Learning a new instrument

I have played guitar for 20 years and am the primary guitar instructor at Footprints Music and Learning. I started taking piano lessons. Playing piano is a first for me even though I sold acoustic and digital pianos for years.

I started taking lessons from one of my teachers, Jean Poynter, at Footprints Music a few weeks ago and it is really fantastic. It is difficult but also easier than I thought. Let me explain - I have found that actually playing the piano not as scary as I thought it was. Those black keys made me nervous! I'm not kidding. But I have tranferred over the knowledge I have from exploring guitar to the piano and it's not that scary! Also, I have used the basic tenets that I teach my students. First, take things slowly (which is actually sometimes challenging) and second, make it musical. I guess there's the third, "Have fun" but it's fun in a way I didn't realize. The resonance of the actual piano is my favourite part. I play the simplest of pieces and they sound fantastic. Who knew?

Speed Kills

One of the challenges almost all my students face is playing slowly. Everyone wants to play fast! It's exciting and impressive. Sometimes the desire to play fast over shodows the desire to play well. Most listeners don't really care how fast you play but they do care how good it sounds. I took up piano because it's something I've always wanted to learn but also to remember what it was like to be a student. To feel that frustration resulting from the "untainable" coordination of my fingers. I enjoy playing the piano slowly because I can hear the music in it. When I speed up I lose the music, notes get choppy and it doesn't sound like the song should. It did take 20 years of playing guitar to realize that playing slowly can be more challenging than playing fast but the pay-off is better music.