My history with musical instruments is one of discovery.
At around the age of 9/10 I started learning guitar. It was an instrument I learnt to respect later in life, as when I was 9/10 I quickly gave up. I was young and had small hands, so it wasn’t the easiest thing for me to play.
Then, after a year of guitar, I moved onto the drums. I was around 10/11 at the time and had similar experiences. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped. I don’t know why I never kept up the drums, for some reason I just didn’t enjoy it.
And after a year of learning the drums, I stopped.
I believe the primary reason for stopping was because I was now starting Secondary School.
Originally, I had lessons that were part of my Primary School, and obviously, I couldn’t do those anymore in secondary. I could have moved my lessons over to my new school, but I wasn’t enjoying it enough for that.
For the next few years, I would give up trying to learn instruments, and then magically, for some random reason, I decided to try and learn the piano.
I was around 13 at the time, and I had lessons in a little music school once a week.
They started pretty well, I followed a book but never really went for grades as I saw no reason to. It was about 1 year in that I decided to try and do grade 1 (which I aced). And afterwards they thought I could go to grade 3, but that never happened.
The first reason why that didn’t happen, was because I started to lose interest in the piano, and I don’t blame myself for that, yet.
The music school I went to was a bit on the rough side. They were struggling for money and they didn’t hide it (As of 2021, the music school has closed down).
This struggle of money also meant a lack of teachers, and in the span of 1 year, I had multiple different piano teachers. My first teacher wasn’t bad, I liked him, but the ones after were a bit difficult. They didn’t always show up to lessons and they didn’t know how to teach. They seemed to have little interest in what I was playing and doing.
Because of this I hated going, I felt like it was a waste of time and I was never improving.
This experience led me to, after 3 years, quitting.
But, there was still hope, as when I was 14/15, a year into my out-of-school piano lessons, I started to do music BTEC.
If you don’t know, BTEC is a qualification that is similar to a GCSE or an A-level in the UK. And if you don’t know what they are, then they are very important qualifications all people (in the UK? Maybe just England.) should have.
As a part of this music BTEC course, the school would pay for instrument lessons. For me, I continued with the piano, and alongside my out-of-school lessons, also learnt during school time.
The difference in teaching was night and day. My in-school lessons were a million times better. I was learning interesting pieces and found them fun to play. I was seeing results quickly and started to gain an interest in learning.
It was looking up. I had quit my out-of-school lessons and was only on the in-school ones. And it was then that I did my first proper performance.
As a part of the BTEC curriculum, we had to put on a little concert. We had to do everything, from organising the event, producing tickets, selling tickets and all that stuff. It was loads of fun, I was in charge of the tickets. Even if I was stressed about the performance, I had a lot of fun, and even did well when performing. The only mistake I did make was that I had to do the accompaniment for a cellist. And when it was her time to perform, I didn’t have the sheet music with me, so I had to perform from my limited memory of it.
And then, after that when I was 15, came the end of the course. At 15, you finish your GCSEs and are preparing to decide if you want to do A-levels or not.
My school didn’t have A-level music at first. There was never a demand for it so they never did it, until my year. I was lucky enough to be able to do A-level music, which is completely different to BTEC.
A-levels focus more on music theory, music analysis, composition, and all the technical advanced stuff. I won’t go more into detail about it, as this is about my experience with the piano.
A-levels last for two years, and at the end of both years, I had to put on a little performance for an examiner.
The first-year performance involved a solo performance followed by a group performance. I was able to play my pieces as expected but sadly suffered in the exam part of the course.
But I was able to move onto the second year, which is where I shot myself in the foot.
The second, and most important, performance was a difficult one.
I had to perform for 10 minutes, over multiple pieces. Originally, I was going to learn a Bach piece that was similar to the one I played in my first year.
Sadly, I quickly understood how difficult it was to play a piece you hated. No matter how much I tried to like the piece, I couldn’t play it, and I struggled to learn it. This struggle hit me with a painful depression, as no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t learn it. I felt like it was an issue with me, and that I’d never be able to play a piece that complex.
This required me to have a little change. So I sat down with my music teacher and told her that I’d rather learn something by Chopin. At that time, I had taught myself the first part of a Chopin Waltz, and we had then decided to go with that. 3 different Chopin piano pieces.
It was amazing to see how quickly I picked up the Chopin pieces. I had a lot of fun playing them and enjoyed Chopin’s music.
But sadly, this story is full of ups and downs, as I had to perform 3 pieces, but I only had enough time to learn 2 of them. Because I changed pieces so late, I didn’t have enough time to finish learning the final piece.
So on the day of the performance, I played the first two as expected. I was doing well. I had messed up the second one a bit, but I was still dreading the third one.
And once that started, I looked at the sheet music in front of me, something I had spent hours looking at. It was a Chopin Mazurka, and whilst the first half started to flow rather well, it was clear I didn’t know the piece I was playing.
With music, there is a thing called Sight Reading, where you are playing the piece as you are reading it, typically having never seen it before. It’s required in all the grade exams at various levels, and that’s what I was doing for my A-level. It was a waltz-like section, which worked for me because I had experience with the other piece. But it was rather clunky and didn’t flow as well as I hoped.
You could see the disappointment on my face after I played the final chord.
I never did get a good grade. Back when I did A-levels, the grading system was from an E to an A* (A-Star), with A* being the best. Even if E is the lowest, in A-levels and E is a pass, and that’s what I got.
Overall, my A-levels were a mess. My final results were 2 Ds and an E. But I didn’t care, because to me all that mattered was getting into university. I had received a text, the morning of the day I got my results, that had informed me I was accepted into university. So, I wasn’t bothered by my bad grades.
But whilst I was away at university, I was unable to play the piano. I had stopped playing for 3 years and only attempted to get back into it this year (2021). It was clear how much I had to relearn and how much what I struggled with before still existed. But, this time I was teaching myself. Because I knew what I knew I was able to teach myself.
I only played pieces I wanted to learn.
I looked up various tutorials for how to improve in certain aspects like moving both hands and all fingers separately.
And I tried to have fun with it.
But, on one final sad note, that all stopped.
When Covid hit, I thought I’d get back into it. But then came my current situation. Time is money, therefore I cannot be wasting my time doing something that won’t earn me any money.
Or so I say.
I spend my time working, writing and selling books, streaming, and more.
It’s the same thing that happened to my drawing.
But that’s about it. My experiences with a musical instrument.
To this day, I’d love to get back into the piano and play some pieces, but sadly I don’t have the time.
You can take from this post whatever you want, maybe you’re in a situation I was where you don’t enjoy it. Or maybe you just want to try and pick up an instrument. My advice would be go for it. Everyone should try and learn an instrument, and don’t be afraid to question your teacher and speak with them if you aren’t happy with where you are.
Thanks for reading!
As always my links are below, do consider following this blog and sharing it around as it does help me. Sorry, this was a long post, I tried to condense it as much as I could and I know it’s a mess, but I wanted to put something out. If you want to know more about my feelings on music and my experience with Classical music, then I think a good place is in my book A Hobbyist’s Chance. The main character, Lucas, shares my love for classical music, and I tried to replicate my feelings.
Anyway, once again, thanks for reading.
My links: https://linktr.ee/FabledByte
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