Were you made to practice the piano as a child? Are you tired of remembering how?
Has the pleasure of playing Gymnopedie No. 1 palled in comparison to its former promise?
“You’ll be glad you learned how to play piano when you’re older,” they told you. Were they wrong? What has DEE dee da DEE dee dee dee da DEE ever done to benefit you?
You’re not good at it. You don’t enjoy it. You don’t own a piano as an adult.
On the rare occasion where you visit a friend’s house who does happen to own a piano, odds are it hasn’t been tuned in years —
Besides which, it would be tremendously off-putting if you just sat down at your new friend’s piano and abandoned the conversation for a little impromptu recital
This isn’t Regency England. It’s not even Tin Pan Alley. No one’s going to gather excitedly around the piano for an impromptu singalong while you play “Honeysuckle Rose”
Be honest with yourself. You’re never going to “do something” about the piano you learned as a child.
If you’re happy with the piano lessons you received as a child, and you do regularly play the piano, by all means keep those happy memories. If you want to keep them, they’re yours to keep
But that’s not you. If you were going to do something with those piano lessons you would have. They’re not doing anything or adding value to your daily life.
Remember how the piano teacher said that even if you don’t become a professional musician, those lessons would still inspire discipline, confidence, creativity, and boost your confidence? That wasn’t true, was it?
Your parents should never have made you learn piano. You could have been messing around on the computer or sleeping in
Who are you trying to impress? Mozart is dead
I WILL HELP YOU TO FORGET PIANO*
Here’s a picture of George Antheil at the piano. He played piano practically all the time. Does he look happy to you?
Reasonably priced one-on-one or group sessions with a simple guarantee: You will forget your childhood piano lessons
You will not forget having taken them but you will forget any songs, warmup exercises, or techniques you learned from them
For example you’ll still remember your piano teacher’s name. You won’t lose chunks of your childhood or anything. You’ll remember how she came by the house, or how your father dropped you off at hers, or whatever arrangement you had. You’ll remember all the recitals and so on. The information will be gone, but the memories will remain
YOU’RE AN ADULT. IT’S TIME TO FORGET THE PIANO
You need that mental room back. The piano was not for you. Free up the space to remember something else: It doesn’t have to be important
My guarantee is this: If you regret your decision to forget the piano, you can always just take new piano lessons again now. Start fresh
But if current trends continue, you’re certainly not going to learn any more piano. I think we can all agree you’re safe from that.
“Once you’ve finished ‘Clair de Lune’ we can move on to ‘Canon in D’”
Nothing’s stopping you from listening to other people play the piano, or singing along to the radio, or going to concerts. You’ll still have lots of music in your life. It’s not really taking anything away from you except for a long-standing sense of guilt and obligation.
Why should you suffer now just because some music school graduate convinced your parents that every child needed to learn the piano? You don’t feel guilty about not playing the cello, do you? So why let them bully you about a piano? You’re a human being
“All children deserve to fully understand the music in front of them”
That’s not true. That’s a lie. I’m sorry they told you that. Music is just as good if you don’t understand anything about it. You don’t have to learn math or triangles to like music if you don’t want to
Children are tired and easily overwhelmed. They don’t need to do anything except try to nurse a dying bird they found on the back porch in fourth grade
Effective, fast, reliable: Memories of playing the piano will no longer trouble you. If you’re serious about forgetting the piano call me at __________
*I cannot help you forget the guitar or any other instruments
[Image via]
Former piano teacher here. Can you help me forget teaching all those mediocre students? Does that cost extra?
Huh. I actually kinda wish I had been a more dedicated student and maintained my (modest, but not nothing) skill. Every time i see a piano I think it would be nice if I could still play some of the pieces I liked. Of course, I obviously don't care enough to spend all the time maintaining that -- I really just want the Matrix skill download. But still... (I _do_ try to maintain my mediocre Spanish fluency, with twice-daily 15-30 minute sessions on DuoLingo. But that actually comes in handy in daily life.)
OTOH I may be an outlier... I sometimes joke that if I had a religion, I would be an Eluite devotee of Shemhazai, whose motto is "All knowledge is worth having."