“C D E. E D C. C D E F. F E D C,” my eight year old voice sang as I practiced playing the piano with my right hand. My fingers were tense and scared. They squirmed like skinny little snakes, trying to listen to their snake charmer. In this case, the snake charmer was my mind, but just like the snakes, my mind was young and unprepared. The keys seemed wrong and foreign. The glossiness of the keys made my sweaty fingers slip. I winced at the sound of the wrong note. I remember looking up at my piano teacher, who smelled strongly of rotten apples. It was my first piano lesson, and I had butterflies in my stomach. They fluttered around trying to be free, trying to escape. “Okay, stop.” She smiled kindly down at me, but no matter how kind she spoke, I felt like I had failed her. It was my first lesson and I sucked. “I am not going to assign you the first song; I want you to work on moving your fingers. Press your thumbs down on a flat surface and run the rest of the fingers down one at a time.” I did what she asked. I worked hard, I practiced. I sat on the piano bench where my feet didn’t touch the floor and I exercised my fingers. I wanted to be good so I worked hard. …show more content…
It festered within me, making me dread that wooden bench I sat upon. I hated practicing every day for thirty minutes; I hated not being as good as Cooper. I begged my mom for me to quit, I begged her to stop forcing me to play. I was miserable and wasn’t good enough. It was a three year long war between me and my mom. Neither of us refused to give in, I didn’t practice the piano, nor she didn’t let me quit. I hated slow songs; I thought they were a waste of time and energy. If I did play, I played fast, perhaps my love for playing fast came with the fact that I didn’t want to be playing at
Akins, M. L. 1982 An analysis and Evaluation of selected methods for the beginning Private Piano student. PhD, Peabody College for Teachers, Vanderbilt University, USA.
Betty had a good start to her career. She preformed at country fairs and rodeos. Betty learned that her talent isn’t enough to make her successful, and there was always more work to be done. Betty’s natural talent made it easier for her to learn ballet from her instructor. She hadn’t learned the basics right and she became very frustrated because she had to go back to the beginning and learn those basics.
August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, tells a story of a family haunted by the pain of their past and their struggle to find peace to move forward. The story begins with character Boy Willie coming up from the south visiting his sister Bernice. Boy Willie introduces the idea of selling the family’s heirloom, a piano, to raise enough money to buy the land on which his ancestors were enslaved. However, both Boy Willie and his sister Berniece own half a half of the piano and she refuses to let Boy Willie sell it. Through the use of symbolism, Wilson uses his characters, the piano and the family’s situation to provide his intended audience with the lesson of exorcising our past in order to move forward in our lives. Our past will always be a part of our lives, but it does not limit or determine where we can go, what we can do, or who we can become.
As the story unfolds, Tan suggests that the piano symbolizes different things. For Ni Kan, it is the unwanted pressure her mother inflicts upon. She argues, “Why don’t you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano” (751). However, her mother sees it as a way for her daughter to become the best. Ultimately, the young girl decides to rebel against her mother’s wishes. During her piano lessons with Mr. Chong, her piano teacher, she learns easy ways to get out of practicing. Ni Kan discovers “that Old Chong’s eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes [she] was playing” (751). As a result, Ni Kan performs miserably in a talent show where her parents and friends from the Joy Luck Club attend. Feeling the disapproval and shame from her mother, she decides to stop practicing the piano.
I was blind to the fact that all the pieces I worked on improved my talent and only saw them as another task. Then, during my tenth and final year of lessons, my perspective began to change; the results of my
She decides to switch her focus on her daughter becoming a prodigy at playing the piano. The mother quickly found put together a schedule of piano practices that Jing-Mei would partake in with Mr. Chong, a neighbor in their apartment building. “My mother traded housecleaning serves for weekly lessons and a piano for to practice on every day, two hours a day, from four to six (Tan 323). When her mother told her what she would do from then on, Jing-Mei was aggravated because she did not want to try to live up to her mother’s expectations anymore. “Why don't you like me the way I am? I’m not a genius! I can’t play the piano. And even if I could, I wouldn't go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!” (Tan 323). At that moment is when she could not take having to live up to her mother’s expectations any longer. She quickly detected that because Mr. Chong was so old that “his eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I was playing” (Tan 323). She learned that she could make as many mistakes as she wanted and Mr. Chong would not even
He pushed me to let my voice be heard, not just to receive the A that I desired, but because he believed that I had musical talent. It was from his encouragement that I received attention from other peers and my teachers. Finally, I had been noticed for doing something remarkable- other than certificates that I had previously been awarded for academics. Now, when I spoke- or sang, rather,- people began to listen. I had haphazardly discovered a talent of mine that may have gone unnoticed if I allowed myself to switch classes to one of a higher academic rigour to assuage the fears that came with being a perfectionist.
As soon as I shut the door all the noise outside the room had disappeared. The room was silent. I could feel my nerves coming, and I continuously wiped the sweat forming on my hands. My clarinet slipping from my grip from all the nerves. (Imagery) She asked me to play two scales, which I did perfectly fine on. Then I went to the required pieces and I started playing and then I messed up onenote and I felt crushed. I heard myself play the wrong note and immediately knew I was going to be placed in a bad chair. It threw me off my concentration and my nerves were getting the best of me. My hands were shaking like crazy. She kept telling me to just breathe (Motif) to calm down. I finished through those, and then went to the difficult piece that made me the most nervous. She could pick any part in the music and ask me to play it, I had to be prepared for any section she ask. To my surprise, she said I could choose a part I felt confident about. I began to play a part my lesson teacher and I worked on, but right when I started I already knew I messed the rhythm up and my counting was all off from nerves. I could not read her face to her reaction to what I was playing, she just kept writing things
Beethoven’s moonlight sonata was gradually becoming audible from a secret speaker of solitude. Then everything seemingly flowed to the slow yet elegant piece as if it were not meant to be in harmony but destined. Waking to classical piano is a subtle and soothing pleasure that radiated throughout his whole body – that moment shattered as he passed the hall corner of his normal two story home…The burgundy coffee mug slipped from his mother’s fingertips falling at a constant rate in unison with every keystroke of the graceful composition. C-Sharp never sounded so shrill until the true final chord of this decelerated memory ended with the shattering of not only the cup but also a mother’s hopes for her eldest son and possibly her youngest as well. She had just finished reading the front page article headlined atop the Chicago Tribune titled “First Drug Forever”…And this begins how to world changed dramatically through the viewpoint of an average high school senior, who is your typical indecisive teenager, meet Kevin James.
Like anything that has to do with music, it will take time for the student’s embouchure to develop and happen without outside assistance. A teacher should always be on the lookout for errors that th...
Ever since I was a small child, I have loved music. The strong, steady beats, the
Music is one of the most fantastical forms of entertainment. Its history stretches all the way from the primitive polyrhythmic drums in Africa to our modern day pop music we listen to on our phones. It has the ability to amaze us, to capture our attention and leave us in awe. It soothes the hearts of billions, and it is so deeply rooted in my life that it has touched my heart as well. Everyday I walk to the beat of the song stuck in my head and hum along to the melody. For me, to listen to music be lifted into the air by the hands of your imagination and float around for a while. You forget about your worries, your troubles and find peace within the sound. Every chapter in my life is attached with a song. Every time I listen to a certain song, thoughts of my past come flooding back
Some of these things include: having a playdate, playing sports, bringing home anything less than an A, and not practicing any instrument other than violin or piano. In her text she shares a story of when her seven-year-old daughter is struggling with a piano piece and attempts to stop practicing and leave the piano. Chua responds with forcing her back to the piano, threatening to burn her stuffed animals, and threatening to donate her daughter 's much loved doll house to the Salvation Army. She states that her older daughter had mastered the same piece at the same age, so the younger daughter should be able to do so also. However, through the fighting and tears, her younger daughter eventually prevails and finally masters the
A month later a boy of fifteen is on stage. He goes over the first few lines of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in his head, before he places his grafted hands on the keys. They land and start to play. But it's the wrong music. His fingers move with such an aptitude and speed that the boy closes his eyes and lets them go on. At first he doesn't notice the different tune. This song had been in his hands since he got them. But up until that very moment he had not been capable of naming what his hands had been playing, Prokofiev's Eighth Sonata.
I look up at the tall, pretty tree. I toddle my way past the kitchen sink, past the table, and all the way across the room to the big, black piano. The piano was so pretty and shiny. One day, I told myself, when I was bigger, I will learn how to play music on the big piano. I climb up on top of the piano bench, on top of the keys, and onto the very top of the piano, and sit down so that my legs were swinging ...