Ah, yes. The mandatory piano lessons in fifth grade.

Scales were okay, shifting into automatic and daydreaming while fingers race.

Reading music was not okay, mostly because I was bad at it, far preferring the play- by- ear- with- visual- aids method. Ask the teacher to play the song each lesson, watch her hands, learn where she was going and how it should sound. Then the written music would jog the mental picture and the sounds, and you fake it. Next week, she'd correct the fakes, and then you're on to the next section.

I didn't exactly master the classics.

However, I did learn my way around the keys fairly well, and when my eldest sister taught me how to use guitar chord patterns on the keyboard, I was off and running, playing guitar- on- the- piano. (That's still basically what happens on Sunday mornings.)

There was a lovely parlor grand in the winter house and a massive upright grand in the summer house, both heirlooms. (How do you spell "Spoiled Rotten"???) Both pianos sang to me even when I was little, curled up against the leg of the piano, arms around my knees, hoping that my eldest sister was too busy playing to notice me cry. Usually she was. (Sometimes she wasn't, but she never made fun, not once.)

There came a point when guitar chords on the piano were all well and good, but I wanted new songs-- "Sing a new song unto the Lord." Improvise. Big fear barrier. I made up my mind that it was going to sound awful when I started, and maybe for months afterward, but I wouldn't give up. Eventually, music happened. It sure didn't happen at first. It took a lot of boring, uninspired attempts plus prayer. "Please, God, make some music Happen", or some such prayer like that.

It was getting better when my parents would silently come into the living room, each with a book or a magazine, and sit down, and read while I played.

For a while, improvisation flowed easily. I never wrote any of it down. It was an offering, and as such it was an end in itself. Much time has passed since then, and I don't play like that very often anymore, but I think that the music is still there somewhere, almost like a latent kernel waiting for God's rain. Time will tell.

I do know that the instrument has a lot to do with it. Keyboards are okay, but they don't have the same personality. Pianos, especially those that are old friends, sing to me, much less than I "make them sing." People talk about "coaxing music" out of an instrument, but those pianos bring music out of me, not the other way around. Instruments can become almost like a part of your soul; those pianos did. I miss them.

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