Reflection of How I Tickle the Ivories
I was going over some of my earlier posts in 2008 when I first began writing for the blog. I was reading how I was so timid and scared when I would play on the piano with people listening to me.
Fast forward 8 years, and it was remarkable the difference how I play. I am so grateful for the aptitude of how I can nearly sight read any song that I had near heard or played before. Granted there is a level of reading where I cannot completely read the song, such as Chopin’s Fantasy but the majority of classical pieces I am able to play at a level where my family is able to recognize the piece.
I am also at a level where I can confidently ask you a letter, and perhaps what type of emotion you want, and I can great a song out of thin air that had never excited before. I have been in the process of recording some of the songs on my iPhone just for memory as I know I will never be able to play them again as I will forget them entirely.
It is from the education of musical theory that I had taken at MIT in addition to the years of playing songs to a point where you can feel the soul or intention of how the composer would play the song. There is something magical being able to play a song to intimately understand how someone thinks. I honestly understand Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelson, and Bach much more deeply from playing a set of their songs. For example, I feel the struggle and sorrow of Chopin how he painful plays even though we were never alive together. It is that pain that I can really resonate with from my own struggles from my injury.
It is at this point, that I can now understand and appreciate what my piano instructor had told me in March 2008. Where I can resonate with a piece and understand it to a deeper level.
Earlier these weeks I was playing Chopin’s Prelude in E minor. I gotten to a level where I can read it to a point where I can embellish parts of it to how Chopin would have wanted it to be played. Even though this song is so slowly played and how simple it is, there is little to embellish it. It is so small subtle details that I love to bring forth.
Still to this day, music is one of the few refuges that I find solace to sit and let my mind wonder and feel the music through my entire being.
Forgive me for not writing more. Some days I feel that I have nothing to contribute. But re-reading my old blog posts gave me courage to write more of the moments that pass through my thoughts.