I have a lot on my mind today, so instead of doing what I usually do which is run to the climbing wall and wear myself out, I booked a piano room in Waltons. I used to play the piano a lot, and it frequently helps me to get some clarity of thought. I need that clarity right now.
When I say I used to play the piano a lot, it’s worth noting that those days ended 10 years ago. Now, I just type a lot. My fingers are fluent in querty but not in CDEFGABC. Which in a way is heartbreaking. Today, I knew I was going to be doing alot of improvising, and the odd bit of playing – you oughta hear my version of The Foggy Dew (it’s special) followed by my version of Newborn by Muse (it’s terrible. I played bits by Evanescence, Ashley MacIsaac and Keane as well, and ended up with lots of bits by Winds And Breezes (c).
My fingers hurt after the exercise. The hammer action on the piano was a bit heavier than I’m used to – it’s a German piano and in very decent nick which is always useful in a piano room, but it’s not my piano and it’ll never be my piano and I woudln’t have chosen to buy one were I buying a piano in the morning. I want to buy a piano, I just have nowhere to put it.
I don’t know what I want to play any more. When I was 17 years old, I only wanted to play Grieg and Rachmaninov. I’ve a pile of piano music, lots by Chopin, some by Beethoven, Saint Saens, and the aforementioned boys Grieg and Rach. I have loved Rachmaninov II since I was pretty small although Saint-Saens V is my current favourite piano concerto. I’ve a book of music by Didier Squiban as well which I suspect I could learn to play in short order if I only played the piano more regularly. But I like some of the rock stuff as well – I reckon with a little confidence and a bit more competence I could shake the foundations of a building with Newborn, with Bring Me to Life. I still wouldn’t mind being able to play some Astor Piazolla. But unlike how things were when I was a teenager, the lines of communication between my ears, my mind and my fingers are somewhat broken.
I used to have a college lecturer who voiced the fact that a concert pianist could play some crazy sequence of keys in a given period of time, and that it depended on muscle memory. I don’t have too much of that muscle memory left. The odd sequence of chords that is useful if you’re playing traditional Irish music. Megafail if you’re not. I didn’t even risk the classical party pieces, the one Mozart sonata and Beethoven stuckchen because frankly they weren’t going to be there.
I’d love to have a piano of my own, and you know, I could probably afford one if I wanted to. But I’ve nowhere to put it and question the wisdom of buying the long yarned for Kawaii baby grand when I just can’t really play any more.
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You have just reminded me of Martin Walton, the founder of Waltons, and the times that I spent visiting his shop with my parents when I was a child. Martin and my father grew up together.
My father loved classical music. His mother could play anything on the piano. She also sang (contralto) with the Moody-Manners Opera Company – a very long time ago. My mother also loved to play the piano and I remember how unhappy she was when she could no longer play owing to arthritis in her fingers.
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