God and Piano

So if you were reading Time flies when you're having fun, you probably didn't understand what God and piano lessons had to do with each other. I think most people who don't know my piano teacher would think it would be weird for me to be have theological discussions with my piano teacher. Or maybe some people do actually do that. It's not everyday that you see a kid with a piano teacher who is also the pastor of a church that the kid goes to. That's what God and piano have to do with each other in my life. God has given me this amazing talent that has taken nine years and more to develop, but I'm extremely thankful for it.

That's right, nine years. I've been playing and taking lessons for that long. And I've been with the same piano teacher for all those years. I can't believe we dealt with each other for that long. Haha, just kidding. He stuck with me much longer than any of my flute teachers did. I didn't really care for playing flute though, so I guess that's my fault. So if you were reading yesterday's blog and sat there wondering what all my little memories were, I'm gonna explain them right here.

Wait should I list them again? I think so. I'm also gonna add a thing or two that I forgot to add in last night.

Thursday nights. Memorizing songs. Learning songs on Youtube. Solo and Ensemble solos. Theological talks. Talks about Wednesday night youth group. Irish Jig (only my piano teacher would get that one). Piano recitals. The "ok's" before playing. I'm going to play this now, but then suddenly realize that I had something else to say. Remembering what I had forgotten to say while in the middle of a song, but not stopping the song. Talking while trying to play a song. Finger Power and it's horribleness. Learning to play by ear. Music that includes an accompaniment to play with the teacher. Asking questions about God. Not really practicing and admitting to not practicing. Practicing during the summer. Practicing on the day of the lesson. Calling my teacher old, but not as old as his wife, hahaha. Playing in church for offertory. Bike rides to piano lessons. Being the student who had stuck with this piano teacher for the longest time besides his own kids. Praying. Dynamics! Notes in the notebook. Mixing up pages during the piano recital. Evil piano teacher. Which song do you wanna play first? Writing out the counting. One more week. That was good; play through it again.

Thursday nights were my night. My half hour lesson that usually went over the half hour because I was talking too much. I think I stuck with Thursday nights for almost nine years if not all nine years. I never had an after school lesson because in high school I couldn't get there right away and most of the time, my parents preferred to have the late lessons. But even after I started driving or riding my bike, I preferred the late lessons, so I could practice beforehand. Hehe.

So I'm not much of a scripture verse memorizer, but I love memorizing things on the piano. It helps not having to carry around a book all the time. I have songs from my very first piano book still memorized. There are a lot of songs I still have partially memorized, but not all the way. I love going through songs I have or thought I had memorized.

It is very true that I have learned a few songs off of Youtube. The one I know the best is How to Save a Life by The Fray. It's a great piano song. And I actually was able to play the song memorized with lyrics at my piano recital last year. People kept coming up and asking if it was lyrics that they were seeing on the paper. Yep, I just used the lyrics.

Ah yes, my Solo and Ensemble days. I only ever played one song on piano for Solo and Ensemble Festival. It was called Solfeggietto by Carl P. E. Bach. I still have it mostly memorized, but it's not as controlled and I can't play it with the music in front of me. The song has been butchered basically. I've played a couple flute solos too I think. Or maybe it was just one solo. I don't remember. My accompanist was my piano teacher. I would play piano for half the lesson and then we would work on my flute solo.

Now when I say I would play piano for half the lesson and work on my flute solo, that playing the piano part didn't always happen because we always started talking about something. We used to talk about theology a lot because I usually had some question about God. So yes, I did ask my piano teacher about God a lot. We'd also talk about Wednesday nights and how it went.

Irish Jig. That brings back some funny, yet oddly weird memories. I still have that song memorized too. I played that song for one of my recitals. I had it memorized at the time of the recital, but I didn't want to forget it out of nervousness, so I had the music in front of me. That year I also played a song called Tarantella. That was also one of the years that we had the recital where we were currently having church at the Chelsea Retirement Community (a.k.a. the CRC). So what's so special about the Irish Jig. Well my piano teacher used to annoy me by dancing to it. I always had to ask him not to dance to it. He said at the recital that year that he would dance to it at the lessons and maybe he would dance to it at the recital. I didn't see him dance to it at the recital.

And of course, the recitals. The cookies afterwards. Is food all I think about? No, it's not. I'm just saying. I always was practically the last one to play. My parents liked that more than being first I suppose. I think I'd rather be one of the first people to play though. Last year when I played How to Save a Life, my piano teacher's mom (I think) came up to me after the recital and said that looking at the music I was playing, she thought I was a serious pianist (I am in some aspects), but when she saw me give a thumbs up to her granddaughter and my friend Hannah, she knew otherwise. I had promised Hannah that I was gonna give her a thumbs up. The reason that I have wanted to play near the beginning is that I'm not afraid of making mistakes. In fact, I laugh at my mistakes. When I mess up, I just laugh. It's not a big deal to me. My piano teacher has a lot of students and I see so many of the young kids get up there petrified that they're gonna make a mistake and when they make that mistake they apologize a ton of times (trust me, I was like that too). Mistakes happen all the time. It's nothing to worry about.

I'm definitely going to play this song now. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. After talking for a while and finally getting to piano, we would occasionally have this "ok" war going back and forth saying ok. It would make me laugh everytime and it was always hard to play when I was laughing about that.

Ok I'm gonna play this now, but then again I just realized I remembered I had something else to say. Do I need to say any more about that one? :)

Usually if I forgot what I was gonna say and began playing a song, I would remember halfway through the song, which would mess me up even if I didn't say anything because I wasn't concentrating on the song.

I like to add commentary when I play sometimes. Oh I messed up here. Oh I can't play this part very well. Oh I should probably stop talking now because it's messing me up. I never stopped talking though. I'm ok at talking while playing, but when it comes to new songs, I should just duct tape my mouth shut. Honestly that's what I should have done.

Grr! Finger Power. I started out with these books. Finger Power was among the first of my books. It just kept getting harder and harder, but what do you expect. Finger exercises. So annoying. I finally just stopped taking the book with me. I remember getting so upset about not being able to play this one exercise that I actually told my piano teacher that I had been crying about it, but then he helped me through it and now I can play that exercise really well.

This past year, I was interested in learning to play some songs by ear. Actually there was one song in particular. That song is my favorite song, In Christ Alone. My favorite version is the Newsboys version. I learned a lot of new chords and a lot of ways to play that song. By learning to play it by ear, I now have the chords and song basically down. It's a good song.

I've had a few books that always include accompaniments for piano teachers to play with their students. I've played Beauty and the Beast and My Heart Will Go On with such accompaniments. One time I played My Heart Will Go On in the talent show at my elementary school with my friend Hannah. She played the accompaniment and I played the melody. But in recent years, I have learned to play the accompaniments and I actually played the accompaniment for my brother when he decided to play that for his one and only piano/guitar recital from my teacher.

So like I said with Thursday nights, I liked having late lessons, so I could practice beforehand because as the years progressed, I didn't really practice a lot. I'm a horrible student. But somehow the playing comes naturally even if I don't practice one song for a while. Well it worked for some songs. Oh I even admitted to not practicing all week. At least I sorta practiced. I did like to practice during the summer and breaks though when I had nothing better to do. I was one of the only people to actually practice during the summer too, but that's ok.

That's right. I did call my piano teacher old. And then you know what he would do? He would say he's old, but not as old as his wife. They're the same age, but she's like more than a few months older than him. Can you tell that I don't feel like counting right now? Her birthday is in January and his is in October, so here, you do the math.

So once in a while, I would actually take my awesome piano skills (is that what I have? haha) and play in church. Playing in church made me just as nervous as piano recitals. It still does make me really nervous. I don't like playing alone very often. I'm not really meant to be a soloist. But I think everyone gets nervous. Now that I can play by ear (sorta sometimes), I actually play piano once in a while in the worship band. That's kinda annoying because they expect me to know everything and I don't like doing intros alone. But my teacher said last time when I finally said yes to playing that I didn't have to play any intros. Apparently the others didn't know about that. Oh well, it all worked out for the best. It's not as scary playing with the worship band. They really don't bite.

I met my pastor piano teacher through Vacation Bible School (VBS) at my Aunt Ann's church nine years ago. My parents were looking to get me into lessons because I had been wanting to learn how to play and so we talked to Pastor Jeff (a.k.a. my pastor piano teacher) about it because somehow they knew he was teaching piano. I don't know how that all worked out, but the same year I started going to church with my Aunt Ann was the same year I started piano lessons. I was really excited when I found out that my parents got me a piano teacher. I was so eager to learn. Not so much now. Haha, just kidding. I love the piano and I especially love learning new music and especially the hard, yet fun to play music. I was one of the piano students that my pastor piano teacher (haha, I love saying that) had for the longest. Ok I was the student who stuck with it the longest that wasn't related to him because his kids took it for a long time too and they're really good at piano. They even taught some lessons to younger kids this past year.

Occasionally I would come to piano lessons thinking or worrying about something and I would ask if we could pray about something. Or I would ask if we could pray for someone who I knew was needing some prayer. We would talk about it for a few minutes and then spend a few minutes in prayer. That's something I had forgotten to add to the list last night, but then I was praying before bed and I remembered that I needed to add that.

CIRCLE DYNAMICS!! This is written in my piano notebook right now. I always would forget to do something at home if it wasn't written in the notebook or if I wasn't reminded to do so. And I don't know when dynamics became such a big thing with my piano teacher, but in recent years they have. And when you least expect him to mention the dynamics, he goes and mentions it. Those dumb dynamics. Always messing me up!

That whole circling of dynamics was for my last recital piece because I kept forgetting the dynamics. Notes in my notebook, yeah, I'll get back to that one in a minute. There were also notes in my books about how I would never play a certain song again or something like that.

Oh funny story. Last year, I played a song at my recital that was four pages long, but I didn't want to use the book because I'm not good at turning pages while playing the piano, so I copied the pages. But somewhere in copying the pages and going to the recital, I mixed up the pages. So I'm playing the song and I realized halfway through that I was looking at the wrong page, so I stopped in the middle of it, said my bad, I mixed up the pages. My teacher said, it's ok just go on. So I went on after fixing my pages. Oh that's the other thing that tipped my piano teacher's mom off to knowing that I wasn't as serious as the songs in the list said I was. I still laugh about that one today.

For a while, I think in middle school, I went through a phase of calling everything evil. My piano teacher was one thing I called evil and he did an evil laugh sometimes. That was kinda scary. I called him evil a lot when he made me replay songs every week. There were some songs, that I wish I could just stop playing the first week.

Which song do you wanna play first? What will it be, Getting to Know You or Dolly's Dreaming and Awakening? I don't really wanna play Getting to Know You. I guess I'll play Dolly's Dreaming and Awakening. No, wait, I'll play the other one. Why does my notebook say "Getting to Know Ewe?" My piano teacher was really weird. It also says "Getting to Know Chelsea." Actually he still is really weird even if I'm not his student anymore. How come I just noticed this now? This is what I mean when I talk about notes in the notebook.

Writing out the counting. When I was younger and first starting out, he always always made me write out the counting. I finally stopped having to do that though when I actually could count on my own. Yet at lessons, I always asked him to count out loud for me. It really helped. This past year, I even decided I needed to write out the counting to one song I was playing because I was having trouble with it. There goes the writing out the counting again. You're never to old to write out the counting especially when you're having trouble with the timing.

One more week. Something I heard very often. I'd play through and it would be ok, but still need work. He would say, play it one more week. And then the next week would come and he would say the same thing about the same song. And then I would tell him that he said that last week. I think he would forget because he's old. :)

And then there were the times when he would say that I played it well and want me to play it again. Ugh. Then I would mess up on it. Oh third time's a charm...not really. Ok, maybe fourth or fifth time.

Ok, so the list keeps getting longer and longer. Can't help it though because I keep remembering things. You know how I said I'd get back to the writing notes in the notebook thing? I'm not over that ewe thing yet by the way. Haha. But what I was gonna say is that I never really looked at my notebook, so I didn't know about the ewe thing. I usually knew the songs I was playing during the week.

So I was looking through some of my books a month or two ago and I found a note that my teacher wrote me on the day of my last lesson. That was back in May. And I found it either in June or July. Wow, I'm kinda oblivious to things sometimes aren't I? So what did the note say?

Dated 5/28/09
Thanks Chelsea for all the years of being a GREAT student!! Jeff

I wouldn't say I was a great student. Haha, I'm just kidding. Well fair enough. I'd like to say thanks too.

Thanks Pastor Jeff for putting up with me in piano for all these years, teaching me memorable things, and helping make piano lessons memorable enough that I would share some of (or most of) these memories with others.
Chelsea