Practice, Practice, Practice....

I took lessons when I was 8 yrs. old for about a year. I can't tell you how much I despised practicing... I remember too well sitting at the piano for the required hour of practice, playing the songs from my last recital over and over again and hearing my mom yell from the other room, "Stop playing what you already know and practice your lessons." I hated the lesson music. It was the same notes, again and again... I find repetition exceedingly boring. I wanted to make MUSIC! For anyone who's ever taken piano lessons... Bookwork is NOT music!

Today, I'm so thankful for that year of having to learn those basic notes through and through. I'm no Billy Joel... In fact I'm about as far away from a Billy Joel as Pauley Shore is to Sir Lawrence Olivier... However, I can play well enough that my husband, family and most importantly I, myself can enjoy the melodies I tap out.

My husband gave me a MASSIVE 'Fake Book' for Christmas with hundreds of pages of tunes... I've yet to make it through the entire book to try playing just the tunes I'm familiar with. I suppose one would call it practice, in a way... But it's not like when I was young... Now I feel like all I want to do is play. Instead I have all of the household duties nagging at me to STOP PRACTICING and get to work!... Funny how things can change like that.