Piano Days

Of Notes and Black Keys and Me and Thee (Day 78)

Little Bean’s very first music lesson with her teacher Cassandra Pepler. Ms. Pepler runs Grand 88 Music Studios and is also my daughter’s music and choir teacher at school so they already have a shared history.

Little Bean is teaching me how to read music. She’s had exactly one music lesson so teaching me isn’t exactly what we’re doing. Maybe showing me?

The very short piece is called “Night Song” and it uses the black keys as a way to introduce her to the piano - it’s basically a scale that can be played on any set of the black keys.

She runs through it for me, then I settle in next to her and follow her lead. She looks at the music and plays and I look at her fingers and copy what she’s playing. What we produce sounds, well, awful actually, but we’re a long ways away from Chopin right now. Heck, we’re not even at Chopsticks yet.

But none of that really matters. We’re less than a week into this new thing, and like everything else with Little Bean, the best strategy has always seemed to be to facilitate not force. So, will music be a career, a hobby or a one-time fad? Don’t know.

There’s two things happening, though, that do mean something. First, she’s learning how to play music. That in and of itself is important. Like learning another language. Life is music. Even if all we ever do is go to rock and roll shows, on some level, this will give her another tool in her life toolkit. A different sense of appreciation. Or respect. Something will come of it, I’m certain.

The other thing is all on me. I’m sitting in our basement playing a cheap piano with my daughter. Not fooling around. Not tinkering. But learning. Together. How remarkable.

“What’s this row,” I ask her, pointing to the sheet music.

“That’s your left hand,” she says. “Over there is your right hand.”

Of course! It’s a piano. There’s going to be notes for the left and notes for the right. Why didn’t I know that?

“Ah, got it,” I say. “Thank you for teaching me that.”

She smiles and plinks a note and I follow her hands and plink my own and the basement fills with terrible, beautiful music. We play, we play together.