How I started playing music

If you've been reading my blog for a while, or have just recently been stalking my every post, you will know that I am a musician. A rather dedicated one, at that. I play piano, guitar, drums, and I sing. At least 5 hours of my weekdays are consumed entirely by me playing/writing music. Weekends is basically just entirely music. I have a standup piano in my room, right next to my bed, so I hardly even have to wake up in order to start playing. That's what happens when you're lazy as fuck.

But how did I get to this state?

I've always loved music. My first memories with a piano are from when I was a toddler, probably no older than 3. I would go over to my grandparent's house in Stamford, Connecticut, just a minute or two away from our apartment. I basically grew up in and absolutely adored that house, which was a giant modern open floor plan shaped like an octagon, with high ceilings and skylights and windows making up most of it. They had a big white piano up against the wall and I would ask my Poppop to play a song while I danced around the giant room. Then I'd violently kick him off the piano bench and started banging on the keys with my chubby 3 year old hands, then start screaming about how the piano is rigged so only he can make it sound pretty. 3 year old logic. 

I FOUND PICTURES OF THE HOUSE ON THE INTERNET.

There's the piano, against the wall on the right.

So until I was about six, the only musical thing I did was bang on that piano awkwardly, making little tunes. Then, when I was six, my grandparents held a concert in their house for a russian string quartet that they were friends with. Shit tons of people were there, including my Poppop's friend Genevieve, a super accomplished world renowned pianist. I was six when the concert happened, and some of my cousins were also there. 

Apparently, my Poppop had asked Genevieve beforehand to give me piano lessons, and she said no, as she only mentors teenagers who already have a pretty advanced understanding/skill level with piano. 

Basically, in a nutshell, this is what happened:

Genevieve says she won't teach me

Concert happens

Genevieve goes to concert

I go to concert with cousins

Concert is in the middle of happening

Cousins are being loud and obnoxious 

I am sitting there quietly and nicely listening to the quartet

Genevieve sees me sitting and listening all nice and realizes that I don't totally suck and that I like music so she decides to teach me the piano-ness

To this day, I know how beautiful the music that string quartet can make is, but at the time of the concert I think I was half asleep, which is why I appeared so quiet and well-mannered. Oh well. I had them all completely tricked into thinking I was a sweet and perfect little child, and it did me pretty damn well. I like to think that I really was a sweet little girl and that I deserved those piano lessons, but I know in my heart I was a 60 pound psychopathic ball of manipulative fury. 

I had my first lesson with Genevieve right in the middle of the summer of when I was going into 3rd grade. I remember the first song she ever attempted to teach me. It was all single notes, just the right hand, only one bar. She explained to me in great detail how notes work and everything. The first words I said after she explained all this shit for about 10 minutes was...........can you guess?

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"I don't get it."

Over the years that I studied with Genevieve, I still never ended up getting it. Genevieve, I am convinced, is the best piano teacher ever, but reading music is something I have never been able to do and I'm damn sure it will always stay that way.

But yeah, I can't read music. Genevieve attempted to jam the skill into my brain for six fucking years. SIX YEARS. AT THE TIME, THAT WAS HALF MY LIFE. I have no idea what it is with me, but I can't read music to save my life. What I can do is ear play and memorize like a freaking boss. And that, my friends, is a skill that nobody ever taught me. It just came up one day. I actually tried to surpress it for quite a while, because I thought it was some alien in my brain controlling my fingers. But basically, instead of reading music (which, for me, is like trying to successfully have a conversation with my toenail), I listen to what I want to learn, and then I play it back. Memorization, for me, takes about 5 minutes for a song that's several pages long. I don't know what's up with my brain, because I can't memorize anything else like that. I can't remember what pants I'm wearing right now.

I eventually stopped working with Genevieve in classical music when I was twelve. I realized that with my weird ear playing/memorizing thing, I wanted to work on other instruments and styles of music by myself.

That's basically how the whole music thing happened for me. Right after I stopped working with her, I took up drums and guitar. Again, I ear play, so I taught myself all those things. Now its completely taken over my life, and I regret nothing. I'm slightly psychotic, and music helps me calm the fuck down. So yeah. I like music. A lot.