Piano Lessons

Since I was a little kid, I had wanted to learn how to play the piano. It drove me nuts when we went to someone else's house and they had a piano. I wasn't permitted to touch it because I didn't know how to play. (Years later, I would understand the logic of that statement because it's very easy to knock pianos out of tune.)

I had asked my parents several times over the years to learn how to play. The answer was always "no." It actually had to do with us being poor until we owned apartments and collected rent from them. So, imagine my surprise when Mom asked me if I really wanted to learn piano. My favorite rock star at the time was Elton John. I said, "Yes!"

My parents bought an upright piano that they kept in their bedroom. My teacher was a preacher's wife who gave lessons to a lot of other older students. The girl whose weekly appointment was scheduled before mine was three years older than me and she was starting at the same level.

I was actually glad that I didn't learn how to play piano until I was 13. At that point, I had a greater understanding of music and how the notes corelated to the keys on the piano. I got to start out learning to play chords. The funny thing is that I never learned how to play "Chopsticks" like everyone else did.

A lot of the kids that I knew when I was younger who took piano lessons actually stopped by the time they reached the age of 13. Many didn't see the point since they had decided not to take part in the school music programs. For others, music was stuff only sissies did and it wasn't cool.

Mom told me I had to practice an hour every day. This wasn't a problem at first, but after a few weeks, I got tired of having to play kids' songs, even though I was playing chords. I also tried figuring out to compose. The only problem was that I had only learned three chords up to that point. (I understood the cliche that rock musicians only know how to play three chords. While it's technically true, you figure out that the three chord structure makes for a very familiar sound. All those minor, suspended and 7 chords just make it sound more interesting.)

Another issue is that I would make a lot of mistakes. It didn't matter how much I practiced, I could almost never get through a single song without making at least one mistake. It was very discouraging. Mom would accused me of not practicing enough because there were a lot of kids out there who played the piano and never made mistakes. Like my handwriting, my fingers could not move as quickly as my brain. This is what caused the mistakes. I would also have the same issue when I was learning how to type in the ninth grade.

The only real problem I had with learning the piano that that Mom and Dad decided to allow Loyd to learn how to play guitar at the exact same time. He was ten years old. I thought this was very unfair because I wasn't offered that opportunity when I was that age. And it wasn't like that cost anything at first. My aunt Cind had a guitar when she was younger and my parents borrowed that for Loyd to learn on. Why couldn't they have done that for me?

However, I doubt my parents would have let me take lessons to learn both instruments. In the end, I lucked out with the piano because when I got electronic keyboards later in the future, I didn't have to tune them.

But I still think they should have made Loyd wait until he was 13 before he got guitar lessons.