When I was a child I don’t remember ever being asked if I wanted to learn to play an instrument. At school I can remember the music room and the pictures of the composers on the wall. I was into sport and loved playing tennis so I guess that is what I focused my time on. I always remember though that I have had the urge to learn the piano. I can’t remember where this came from as no one in my family play a piano and I have no experience of playing one. I think the problem with a piano is that it is big and not very portable. When I say to my family I have always wanted to learn how to play the piano they always say ‘I know you have always wanted to’. I guess the old me didn’t have the urge to do everything that I want to do, but now I do. I was talking to a friend about this last year and she said to me ‘you don’t need a piano, get a keyboard’. I have never thought to do this before. I guess this is the reason why you should talk to people about what you want to do. So I had a think about it and did some research. I talked to my Mum about it and she said that she knows I always wanted to learn the piano which gave me the impetus to buy a keyboard. So now after decades of thinking about learning to play I am in the midst of being able to play the keyboard. For years I thought that I needed to have a piano, I even had a place in my house where I planned to put one. I know a keyboard is not the same as a piano, it is in fact better as it doesn’t take up much space. So the first thing was to buy the keyboard, that is the easy part, the hard bit to learn how to play it. I probably learn’t about music notes when I was in school but that has all gone now. Because of how the world is now it is hard to get help to learn all the things that I need to learn. I have also found that when you want to do new things, it is expensive so I have decided to try to teach myself which makes it really slow. I began by buying some kids books which teach you the basics but even this was hard. I have found it hard to learn thing from scratch now as it takes so long to do and I just lose the motivation after a while. That is what happened and I put the keyboard under my bed and didn’t think about it for a while. Even though the keyboard is easy move around having to move it each time I want to play it and having to clear my desk everytime was just a faff. Of course I thought about it all the time and felt a bit useless as it was my dream and I gave up too easy. I was talking about my failure to a woman I work with and she said she played the piano and keyboard and had a keyboard stand that she was not using and I could borrow it. That pushed me off again. I have also found a wonderful app that helps you learn to play, like they say there is an app for everything. The problem is that it is very difficult and this can put me off doing it. It is good that I am learning at my own pace so if it takes me longer to do things it is not a problem. I have problems with my short term memory so learning something new takes longer. I have found that if I do something twice it is easier to remember. If I read something I usually have to read it a couple of times and then it goes in. Is is all about information processing. I am now on the second go of the first part of my online keyboard course and have got back to the part where it got difficult. It is still hard but only I can hear what I am doing so it doesn’t matter. I think another reason for taking so long to learn to play was not being able to read music notes. After about six months I think I finally know the first five notes so maybe by the end of the year I will be able to tackle some chords. I am enjoying playing, there is no pressure. If there is something you have been waiting to do all you life just do it!
A Recovering Brain 