July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
A skill that didn't 'take' (4/7/04)
Dear Reader
Did you “take”?
I took, but it didn’t take.
Time was, growing up in small town Indiana, there was an expectation at a certain age that you might start taking piano lessons.
If you were lucky, you might get on the track toward school band early, with “tonette” lessons in third or fourth grade and a clarinet or saxophone by the time you were ready for junior high.
But some of us “took piano.”
For me, the lessons started in the fourth grade and involved one day a week when I walked home by a different route, heading east on High Street from Judge Haynes Elementary School until I reached the little house occupied by Nevo Bergman.
Nevo was a friend of my mother’s and a gifted — if somewhat flamboyant — pianist.
As an instructor, she probably lacked the musical knowledge of someone like Kit Beard, whose students were taking lessons on the other side of town. But she made up for it with enthusiasm.
Nevo was a great believer in stickers, perhaps all piano teachers are.
Master a piece of music — even something like “The Volga Boatman” which had about four notes — and you were awarded stickers and stars of various colors on the pages of your lesson book.
Lessons started pretty well, but as time went on I found myself simultaneously frustrated that I couldn’t play better and resentful of the practice sessions that might have made my performance improve.
I also suspected that I was a fraud, that when I learned a piece it was more by rote repetition than anything else. The idea of actually reading the music seemed beyond me.
And then there was the matter of attention span.
Dedication to a musical instrument involves just that — dedication. I was ready to daydream about dazzling people with my skill at the keyboard, but I wasn’t prepared to do the hard work necessary to make the dreams come true.
Somehow, along the way, I’d picked up the erroneous notion that it was more fun to do things that came easily than to master tasks which were difficult.
It was a bit of foolishness that took years to shake, and knowing I wasn’t the only one to fall into the same trap was little consolation.
By then, my piano-playing days were behind me. Even “The Volga Boatman” was beyond my reach, and all the stickers and stars in Nevo’s arsenal couldn’t bring it back again.[[In-content Ad]]
I took, but it didn’t take.
Time was, growing up in small town Indiana, there was an expectation at a certain age that you might start taking piano lessons.
If you were lucky, you might get on the track toward school band early, with “tonette” lessons in third or fourth grade and a clarinet or saxophone by the time you were ready for junior high.
But some of us “took piano.”
For me, the lessons started in the fourth grade and involved one day a week when I walked home by a different route, heading east on High Street from Judge Haynes Elementary School until I reached the little house occupied by Nevo Bergman.
Nevo was a friend of my mother’s and a gifted — if somewhat flamboyant — pianist.
As an instructor, she probably lacked the musical knowledge of someone like Kit Beard, whose students were taking lessons on the other side of town. But she made up for it with enthusiasm.
Nevo was a great believer in stickers, perhaps all piano teachers are.
Master a piece of music — even something like “The Volga Boatman” which had about four notes — and you were awarded stickers and stars of various colors on the pages of your lesson book.
Lessons started pretty well, but as time went on I found myself simultaneously frustrated that I couldn’t play better and resentful of the practice sessions that might have made my performance improve.
I also suspected that I was a fraud, that when I learned a piece it was more by rote repetition than anything else. The idea of actually reading the music seemed beyond me.
And then there was the matter of attention span.
Dedication to a musical instrument involves just that — dedication. I was ready to daydream about dazzling people with my skill at the keyboard, but I wasn’t prepared to do the hard work necessary to make the dreams come true.
Somehow, along the way, I’d picked up the erroneous notion that it was more fun to do things that came easily than to master tasks which were difficult.
It was a bit of foolishness that took years to shake, and knowing I wasn’t the only one to fall into the same trap was little consolation.
By then, my piano-playing days were behind me. Even “The Volga Boatman” was beyond my reach, and all the stickers and stars in Nevo’s arsenal couldn’t bring it back again.[[In-content Ad]]
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