Can You Play Me A Memory, I'm Not Really Sure How It Goes But It's Sad And It's Sweet

I had a keyboard when I was little. I even tried to take lessons for a while, but paying $12/half hour when you're 12 isn't fun (yes I paid for them myself). Plus at the lessons, they had a full keyboard whereas mine at home was a smaller scale. Which meant I did the practice I was told to at home throughout the week, then was admonished for not practicing when my fingers didn't naturally reach properly on the bigger keyboard. The lessons were short-lived.

But I always played at home. Never very well, and typically not with two hands. I had simple music and usually played Christmas songs. Or I discovered the melody to a favourite song by trial and error. I never really excelled at reading music, I was pretty slow at it, but was quick to memorize what I played. Even in band (Air Cadets) where I played trumpet, then baritone, then glock, then baritone again, I played more by memory than sight-reading.

I still longed to really play the piano, so Nick bought me a beautiful keyboard a couple of Christmases ago. I'm sad to say it took me this long to get playing on it (not that I'm a procrastinator), but I'm glad that I am. I bought a book (when he got my the keyboard) that actually taught musical theory, that I've been using all week.

I've learned about chromatic and diatonic tones, and was thrust into both treble and bass clef right away (no learning to use the right hand first, then adding the left, as I would have hoped). Some days I haven't been really excited to force myself to sit at the keyboard for 30 minutes, but I do think it's created improvement. While I still don't sight read really fast, I am making myself take the time and do each exercise in the book carefully and thoroughly so that I can learn.

I have some songs to learn for another goal, so I better keep at it!