It's Like Playing Piano

It's now 7:28am, and my daughters, Shelby and Sara, are punching and pounding on the piano behind me. And I smile, because they're one-fingering Jingle Bells, independently of one another, and on both ends of the keyboard, and honestly, it's pretty horrible.

Now, Sara has pulled out one of the intermediate piano lesson books (which is considerably more advanced than her abilities), and is trying to figure out the left hand part of Allen Ellmenreich's 'Spinning Song' - while Shelby starts on the top end of the keyboard with a purely accidental improv that mechanically fits and sounds, well, kind of cool.

It doesn't take Sara long to get overwhelmed or bored or impatient or whatever it is that makes her turn the page and look at other music. The girls are having a good time, playing together and laughing - more having a good time with each other than seriously trying to make music, although, in essence, they really are.

Here's the spot where I could go on a tangent about how a culturally rounded individual is a great contributor to the home, the workplace, and the community, but I won't. The research is there to prove it - plus, I'd look like a hypocrite, since none of my kids are in private lessons of any kind at the present (although they sing, and are developing nicely).

Instead, I listen to my girls play Heart and Soul, sometimes laughing as they listen to one another butchering the piece. The music that emanates from their hearts by way of their brain, through their fingers, onto the keys and out through the piano's cabinet is their own, based on their abilities...

Which is one of the motivators of music students and musicians. We hear what others play and we want to play it too. I'd love to be able to play Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is", but that would require the time to sit and listen and study, maybe watch a YouTube video or two.

So from the musical standpoint, Proverbs 27:17 applies to the gleaning and mentoring that goes on between musicians, whether it's direct or even cognizant of the gleaning. It reads: "Let iron sharpen iron, and so let a person sharpen his friend."

There's a show on the Public Television channel called "The Piano Guy", where the host, Scott Houston shares a familiar tune with step by step instructions on how to play it. He also has guest artists present their renditions of familiar numbers, which is always cool to me because I love to 'borrow' riffs and chords from other players.

In college, I had a friend who could play the intros to many of the piano rock songs on the radio: Journey, Van Halen, the Eagles. He always picked them out by ear, and he was pretty good. I think that's as far as he wanted to develop at that time as a musician. He was a smart guy and had other interests, but he wanted to be able to play a few songs on piano, so he learned to play them by ear.

I will tell you that it's easier to glean what you're wanting to glean when you have what it takes to know how to glean it.

Sara couldn't grasp Ellmenreich because her abilities are not developed enough. I can't play some of the things I hear others play, mainly because my ear training isn't developed enough to pick it up. Musical maturity arrives in platforms and stages, kind of like climbing a staircase, each one dependent on the platform of learning that the student has come from.

Some students can figuratively run up the stairs of learning, while others struggle from step to step.

The parallels of maturing musicianship and the maturing relationship with God are very much alike in that both 'ships' often mature in small baby-like steps, often times with significant markers along the journey.

One of the markers in my life as a musician was when I conquered Beethoven's "Fur Elise". The day that I played this song completely and without errors, I remember such an air of accomplishment, of victory. "Ah", I thought, "I have arrived at greatness..." which was so far from the truth, and, honestly, I now admit to you that I hate Fur Elise in its traditional form.

When God called me to leave the secular workforce and go into ministry, well, that was a huge marker, with tons of baby steps leading up to it. It was at the precise moment of taking just so many baby steps that I was at the place where God would be able to get my attention and make the call on my life come to fruition. But contrary to my sense of victory following my first performance of Fur Elise, I can't tell you that I've arrived at greatness.

Just more baby steps.

I have learned that my walk with God is so much like learning to play piano; the true pianist never quits learning, practicing, growing and listening.

Here's your 'iron' for the day: Just because you know a few songs on the piano doesn't make you a pianist.