I quit taking lessons.
What I want is to learn to play certain pieces that are far beyond my ability to read the music.
I want to learn RHAPSODY IN BLUE. I used to be able to play the first two pages but now I cannot quite make out the notes: I cannot read the notes.
I would like to be able to play some other Gershwin songs-- some of the music from Porgy& Bess. Some of the other things he wrote but again, they are far above my skill level. If I knew the notes I could practice and eventually, I'd get it. As always, I want to skip right over the basics. This was my problem about going back to school too: I do not want to start at the beginning, I want to get right to the juicy stuff.
I'd like to be able to play some Scott Joplin. Also some Mozart, Tschaikovsky, Dvorak, Beethoven. I'd like to learn some of the music that one of my heroes wrote, Leonard Bernstein.
What passion he had. I never liked the Beatles until one day I happened upon one of his Children's Concerts and he was explaining WHY they were great, and suddenly I understood but from a totally different angle that I had known before. I wish I had heard all the Children's Concerts now. I used to have a record-- you know the vinyl kind-- with some of his less well-known music on it, and it was fabulous. TOP HAT I think one was called. I could be wrong, it was a long time ago.
And of course, the seminal WEST SIDE STORY.... could I play that? I don't want to wait. I don't have time to start at the beginning and work my way up. It will never happen. I get bored and stop.
There must be some starving piano teacher willing to tell me the notes. Not "The is c minus" but here it is,physically, on the piano.
But maybe not.
Maybe this is the lesson I am supposed to learn, that you have to start at the beginning.
How dull.
