I’ve taken piano lessons for six or seven years now, and I’ve noticed that my improvement isn’t a steady upward line on a bar graph. Rather it’s similar to the stock market: up one day, down the next, but over the long haul it remains up.
When I started I didn’t realize piano was such a challenging instrument. I thought it would be like typing, at which I am a whiz. But, no, it’s more complicated. In typing, you press one, two at the most, keys at once. In piano, you can press ten keys at once and add your feet to the pedals.
Then there’s the issue of rhythm, that ability to assign a length of time to a particular note and then parse the other notes around it so they are more than, equal to, or less than the note involved. Typing doesn’t really consider this. A good typist strikes all keys with the same rhythm of time, which never really has to change.
I plod on with my piano lessons. And what I’m experiencing right now is that much of the work of the previous few months has come together in an “Ahaa!” moment. I love it when this happens, because I make great strides. I begin to read music after struggling with identifying notes. I get the sense of rhythm. I look forward to sitting down at the piano.
I know that I’ll tackle more difficult pieces and the struggle will continue. The “Ahaa” moment will be replaced with more work. But for now, I’m reveling in the current plateau I’ve reached.
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