Struggles of an Amateur Pianist

March 2006

God in His wisdom has planned that we don't have many musicians in our church. We do have a very good organist who serves faithfully. When he can't be there, our pastor usually can get a substitute organist, a lady from Clarksville who plays beautifully. But if this lady can't come, Pastor calls me and asks if I will play the piano.

I am not a good pianist by any stretch of the imagination. I had piano lessons when I was growing up, but my talent was never more than mediocre. I have no inborn gift for reading music. It has always been hard labor for me. Similarly, I am not particularly good at reading time -- dotted notes, rests, and such. I struggle terribly with unfamiliar music! Sometimes I even photocopy music and use white-out to remove notes that confuse me.

When I have to play for a church service, I often have trouble with one or two of the hymns. I practice dilligently, but when it's time to play them in public, sometimes I do OK and sometimes I make mistakes. But whatever notes I hit, right or wrong, I play on, the congregation sings on, and soon enough we come to the end. 

Over time, I've had a couple of insights about playing for church. I have learned that several other ladies in our church play the piano a little. I would be happy to let any of them play in my stead, but no one else has ever volunteered. That must mean that they would rather endure my efforts than try it themselves.

More importantly, I realized a while back that nervousness is a self-centered emotion. The piano is part of the music, and the music is part of all the worship that is offered to God during the church service. Obsessing about my fears and imperfections is wrong; I should play the best I can, and God will bless the music. I try to keep that in mind.

Tonight I have to play for the Lenten service. Pastor called me yesterday afternoon and since then, I've been practicing. The hymns are "Jesus, Thy Boundless Love To Me" with the Vater Unser melody, "O Dearest Jesus", "There is a Green Hill Far Away", and "Go My Children With My Blessing".

In our hymnal, the first two hymns are one difficult minor chord after another, but I found easier arrangements in another hymnal. If I concentrate on reading the notes, I should do all right on them. The other two are easy enough. A short prelude, the four hymns, the offertory, and a short postlude, and I'll be done. Yes, I feel a little nervous, but I'll be OK.

Grocery Store Music

February 2006

When I was a teenager, Mama and I were walking around a grocery store one day. A big band song was playing, and I made a derogatory remark about "grocery store music". Mama looked at me and laughed and said, "Oh, is that what it is?!" (That sort of music was popular when Mama graduated high school in 1940.) 

Now I'm in my mid-50's, and I notice that many of the stores are playing my music. I hear the Beatles all the time, the Beach Boys too, and many others. The other day when I was in the fabric store, Bob Dylan was on the muzak. (He never could carry a tune, bless his heart.) "That's Bob Dylan,"I said to the lady who was cutting my fabric. "Huh? Oh, really?" she said. I think she grew up before Bob Dylan. She looked more like a Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra person. 

 The Peddler's Mall flea market in Hopkinsville always plays music of the 1950's, mostly rock-and-roll. It's very cheerful. The toetapping rhythms put me in the right mood for looking at all that old junk in there. I'm sure that's what the mall owners have in mind.

Hymns on the Piano

January 2006

Today in church we sang a hymn I like a lot -- "Jesus, Priceless Treasure. The melody was written by Johann Sebastian Bach. Some Lutherans complain about the old hymns that we sing, but I like most of them, especially those with gloriously minor melodies. 

 
When I was a teenager, I discovered that I could play on the piano many familiar songs that we sang in church. This worked out well for our little country church as they usually needed somebody to play the piano. Many of the hymns that we sang were written by Fannie Crosby and her contemporaries, roughly between the Civil War and World War I. It was a time when great revivals were sweeping the nation, and new church music was often peppy with easy harmonies. Many of the hymn melodies were written in flats, and I became quite comfortable with that set of chords.

Two decades later in Germany, I started attending Lutheran services and, here in Kentucky, joined the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. In Lutheran services, I heard a familiar hymn only occasionally. Many of the LCMS hymns were written several centuries ago or even earlier.

After a time as Lutheran hymns became more familiar to me, I started to play through the Lutheran Hymnal on the piano. Many Lutheran hymns are written in minor keys and/or sharps, so I eventually learned (am still learning) a whole new set of chords. I am not a master by any means, but I'm much more fluent in Lutheran music now than when I started.

When I started practicing the Lutheran hymns, I became obsessed with them, and I abandoned my old favorite hymnbooks for a long time. A couple of years later, I began playing through one of those neglected volumes, page by page whether or not the hymn name was familiar. To my surprise, many of the hymns that I thought I didn't know turned out to be:

1. Hymns I have learned as a Lutheran, or
2. Unfamiliar words with melodies I have learned as a Lutheran.

About a year ago, I read a rave review that a music professor had written about the new Baptist Hymnal. I ordered the hymnal online, and I agree that is a great hymnal. It has a broad selection of Christian music from various genres, it's easy on the eyes, and it contains good indexes and helpful information like, "This melody in a lower key on page --."

I was interested to find many hymns from my Lutheran experience in the new Baptist hymnal. In fact, I find that I know nearly all the hymns in it -- some from my years in church music before I became a Lutheran, and others from my years in Lutheran music.

Keely Has Taught Herself To Sew

January 2006

Keely spent the day at home. She is now driving back to Murray, and she should call soon to say that she has arrived safe and sound. As moms do, I worry about her being on the roads after dark.

While she was here, she got out some of her old piano books and tried the freshly-tuned piano. I remembered some of the songs she played from her years of taking piano lessons. She doesn't have a piano to play at school so she's a little rusty, but it will all come back to her when she has a piano of her own someday.

This afternoon Keely and I drove over to Clarksville where Hancock Fabrics was having a sale on Butterick patterns -- $1.00 each, limit 5. We got some patterns for "garb"(costumes for Keely's medieval reenactment group, a college chapter of SCA -- Society for Creative Anachronism.)

Keely was excited when she read the flyer for next week's sale at Hancock. She has a list of McCalls patterns that she likes, and next week, McCalls patterns will be $1.00 each, limit 5. Also, dress trim (lace, braid, rick-rack, etc.) will be 40% off. She announced that she'd be coming home next weekend, and we'd be going back to Clarksville, because she wasn't going to miss this sale.

I'm amused, but pleased to see her become interested in sewing. When she was about 13 or 14, I forced her to make a pillowcase. Not long after that, I bought her a sewing machine, an older Singer that does straight and zigzag stitches only. 

For several years, Keely didn't have much interest in using her machine, but then she got involved with SCA. She took her sewing machine to college and became a seamstress. She sews garb for a number of people in her group, some of whom even pay her money. She has taught herself, and ultimately that's the only way to learn to sew-- by sewing.

She made the suede-y, floppy hat she's wearing in the photo. It's garb, but she was wearing it out and about today. It looked cute on her.

My Emerson Upright Piano

January 2006

Yesterday, on the 11th day of Christmas, I received one last Christmas gift, something I had specifically asked for. A piano tuner came to our house and tuned my piano. 

He also fixed two small things that were wrong with it -- a key on the far right that didn't make a sound and also the C key, an octave above Middle C, that didn't hold its sound. The damper on the C was broken, so he removed the damper from the highest of notes that have dampers and moved it down to that C. He will try to order a replacement damper from his catalogs of old piano parts. 

 Isaac felt vindicated and outraged when I told him the piano tuner had found the missing ivory key-cover inside the piano. For years, I thought that the kids had lost that piece of ivory, and Isaac remembers that I expressed my suspicion quite a few times.

As all piano tuners do when they work on this piano, he commented that it was in very good condition and had a nice sound for the age of the instrument. It's probably over 100 years old. The most recent patent date inside the piano is 1893. 

My mother bought this piano from a newspaper ad when it became apparent that I was practicing my piano lessons willingly and learning to read music. We had another piano before this one. My mother had tried to refinish it, and it hadn't gone well. When she moved in the new piano, my dad took the old piano to the blowout* and dumped it. I remember it lying on its back with its face to the sky. 

Over the years, this piano went from Nebraska to Missouri to Kansas with my mother and father, and after they passed away, I moved it to Kentucky. The kids and I had a memorable trip! We drove an excessively large U-Haul truck that was nearly empty except for the piano, dragging our car behind for 750 miles.We made the trip without serious incident, and the day that the piano took up residence in my living room, I know that my mother smiled. She bought the piano for me, and at last it was in my home. She would be glad that I got it tuned again at last, and she'd be pleased at how nice it sounds. *

In the Nebraska Sandhills, a region of grassed-over sand dunes, where I grew up, a blowout is a sandy depression or hole caused by wind erosion. Rightly or wrongly, Sandhill ranchers discarded their trash in blowouts. Trash in a blowout was a ranch history of sorts, with an odd assortment of well-weathered objects such as old cast iron cook-stoves, tangles of antique barbed wire, old bottles and cans, and skeletons of dead cattle. And a piano, in this case.