Pianoforte

Sorry, I have missed another day’s posting. I wrote some of this post yesterday, but didn’t finish it because Dad wanted to use the computer and I felt that I had hogged it for too long already.

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Today, in between visiting friends with a small baby and visiting my grandparents, I have been playing the piano. I haven’t done this properly for ages. I did attempt to play some carols at Christmas, but found that I was even worse at it than I thought I would be so didn’t play for long.  However, today I decided to take the plunge and try out some of the pieces I used to play, to see whether or not I would be able to remember them.

I tried playing the piano the other day, but when I sat down at it and tried to play it felt like learning a foreign language. I couldn’t make my fingers do what they were supposed to do, the connection between brain, music, hands and keys was not there. Today (now yesterday) however, it came back to me a bit. It probably helped that I was attempting to play music that I must have practised dozens of times before, pieces I had  to play for my exams or for my piano teacher. I remembered the tunes better than I remembered the technicalities of how to play them, but the lines and phrases seemed to come forward from the recesses of my mind more easily than I expected them to.

I wish now as I have before that I had been more studious and focussed on my piano-playing when I had the chance and, more to the point, a piano to play on! Yesterday I really enjoyed playing, something that I don’t remember doing very often when I was younger. I wanted to get the phrases right, to practise those twiddly bits over and over again until I could play it correctly; things which I would only have done under duress or the thought of an impending exam in my younger years. Alas for the follies of youth! I will have to go home and play my keyboard. It’s just not quite the same as the real thing.