Why Learn?

Piano takes so much work that it's not even funny anymore. Ten plus years later, and my fingers are aching, my brain hurts from practicing almost every day, but I'm still playing the piano. Why? Why put in all this effort if it hurts so much, if it feels like agony to slow down sections of pieces time and time again, if all my patience feels like it has run out but I still have to dig down deep to find more to muster through a practice session? Why do I do this to myself?

Everyone has that one thing that they use to calm themselves down. People use anti-stress balls, and yoga, and meditation, and casual ten hour rainfall videos off of YouTube, but what works best for me is piano. Music. Anything like that. I have my regular songs that I listen to during my Internet browsing sessions, and most of those songs I have sheet music of, and that's what I use to calm me down. It's like a free version of visiting a psychiatrist. That's how my teacher described it in one of our conversations, at least.

There are so many different things you can take from the piano. So many different motivations. Find the one that appeals to you the most, and run with it. Have a motivation in mind, otherwise you'll just be frustrated with yourself two hours in and just quit. Why do you want to learn?

And maybe it'll help you if I explain why I began piano in the first place, and why I stuck with it for ten years. It's not that dramatic of a story, if that's what you're expecting. When I was about six, all three of my older siblings were going to my current piano teacher for instruction on the instrument. As I saw them jamming up tunes at home, I became kind of jealous, that they got to make such wonderful sounds just by tapping their fingers on some keys. So my mom signed me up, and I started taking half hour lessons. It was fun at first, but then it started getting really hard. I wanted to quit. And that was just with the beginner version of 'Ode to Joy.' My mom pushed me to keep going, but her (harsh) enthusiasm sort of stifled my liking of the piano. However, as a six year old, I was completely unable to make the choice to quit, so whether I liked it or not, I had to continue, and continue I did.

I don't know when - it was probably at my discovery of Noteflight.com - but I started liking piano again eventually. So I guess the moral of this story is find pieces that you really want to play, or just really like the sound of the instrument. Pick out a musical piece that you really want to learn, and utilize this blog to help you learn it. I guess. That works for me. Let's see if that works for you, too.