Today it’s about a few days more than a year I started learning piano, attending piano class to be precise (to be more precise I started my classes on 21st of September 2022). Henceforth, I wanted to reflect on time I put into this journey.

I remember at first I had been struggling, just like anything else with piano I had a rough start. I confirmed a theory of mine that I am really bad at learning new stuff at start, but once I get over the starting path I can gain some speed quickly and dive deeper into the subject I am trying to master. This was the case for when I started learning English when I was 13. While it may seem knowing the pattern won’t change the outcome, it helps me to know myself better and not lose motivation whenever I start learning something newer.

Now I want to shed some light onto more behavioral contributions of the journey.

Play it slowly

On early days, well months, actually up until last few months, my piano teacher was been telling me this phrase whenever we were practicing some new piece - “play it slowly”, “don’t try to make it sound like a music”. Of course me being me, I didn’t listened to him until I really understand the reason.

Well, if you are expecting me to write some sort of life changing quote or something similar, I am sorry but the reason is rather rationale and related to how our brain works. Human brain needs time to process complex things. When you don’t give it enough time it would still try to process but instead of detailed processing it will just remember rough estimates and patterns. For example, when learning a piece, if you play it faster the brain won’t have enough time to process each single note, but will have a general sense of a music and feeling it outputs. So, the next time you try it will try to replicate the same sense, but because you don’t have detailed knowledge baked into your brain it will bash random notes until it sounds similar to what previously been heard.

It takes time

I am glad I was already aware of this when I first started, otherwise I would have given up within just a few days. No matter how hard you try, or how gifted you may seem to be. Mastery comes with time, patience and lots of practice. A year ago I couldn’t even properly hold my hands to play piano, but nowadays I still don’t hold it properly, but it’s better than what it used to be. And on top of that, I can play pieces like “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven, and “Nocturne” in C# minor by Chopin. Am I satisfied? Not really, I still miss a lot of notes, or can’t control my tempo, put the necessary emotions when playing. However, I am sure with time and practice I can get there one day.

It’s good to just wonder around

On the last paragraph, I said ‘I can get there one day’. But the truth is, there’s no ’there’ to be precise. I didn’t had any precise goals when I first started learning piano, nor do I have now. I just wanted to enjoy the learning process and keep myself engaged while doing so. I had quite much of fun along the way, meet some nice guys and gals while doing so, and as a side product I can play a few pieces on piano. I never rushed myself to get anything faster, there wasn’t any deadlines, I didn’t had to compete against someone. All I had to do was just practice over and over and over again, then put some emotion into it. Voila; you got yourself a piece to play. I enjoy the nights where I turn all the lights off and start playing for myself and hoping that neighbors won’t get mad at me.

Although I am favor of “journey” like view of the life, I am not saying this is “the way” to think of it. It’s hard to make a sense out of things around us, sometimes goals are necessary to get some s*it done. However, I think sometimes it’s calming to just stop sprinting and take a look around, just enjoying the process as is rather than waiting for the goals you had planned. At least that’s how I look into life right now, most probably over time my views will change. In that case this post should be a note from the past Misir to future one reading this to sometimes take a break and enjoy the life as is. It helps especially when you don’t really know what you expect from life.

Easy pieces don’t feel as good

It really pays of when you put time and effort into cooking something delicious. In the same sense learning a bit harder pieces do really feel nicer when you really get a hand of it. One day you are thinking “how the hell am I supposed to get this done”, then some time passes and suddenly you have accomplished what something used to feel burdensome. And boy does it really feel good to play a piece after spending months on it. You finally get to enjoy the dish you’ve been cooking. I think it’s not just about the complexity or details. For sure they are contributing factors, but what really adds is the effort you’ve put in.

That’s all for me to reflect for now. I might come back and update this post if I remember some other ideas from my experience. Going forward my plan is to continue investing time into getting even better at piano, and learning more into theory than just practice, eventually trying composing new pieces for myself. However, as said above, I don’t have any rush or timeline to catch up. I will just go along with the flow and expand my knowledge when it’s suitable. For now my friend, thanks for reading along. See you on the next adventures!