When I look at the keys I see the computer game, Tetris. There are serveral falling blocks and each block is a different shape. You can rotate the blocks, you make them fall faster or slow them back down, but every second, you’re trying to make the blocks fit together in harmony, in an unbroken straight line.

With the piano, I imagine my fingers as the blocks, there’s several shapes but with four fingers and a thumb there’s only a limited number of shapes I can make with them. Each one of those shapes is a chord, and if I can only move them around the piano, sometimes faster, sometime slower, I can make them all fit together in harmony.

Which sounds simple in practice, like Tetris. But harder and harder in practice as one mistake means it’s game over.

There are three pedals at the bottom of our piano. I know that one of them muffles the sound of the piano. We have this on at all times as we live in a semi-detached home, albeit one with thick walls, and we don’t want to bug our neighbour with our practice.

Some people would love to live next to piano wizard, Lang Lang. However, we are Clang Clang, and no one wants to live next door to that.

But I have no idea what the other two pedals do. One seems to make the piano sound echo-ey. I call it the Ghost Pedal as it makes the piano sound haunter.

The other one does…. nothing. I press it. Nothing. It doesn’t muffle. It’s doesn’t try and scare me. Nothing.

I could google the answer but it seems more fun to try and work it out myself, like it’s a rite of passage for all piano players. Until you work it out, you can’t call yourself a musician. And looking up the answer would just be cheating.

I’ve been watching a a lot of videos about learning to play the piano and this one, ahem, struck a chord.

As I’m following the Simply Piano app, I’ve not thought a lot about timing. 

1… 2… 3… 4

1……. 2…… 3

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Part of not thinking about timing is that I’m both not fast and too fast. I’m not fast, as I try and play pieces and can’t change between chords as fast as shown on the screen. I’m also too fast as when I practice on my own, I try and play as fast as I can rather than going slower and learning better technique.

I need to slow down to speed up.

Our piano is in the hall beside the living room. If I’m playing, I keep the living room door open so I can keep an eye on little three year old Wee TwinBikeRun when she watches her cartoons. However, in the last few days, every time I sit down to play, about five minutes after starting, she comes out of the living room, stares at me and then holds her hand our to take my hand. She then pulls me into the living room.

I may not be as melodic as I thought. Even a 3 year old is a critic!

Imagine singing a song but only learning every second word.

“Take… Down… The… Paradise… Where…. Grass…Green….. The…. Are Pretty”

Now try and play it on the piano with the missing music too.

That’s Simply Piano.

Which sounds like a complaint, and it is, but I can see it’s also necessary. The app teaches the piano by playing along with songs. However the songs are complex so it simplifies the songs so you only play along with parts of it. It’s just enough to know the song but, because it’s simplified, I can filling in the missing notes in my head and think I’m missing out on playing some keys.

On the other hand, as I move through the lessons, you come back to the same songs and gradually learn how to play more complex versions of it, which helps show how you’re improving.

But it is frustrating as I want to be better than the programme will let me. And that’s probably a good thing as it’s forcing me to learn the basic techniques and to practice those before doing anything more complicated.