Column: Learning the Keys to Lockdown

When I was 6 years old, I had violin lessons, most of which I spent daydreaming about Winnie the Pooh. Also, despite my ‘big-boned’ stature as a child, violins are surprisingly hefty so really it’s no surprise that I could barely hold the thing up…

Flash forward a few years, and I’m sitting at my piano teacher’s house. She’s absolutely lovely, so I still feel terrible about dozing off in the middle of a lesson. Maybe it was because I was learning ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, maybe it was because I just wasn’t made to play an instrument.

I had a small resurgence of interest in my Twilight-obsessed teens when I tried to learn ‘Bella’s Lullaby’ from the soundtrack by ear because I can’t read music. I managed the first 8 notes, but even my Robert Pattinson-fuelled motivation couldn’t help me.

Quarantine has brought with it the opportunity for rest and self-reflection. The latter has shown me that my biggest flaw is feeling like I need to know a little something about absolutely everything. So, I’ve decided to try to learn a little something about playing the piano again.

If you also want to try learning the piano from scratch and don’t know where to start, labelling the piano keys with tiny post-it notes is really useful for learning where the notes are. Then you can just Google the songs with notes in letter format and start that way, but don’t quote me on this method.

The first song I tried to play was ‘Für Elise’ because it’s supposed to be relatively easy and is a classic. I’m no Beethoven but playing even a small bit of this song was really heart-warming. It’s great to achieve small goals, and after learning this I had high hopes.

These were shortly flattened when I realised that I hadn’t learned the chords for the left hand. I swiftly moved on to learning ‘Happy Birthday’. I thought it would be a nice birthday gift for my boyfriend’s dad or would at least provide some entertainment when people need to wash their hands.

I was not wrong: my birthday gift resulted in a good fifteen minutes of laughter. Alas, it was mostly at me, or at my boyfriend being so exasperated that I could get all the way to the end of the song and consistently mess up the last note, that he decided to learn it himself just to give everyone closure.

Despite my disastrous performance I will carry on trying to learn piano. The satisfaction it gives me knowing I’ve learned something new, however small, means more than the fact that it makes any bystanders want to cut their ears off. I will be a master at Happy Birthday and available for party hire by the end of this lockdown. Stay safe, stay indoors, and make the most of the time to try something new!

By Lucy Booth

Feature image credit: Unsplash

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *