessons, and please don't give up your day job. I love reading what you write.
39
Oh yeah. I went to a top-tier law school, where everyone in our class had been valedictorian-of-something. The drive that got us all there is definitely a 2-edged sword. I took up piano as a middle-aged adult & I stink, big time. But the first time I stumbled all the way through Chopin's Waltz in A Minor w/out major error, I felt like I won the lottery. Good enough. Good enough to bring joy.
94
@Patty
"Good enough. Good enough to bring joy."
My goal exactly !
7
Not sure it's still in print, but John Holt's "It's Never Too Late" is a great read and inspiration for older folks thinking of taking the leap into learning an instrument. He took up the cello in his 40s or 50s.
6
Beautiful! And much needed.
3
Good for you, letting go, at least for this purpose, of the pathological striving that seems to have infected us over the last 30 years or so. You might have said, just enjoying myself is enough - a better sentiment for the soul, though not as catchy for the publisher, and probably what your meant anyway. New Year’s resolution - do things because you enjoy them, or because it makes other people happy, or because it’s the right thing to do, and never mind whether it earns a profit or enhances your Facebook profile.
3
I think it all has to do, like most skills, with the teacher. When the teacher excels in communicating with the pupil, the student excels to the best of her abilities. The boredom evaporates. The difficulty remains, and the frustration remains, but the tendency to quit goes away, because improvement is obvious. I’m 73 years old with three years of trumpet lessons under my belt and loving it as much as it is frustrating. When I look at how much I’ve accomplished, my only regret is starting much too late.
I think young teachers make the connection with young students. It may appear to the student that they are growing together.
7
Thank you for this wonderful essay. While I was never very competitive, each day, after I finish practicing, I can’t help having my own “I’ll never be Rachmaninoff” thought. For me, it’s “I’ll never make it to Carnegie Hall — unless I buy a ticket.”
I played accordion as a boy, so I learned to read right hand music. Now, at 70, reading the left hand, even now, 30 years after starting piano lessons, is still a challenge.
But I started lessons when my brother was dying, and piano, with its ability to focus the mind on something other than real life, was, for me, critical in dealing with his illness and death. So I practiced A LOT. Within a month, my teacher suggested the Bach inventions, and I have a clear memory of taking several weeks just to master the first few bars of the C maj. invention with both hands. Now, I play almost nothing but Bach, with an occasional Mozart sonata, or other similar piece thrown in.
I still practice many hours, and still struggle mightily with difficult passages. I will indeed never make it to Carnegie Hall, but so what. The joy of playing and mastering (for me) a piece is really all I need.
22
I've been playing piano since I was a kid but was always something of a dilettante. I was playing Mozart sonatas, Bach inventions — not badly, not well. Then, 9 months ago, I decided to go back to one of Chopin's Ballade in g minor, considered a major piece. I've been concentrating on that one piece. I find myself practicing way more than I ever had. One of the impetuses was trading my upright for a grand. A grand piano seems to demand virtuosity!
I don't know if I'll ever master it. I consider it a life goal. Don't give up — five minutes for the "Minute Waltz" is just fine!
8
@HKGuy
I applaud you, Ms. Weiner and all the commenters for playing for the pleasure of playing. i returned to serious study after graduating from music school 35 years ago. I intend to learn some pieces such as the Chopin g minor ballade, even though my technique never was that good. I don't care how long it takes, and, with the help of my very excellent teacher, I hope to be lucky to continue for many years to come. Also, I'm cashing out most of my meager retirement funds for my first grand piano. Cheers to you in your musical endeavors!
5
@E Brown I'm 66, and hardly flush, but when I moved into my present apartment, I realized I finally had room for a grand. I got a bit of a fixer-upper on CraigsList. The operating system of a grand resembles an upright's the way the engine of a Porsche does a Ford's. But it's worth the hassle! The sound is vastly superior.
I went back to piano two years ago at age 68. Now I play year-end piano recitals with my grandchildren. I also drive them to piano lessons. It is wonderful on so many levels.
11
Whatever your level, there will always be many who are above you, and many below you. Making music is not about judging or rating yourself, but a creative adventure that lasts a lifetime.
64
Ha. Try telling that to a professional musician (me). I envy being able to sit and play without my "inner critic" jumping in constantly. You have a very good teacher. Enjoy. :)
15
As a self-taught 54-year-old “pianist,” I can offer this:
What’s often missing from the toolbox of students young and old is a methodical and efficient way to practice. As a conservatory-trained violin teacher, I’ve had many students come to me that were never really shown how to practice. Simple repetition is only a small part of the process. Practicing in groups and rhythms should be taught by every teacher, and so should the different techniques of using a metronome.
Even middle-age beginners can fast-track their progress with the right practice techniques. It begins with finding the right teacher.
25
As someone who resumed piano lessons a few years ago after a 60 year hiatus, I’ve been searching for a book that helps with these. mundane aspects of piano practicing. Any recommendations?
1
@Mark
Several years ago, I got a book called Jazz Hanon. It turns the Hanon exercises from my early years of piano lessons into pieces that actually sound musical. So I'm getting my good muscle memory "practice" while not sounding like scales. I took lessons from 6 to 18 and have continued playing my entire life, mostly for church and at home for myself. Years ago, my husband bought me a Baldwin baby grand which I am unworthy of, but it brings me great joy!
‘The Musician’s Way”. Amazon it
1
I used to be able to play Malagueña. One of my greatest accomplishments!
4
@SLeslie I was in the finals of the Connecticut Junior Miss Pageant in 1969, and I played Malagueña. Never played it better, but I did not even place in the talent section. Later on, I asked one of the judges what else I could have done. She kindly told me that I was terrific, but that “piano players never win!” Fifty years later, that still makes me smile.
2
@Kathy Belinkie I think you are a winner!
I learned that minute waltz as a kid. Tried to play it in a minute, to make my teacher happy. (The right hand did okay, left hand not so much.) When I finished, she was laughing: "Minute", she said, "just means small."
But as for the competitiveness, it's easy to relate. When we are used to success, being less than the best at *anything* is hard to swallow.
5
@Alison
I'm curious about the phrase "being used to success." If you never fail at something significant, either that thing wasn't that significant, or you never learned anything truly useful about being human.
@Tim Clark Sorry, don't quite follow your reasoning about "significance" or "humanity" here. To each his/her own, I guess.
Among other things, this essay speaks to the benefits of learning to play an instrument when young. A baby boomer, I was raised in an era when many parents didn't force their kids to take music lessons. Being permissive ruled and the feeling was that it would make them rebel and shy away from all music. I would love to be able to sit down and play something, but I know it would sound so far from what I hear in my head that it would only lead to frustration and disappointment. Keep at it, Ms. Weiner!
5
Get a toy piano with a nice tone -- vintage stores often have them -- and just plink out a few notes whenever you feel like it. The joy of playing completely for fun.
Shortly after retirement I purchased a very good piano (nothing like being monetarily invested to keep one's focus!) and headed over to the local community college to sign up for a "beginning piano" class. There I learned the basics (thank you Ms Sasaki!) of reading sheet music, scales, pedaling, etc. When the class was over I chose not to continue with lessons but to find easy piano pieces that I could learn on my own. Think easiest Chopin and four part hymns. I am not any good but I find that playing the piano is good mental exercise and a welcome respite from our sometimes crazy world.
11
Asking for perfection from imperfect humans beings, and we all fall under this description, is an aberration of sorts. Let's just enjoy each other, as we strive to do better the next time...perhaps. In that sense, you are perfectly O.K., and no need from outside critics to confirm it.
4
I took piano lessons as a child for 3 years off and on. After retiring at 57 decided to eventually restart as a post retirement hobby because - why not? It's a cool instrument and always loved the sight of those playing effortlessly for pleasure and company. So 2 years ago I started with an electronic piano, practice everyday, practice when I can on the teacher's baby grand and add to my repertoire. I will never be "great" maybe after ten years - "pretty good"with caveats but my goal is to have few songs I can play from memory. So far I can play Happy Birthday, a few short works of Mozart, Bach and Purcell. Even the Entertainer by Joplin. Working on a song from Godspell - fun and hard. My teacher and I are working towards a mini concert at a retirement community this summer - there is never an end to learning and piano entertains and keeps you humble and coming back for more.
23
Jennifer, thanks so much. I was laughing, and almost crying, at your essay because I could have written it - including the parts about being uber competitive in the most non-competitive situations, reaching the level of playing Moonlight Sonata in high school (and then that was it), and recently having sat down and started to play a bit again after more than 35 years - but finding utter peace in my clumsy, halting, start and stop and squint efforts to play everything from a Mozart sonatina to Stardust. Thanks, again....
3
Loved your story. I, too, have come to the piano late in life and I play badly just like you, but I love the music and keep plugging away hoping to get better.
9
Interesting essay. It seems to me, being sort of an outside to this region, that this is the folly that most plagues us. Unless we excel at something, it's not worth doing. That is a shame but......it's has it's purpose.
I do believe that relative to ones craft or profession, the pursuit of excellence does have it's place.
That book you wrote. The one that kept you up at 3am ruminating. I read it. I reviewed it on Amazon. It was not the most glowing of reviews because I saw flaws with it which I believe you are capable of improving upon. Because I am truly a fan, and a frequent customer, I took the time to offer my feedback to your artistry in the hopes of a more satisfying experience the next time I purchase one of your books. My opinion was offered as such and you can do what you want with it. My hope was and is that you realize that only concern for you and your output motivated me to offer my thoughts and opinions, which you are free to discard if not useful.
So, yeah, in the instance, yes, it pays to try and get nuggets of helpful feedback from your readers etc and to try and grow as a writer from the things that don't universally work.
But the piano? You are absolutely right. It is important to enjoy it for it's own merit. We all need things we do for the joy of it and only the joy of it.
.....and we need to teach our children the same.
And the growth in one's craft? That need to excel must be modulated with joy in the process. Both have their place.
13
@Gwe I love that you actually reviewed that book and then hooked up with the author here! It's a small (big) world!
1
I like the 15% rule. Let’s celebrate that part of us that continues to grow in appreciating our limits and our progress so we do not continually fuel the neurotic need for perfection that keeps us walled off from the joy of small accomplishments.
11
Michael Jordan's passion was playing baseball. How did that work out?
" Find something that you truly love doing. Find something that you are really good at".
If the desire and the talent coincide and match then you will never toil nor trouble about your achievements. Unless and until you look with envy at your acquaintance or friend or stranger who eclipses you on both fronts.
6
Ahh, Jennifer; how your essay resonates. I took up the clarinet at age 40, hoping to attain the ease of playing of a Benny G. There was no money in my youth for music lessons and now, after 40 years of practice Goodman still remains a shimmering cloud far out of sight. But I love what I can do even if it is nothing more than mediocre. A beloved clarinet teacher came close to complimenting me when he called me "dogged". Love it. I play every day. It clears my mind and gets me ready for my scientific work with a freshness and joy only music, self made, can bring. Never too late to start and even a duffer can play "it don't mean a thing".
41
Playing the piano runs on my mother's side of the family. My grandmother, my mother and my uncle (who played professionally until he became an engineer), all played. We had a piano in our home until I was 12 or 13 but none of us kids had any interest in it, so mom got rid of it to make more space in our living room. I played the trumpet through high school then lost interest in it. As I reminded mom recently "No one asks a trumpet player to get up at a party and blow a few tunes (unless maybe you're Wynton Marsalis) but everyone loves a piano player!".
4
When I was 10 years old, my parent bought a Steinway Grand for all the children to learn to play the piano. I was the only sibbling to take lessons through high school. It taught me what a wonderful piano sounds like, that there is a level of excellence that can expand our experience of the world. It opened my mind to a wider world than the poor state in which I grew up, where mustic primarily came from the churches and scattered radio stations playing rhythm and blues throughout the south before any one had heard of rock. I love all kinds of music, from classical, to primitive drumming, to jazz and rock and roll. Music is the universal language, spanning time and culture. It sooths when the heart is broken (Mozart's Requiem) and elates when experiencing love and springtime (The Triumphal March from Aida). Love of music cements friendships and marriages.
Anyone who thinks a cheap electronic keyboard can generate transcendent sound lives in a underprivileged world. No wonder you are mediocre in all things you do and expect of yourself. You should aim for joy, not competence. Low expectations are a dangerous thing - they gave us our current president.
9
@San Francisco Voter Oh, just slipped the kids a Steinway, eh? The music is the thing, and the music precedes the sound you make on the instrument. Glenn Gould would play air piano to immerse himself in the composer's plan. I know a trombone player who carries a plastic model on trips so she can be with the music. Sure, she'll eventually play the work on her expense brass unit, but with or without the fine tool, she still stays near the music; the sound is not the place the music begins to live. Nice sound is a goal, but the aim is to find the ideas in the music. The instrument is just a means to an end. Finally, your last observation brings to mind on of C.S. Lewis's books, Surprised by Joy. Who ever guaranteed joy by aiming for it?
14
@San Francisco Voter
Much truth in what you say, but the Beauty of music does not require a Steinway grand. I played the oboe at an advanced level (NYSSMA Level 6) guitar, and piano- I have a Steinway model L. But I find the notes of a well played Shakuhachi - a simple bamboo flute, transcendent and I first started to play music in kindergarten, on a concertina. The author does not have low expectations, she simply does not need to play like HOROWITZ in order to enjoy the pleasures of the journey of discovery of learning to create music.
12
@San Francisco Voter "When I was 10 years old, my parent bought a Steinway Grand for all the children to learn to play the piano." That is difference. Almost every parent who approaches me for piano lessons for their kid now has a keyboard or is about to buy a keyboard. I actually stopped taking students who don't have a real piano. The whole experience is difference and sub-par in ways too numerous to mention and too long to explain here. While I don't agree with your implication that the keyboard means the writer is "mediocre in in all she does", I do concur that she will definitely stay mediocre at "piano" (i.e., keyboard) until she sees her way clear to buying an acoustic (i.e., real) instrument. But that seems to be ok with her, and I'm ok with that.
3
I gave up playing the Minute Waltz in under a minute decades ago. Now I like “my arrangement” better. My dad figured out at some point that I played better and longer if I thought I was alone. I know he was listening, though, as he would often ask from his chair in another room, “Would you play (fill in song)?” Now I am adding piano to my “what to do when I retire” list - put that muscle memory of driving anyone in the house crazy with my same three songs to better use! Thanks, Jennifer!
2
This is so true to my experience. In the midst of a stressful professional stretch, I've taken up guitar and returned to mountain biking. Very different from one another, but both require total focus, and grant just enough progress against the effort put forth to be satisfying. Like the author, I know I'll never master either one, but that's just fine.
6
Thank you for this lovely piece. Weiner describes virtually the same trajectory I experienced resuming piano lessons after a 40-year hiatus. While I may have pictured myself learning to play well enough for others to listen to, it was the total mental immersion of learning pieces measure that’s become the enduring pleasure. I’m still striving for mediocrity, but when I’m at the piano, the rest of the world recedes, so I’m in no rush to get there.
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Taking up a musical instrument at any level is a Sisyphean task. This type of quest is good for the soul no matter how far one chooses to push the boulder. It melds 3 senses in a way that enhance learning capabilities. Each piece of music is a window into a world that I like to think of as "emotional messages in a bottle". The social aspects are a nice fringe benefit as well. Music is fun when played with others. I wish that music education systems treated amateurs with more respect at the ground floor. The bloodthirsty competition at the professional level starts so early it drives young would be amateur musicians away by and large although many do return once their careers are well established. The study of music makes better people. We could really use some better people.
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@Joseph
"We could use some better people."
Bravo, Joseph. I add this brief reply only because we cannot hit recommend multiple times.
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I enjoyed your piece here. It brought back memories of my mother. She was a pretty good piano player, she grew up on a farm during the Depression and her dad was able to pay 25 cents a week for her piano lessons. She enjoyed classical music of all types. I remember as a small boy sitting on the piano bench watching her play.
A few years ago in her late 80's, Alzheimer's took away her ability to do most things we take for granted. She could no longer speak or respond to family members, she either slept or sat in her wheelchair looking out the window. We even had to feed her, as well as bath and dress her; in the end we did home hospice. But if I moved her wheelchair to the old piano in the family room she would smile, open some music books and begin to play. Her tempo was a bit off but her fingers touched the right keys and she played while we turned the pages. I guess there are some things you never forget and for her reading music and playing the piano was it.
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@Chris Summers - wonderfully touching comment
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@Chris Summers
The nonprofit organization Music and Memory (musicandmemory.org) has programs that promote the use of music with the elderly and infirm, esp. those with memory issues. Their work is shown in an excellent documentary “Alive Inside” which is available online at Amazon Prime and YouTube. Seeing patients come alive when they hear familiar music is truly remarkable.
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@Chris Summers That's beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
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Life should be a search for spiritual perfection. Music and poetry are spiritual. You should practice the piano so long as you are progressing towards that infinite goal. And you should never compare yourself with Rachmaninoff, Alfred Brendel, Rudolf Serkin, Rosalyn Tureck, or anyone else.
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I too took up the piano in middle age, some 40 years after dropping it as a tennager. My interest waxes and wanes, but I love it.
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Ever since the advent of recorded music, the joy of private, amateur, music-making has gradually been lost. So it is a joy to read this wonderful essay about how we can recapture the pleasure and peace that come with amateur music-making in the home. I would strongly recommend that Ms. Weiner pick up a copy of the Bach "French Suites" and try her hand at those. Brimming with melody and beauty, and most of the pieces are well within the grasp of a diligent student. Repays study throughout a lifetime.
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@TomF
You touch on something I have always wondered about: The effect of recorded music on culture in general. More specifically, does it change the definition of "classical"?
("Roll Over Beethoven"?)
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@TomF.....recorded music is one of the great achievements of human history. It has allowed a much wider and deep appreciation by multi millions of average people of great piano music, and all classical music. And now even more with youtube, etc.
How many people in past eras had the means and the time to learn to play such music in the home? Then radio enabled concerts to be appreciated nation wide.
I feel very lucky to live in the era of recorded music.
I can listen to recordings of the Bach French suites, and Beethoven and Chopin and marvel at it. And listen over and over---by different pianists, for an enlightening range of interpretations.
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@TomF.
My copy of Bach's French Suites is amongst the most dog-eared of my sheet music. I have always felt the freshness of this music no matter how often I play it and you are right -there are many sections that are easy to play .
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there's a kid playing pachelbel's canon in d on youtube named Funtwo. that inspired me to pick up the guitar again after 45 years or so. i've been taking weekly lessons and accumulating instruments. it turns out to be a difficult instrument to play well, and one of the reasons i wanted to pick it up was to help keep my brain sharp. but i find that after we go over several bars of a song, right now Georgia on My Mind, i forget what the music is supposed to sound like. i keep at it until i can pick out the melody but typically it takes a couple of lessons until i suss it out. i like the american songbook...fly me to the moon, misty, somewhere over the rainbow, satin doll, harlem nocturne, someone to watch over me, the very thought of you, and some beatles, and one led zeppelin. my instuctor says i'm a great student because i always practice and i always show up.
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@david i learned about Funtwo from a story in the Times, so there's kind of a neat symmetry going on here.
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I deal with just about everything by playing piano. Joy is shared. Sadness given to the keys. When life's hard problems arise, I choose a hard new piano piece to play, demanding 100% attention, which melts my problems into beautiful music.
Can anything be better than making music?
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@DB
Nope absolutely nothing is better than making music.
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I've been no better than average for every one of the 55 years I've been playing piano. You get used to it. Try this, however: try playing pop music. It's a lot easier, a lot less technically demanding, and if you or anyone around you can sing a little bit, way more fun.
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@Larry Ginsberg
Totally agree, much less demanding, you can even play by ear and as long as people (should one dare to play publicly) recognize the song, they generally don't complain, usually quite the opposite.
Ms. Wiener, thank you for this story. In addition to the importance of learning to embrace mediocrity, it brings back great memories. My mother was a classically trained pianist and she had a similar lament “I’ll never be Rachmaninoff, my fingers are too short.” The wiseacre brother would walk by her piano and say things like “Oh, is that one by Rip’ercorsettoff?” I could always tell what kind of mood she was in depending on the composer. Bach was always a good sign—she would invariably finish the piece and exclaim “Bach is just SO satisfying!” It may well be that some day your daughter, like this one, will tear up when she hears your signature pieces, whether they are played perfectly or not.
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I loved yr story! Have this habit of immediately forwarding articles like yours to my son the Know-it-all in california:)) this time I read it carefully and smiled... I was telling an old boy-friend, a fellow photographer how totally disasterous I was at my first piano recital at 11... but that I actually took lessons because I LOVED those music books ( which in Israel back then had surreal illustrations on the covers...) and he said: well that’s it! You probably should have taken art lessons! Not only that... ironic as our experiences often are ( and very ZEN) the friends w the piano where I practiced had a closed room which stated DARKROOM! I became a photographer years later... and smile everytime I wonder what would have happened had I visited THAT room instead:)) and practiced in it...
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A beautifully composed piece. Your themes must resonate with many of us and you articulated them with brilliance - through the finale!
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I'll never be a pianist, I stared too late for that, but I am a musician. What is in my soul flows to the keys - as it does for all of us - and thanks to a recording studio set up on my Mac, I make and record my own music. My deepest thanks to my current teacher Paul Sheftel, a man of immense patience and humility. After hearing a piece or two at our first meeting, Paul introduced me to his next student as, " a composer." My eyes filled with tears.
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Jennifer, you speak to an endeavor which many older people can engage in and receive a multitude of rewards for their efforts.
Way back in the late 60's, as I was 17 years old, I declared that I was too old to learn how to play the piano !
There was much music in my life beforehand, and as on the cusp of entering a music conservatory for percussion, it was announced that I must also become proficient in piano.
This did not go very well, however, I managed to complete the required piano curriculum.
There were 1000's of hours of practice and of course, "as a drummer" - I could play the piano a bit.
Rachmaninoff - "seriously" - not even a maybe !
Clearly, you early training took you pretty far towards becoming "accomplished".
You said something very interesting as well as revealing, when you talk about "reaching the limits of your ability" -
Wow !
I applaud your sense of "you" !
I find that it takes a very, very, very self aware and honest person to face their limits.
This said, I too found "my limits" in percussion as well in realizing that some difficult passage here or there was not "just right" -
After a prolonged self-beating, I had an epiphany and realized that "It's OK"
And now in my late 60's, I too have just returned to the keyboard and as a final thought;
As there are and will always be limits on technical proficiency . . .
There is NO Limit on the joy one can receive by returning to, or even starting out for the first time and "making music".
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@Leonard D
I started the violin at 60 after piano as a child. Took lessons, attended jazz camps and began to attend
" Jams " and improved my skills with many hours of practice. I was never comfortable playing with pros , but I did recognize improvement with increased experience.
I learned that others playing with you, are not as aware or concerned about your errors , they are more concerned with their efforts.
If you left a gig feeling good , then it was well worth the time. I always knew that I was not a star, and its fine to just be a 'team' player.
When there is a star in the group , it benefits everyone , just as in team sports.
I remember a teacher in an early fiddle lesson telling me '
60 is too old to start '..............I never believed it to be true.
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Jennifer,
I doubt you remember me, but we were casual acquaintances back when you were nobody, a friend of a friend. I am STILL nobody, but back in the day, I had a successful writing career. Here you are writing regularly for the NYT! Congratulations! How time does fly.
Like you, I play a dozen instruments, "half well enough to perform, half well enough to practice." Strings come fairly easily. Harmonica is like humming, the music comes out. I don't even need to know the tune first. Singing is a natural instrument. Piano requires endless practice for little return. I will always be a halting pianist. Yet piano was my first love. There is something about your first love which never quite goes. It doesn't matter if you excel at every part of the rest of your life, it's enough just to play.
There's a reason they call music, "playing."
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i'm right there with you. Debussy's Clair de Lune beckons me - harder than anything i ever played as a kid, and I work through it haltingly, every now and then sounding like music. Nonetheless, I feel a connection to something eternal. In addition, a couple years ago started tackling jazz - same instrument, entirely different language. I look forward to my 60's (which just started) as I continue to explore and develop myself.
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Thank you for this article. It made my purchase of a grand piano after forty-five years of lapsed piano playing seem a little less silly. I am now conquering Beethoven's Fur Elise and Bach's Solfeggio in C Minor and feeling pretty good about my decision, although I still can't bring myself to even practice if someone is in the house.
If Ms. Weiner would like a challenging piece that is quite beautiful, I highly recommend Richard Clayderman's Marriage D'Amour.
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Taught myself piano at age 12 after starting a vocal solo a third too high and squeaking out that high B. I vowed never again -- I'd learn the piano keys. With no money for lessons, my mom (who played piano beautifully but had no patience to teach) plopped a John Schaum beginner's book in front of me and let me have at it. After three summer months , "playing" three to four hours daily, I had learned to play a reasonable variation on the Carousel Waltz... and never looked back from there. Some 50 years later, I still play passionately but technically cringe-worthy. And for me, it's okay... though Mom never said a word.
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Good luck with that Chopin C# minor Waltz. I love that piece. It always reminds me of the great, forgotten early-90s classic movie Sneakers. I wish I had actually studied it with my teacher. I’ve sight-read through it several times, but I’m always faking the B-section.
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Great piece, er, column.
At 75 I'm attempting the same. I'm trying to relearn works that came so easily for me 50 years ago. And yes, it really focuses my attention but most of all, if I want to do it enough, I MUST do what I didn't do as a kid: play it again and again and again and again and, yet again—until the timer goes off on the stove.
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I too, tried to resume piano after many years, at least 35. The first time I tried, I was still working but the piano teacher made it very easy by coming to my home. I didn’t last a year because I was too tired after work and my weekends were full. Now, after retiring almost 3 years ago, I’ve been at it for 2-1/2 years and loving it! My teacher says that unlike her younger students (I’m 64) who give up easily, I will practice a piece until I get it. And like the author of this article, I’ve found that it really relaxes me. I too, tried yoga and meditation but eventually realized that practicing piano is really the best at taking my mind off of everything else. I was motivated to resume piano after I read a NYT article stating that to keep our minds sharp longer as we age, we should take up hobbies and activities that require improvement. Since I have more time now, I don’t practice in 30 minute increments but practice for long sessions every other day. No, I will never be Rachmaninoff, but I have found my Zen. I highly recommend it!
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I have been haunted by excellence for a long time over the course of my 80 years. I am a selfless music lover (selfless in the sense that I can fully enter the world of creations and performers) while having a very modest instinct to take center stage myself. Among pianists I admire: Yuja Wang, who seems to me to be a latter-day incarnation of everything Rachmaninoff could play at the keyboard -- or, to put it another way, a combination of Rubinstein and Horowitz -- the former's poetry and beauty, the latter's spectacular virtuosity); also Teddy Wilson, an understated and beautiful player. Teddy is not so spectacular as Art Tatum or Oscar Peterson, and his stage presence, touch, delicacy and touch is not the equal of
Fats Waller, but he is very much himself. His understated lilt in middle-pace fox-trot numbers such as "That Old Feeling," " I Wished on the Moon," and "Why Was I Born?" (to mention just a few) make me want to dance with an old flame. Teddy, at unaccompanied piano, is somehow utterly complete and all you could ever ask for. I have been tempted to spend a fortune on an online jazz piano course with Berklee Music, but none of their instructors can come anywhere close to Teddy. So I'll just have to trust my own ear. Another pianist I admire (amazingly taken for granted) is Earl Wild, who has recorded the most beautiful version of Rachmaninoff's war-horse second piano concerto I have heard.
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I am somewhat older than you Ms Weiner, but in my suburban Jewish middle class extremely educated family, music lessons, usually piano, were almost automatic and indeed I began at grade 3 and continued into high school.
At my best I was technical, but never really any good, and there were many reasons to stop in high school.
I have planned to go back many times. I have an 88 key keyboard in my living room, but I can't find a comfortable position for my back to sit and play (talk about excuses).
But I am sitting here typing with WQXR (they deserve the plug) in the background (wonders of the internet).
If my computer is on, I have classical music in the background from any number of great stations. I have recently found out that my grandfather who died when I was 3 loved the opera. He never played but the joy of listening is in our genes.
I am good at a fairly large number of things and even excel and succeed at some, but failing at playing does not effect my joy and pleasure from listening one iota.
Good luck on the lessons. If you enjoy it, even "OK" is just fine. After all, only Rachmaninoff was Rachmaninoff.
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My lapse was forty years. Then my mom passed away and I inherited the family piano. Hated it then - love it now. And it came back fast - progress beyond the point I left off has been slow - but I love it and am glad I gutted out a few years of lessons as a kid - mom was right!
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I loved this piece. Such honesty about what she has achieved, with no "humble bragging." Equal honesty about failures. I have struggled to be a better painter for years - but have finally (finally!) been able to accept that I'm just barely an OK painter, and I'm OK with that. Jennifer - I love the mental picture of you sitting at your piano, squinting at the score, and having the time of your life, hitting all the right notes.
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I took up harp at 47 and still enjoy my mediocre playing although I often feel guilty for not “sharing my gift” . I have sever performance anxiety so I just play for myself. I love the exercises, the simple pieces , and the sound of it in my house when I am alone. I will not give it up.
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Me too! As an oldster I gave myself the gift of piano lessons with my wonderfully patient piano teacher, Jeanne. Tolerating mediocrity (or less) is a good lesson for me. I still struggle with it as a goal oriented over achiever. Not sure exactly what my goal was or is with piano lessons but find my time on Thursday mornings are important to me. I just hope Jeanne can stick it out with me. :)
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Brava for sharing your wonderful experience.
I, too, took piano lessons in elementary school. I lasted two years and hated to practice. Then I took it up again after university and now, forty years later, continue to play every day.
I can perform a fairly decent Chopin nocturne. His etudes are beyond me. But I can handle a Mozart sonata or two. Some Scarlatti is accessible.
I'll never be Rachmaninoff. But making music oneself is infinitely better than downloading on iTunes or punching an iPod.
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The pursuit of excellence which drives many of us -- and has its benefits for society -- "can" be accompanied by a perfectionist attitude that we all need to figure out how to maneuver as it can wreck havoc. It's almost as if we need to tell the part of ourselves that "strives" that it can take a nap while we want to enjoy some of these hobbies for the fun and peace of it all. Well, you know, my brother killed himself this past year, may his soul rest in peace. No doubt he was not feeling "enough." I do all I can to learn from that. Make whatever I am doing "enough" and let go of the perfectionism. Played some music with friends the other day, I am certain I was off key.
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The act of creation is a joy in itself. Fall in love with the process, not the product.
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@nytrosewood
I think Tim Gallwey and his Inner Game would agree.
@nytrosewood
Well stated!
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And I will never be Galway. After many years of "playing at" the flute, I started to really work at it. Being retired, and having time helps. I will never be good enough even to be a busker, but I play for fun.
I have read that a lot of mathematicians play an instrument just so that they can play Bach, and that is what I do. Marcus du Sautoy wrote that he took up the 'cello simply to play the Bach unaccompanied suites.
It's too bad that so many adults are intimidated by excellence that they miss out on one of life's simple pleasures.
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@walterscott I agree about the pursuit of excellence...but I think maybe the difficulty that I’m reading here in Weiner’s piece is the competitive aspect, the outwardly focused part. I’ve been called a perfectionist all my life (often said negatively). But what I don’t think most people understand is that I’m only competing with myself, not with anyone else. The things I’ve loved, or that are important to me, I’m usually trying to improve at...because it’s a challenge, & I enjoy challenges. I did this with my profession (writing) & I’m been doing it the last 5 years with the piano too, which I started again 5 years ago, at age 70. No one is interested in hearing me play, so I’m certainly not doing this for anyone else. I love working on details & playing passages over & over! I love just feeling my fingers on the keys too. But I also get great joy out of feeling I’ve improved--on a piece, or over time. But how to explain that to others?
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I have read and loved many of her books and read a few essays where she doesn't feel as successful as a "serious" author, especially at her college reunion. I am not sure why. She has written many enjoyable books and one was made into a very respectable movie. And while she may never be as good as piano player as writer, she enjoys it. That's all that matters. Write on!
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@Douglas Ritter
I am a big JW fan. Really have loved 99% of what she wrote, save her memoir, which I found a little mean.
I hope she continues to write and I hope she continues to press forth for her push for literary credibility. I find the emotional observations of her books to be quite masterful and nuanced and I find that is very difficult to do.
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Starting to play the piano after a lapse of 35 years - you think that is something? I have started to play the piano after a lapse of 65 years. I have to say in my defense that I really enjoy it - although I guess the ghosts of Chopin and Scriabin (whose compositions I am massacring) probably don't. Beginning piano lessons at the age of almost 90 may be harsh evidence of my eccentricity and/or senility; however, it's not against the law.
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@David J. "Beginning piano lessons at the age of almost 90 may be harsh evidence of my eccentricity and/or senility; however, it's not against the law. "
IMHO, it is not a sign of anything but a creative, open mind - you are an inspiration.
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@David J. Thank you for this. I thought it was too late for me to try the piano again. You have inspired me!
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@David J. I suspect that playing music will help you get another couple of decades of life in. Happy New Year.
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There are many of us in this position, not exactly enjoying our mediocrity, but finding it OK enough to experience a wonderful part of life that would otherwise pass us by, and putting in balance the focus on hard work and achievement. My kids roll their eyes when I start my piano playing with my ten millionth version of "Pennies from Heaven."
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