Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum So what keeps you going (Motivated)?

I don't know how anything you play on the piano can be tedious or boring! Just listen ... don't you love the sound of your instrument? One of my earliest memories is hearing a chord being played on the piano (my mom playing, perhaps?), and the feeling of utter happiness it gave me. Lately I've been learning/practicing harmonic minor scales, and the notes almost send shivers through me. Last night I sat down and spent some time just playing chords, listening to how one led into another and how the sounds mixed together, and I was enthralled. To me, almost anything that is played on the piano can sound beautiful. Of course, it's even better when you have a beautiful, finished piece to play. But if you can enjoy all the work and sounds leading up to that, you'll have increased your pleasure many times over.

What motivates me?

Every once in a while I play a piece very well, or at least well enough to hear what the composer really intended. It's like being in their company, and sometimes (Bach's Goldberg Variations, the Moonlight Sonata) you sense the presence of the divine. Only musicians experience this fully, I think, and it makes all the effort and occasional tedium of practice a small price to pay.

As a player who currently is playing in the pop/rock/country field, what motivates me to do the prep work of scales etc. is when I play through a piece I've played many times and realize that because of the prep work my playing is more fluid, more note-to-note even, or perhaps more rhythmically accurate (which given the genre may mean that the micro accelerations/ritards are better paced).
As far as another kind of practice I do, taking a simple phrase and varying it slightly, I find pleasure in the successful variations. If I'm preoccupied, or just tired, I just stop and do what I'm preoccupied over, or find something else that doesn't need inspiration but needs doing (laundry, etc), because trying to be creative when you're not is usually not helpful, and there's always laundry etc. to do. When enough of the other stuff is out of the way, then I find it easier to not be preoccupied.

I get motivation from reading a post like yours because it mirrors how I feel at times. I use the Star Wars Force concept for motivation. When sitting down to practice, there is a connection with all the others around the world that have chosen to do what we're doing. There is also a temporal connection. Sometimes I can feel the wave of all those fingers that have played Hanon in the past. I get caught up in the wave, play my two octaves and pass it on to those that will play it in the future. Don't want to be the one that breaks the chain.

Just for fun!

As for laundry, I think piano is a perfect couner-activity, because much of 'doing laundry' is doing something else between load changes.

I'm sorry if you are out by the stream, beating the clothes against a rock--but just think of the hand and arm strength you are developing!

It may be blasphemous for me to put my two cents in since I'm not an adult beginner, but I think it's a great subject, and it's got me thinking.

I didn't really love piano when I was younger. I sort of thought of it as an extension of school--something you just did. But over the years it became an important part of me, and now it's like a sixth finger or something--not everyone has that extra pinky, but it's a part of my body and I don't see any reason to chop it off.

Now, I play because the day is better when I do. I want to have a good day, so I play piano. It makes me happy. Sometimes, also, the day feels like it's missing something if I don't play piano. But I don't really practice anymore. (I kind of don't really need to practice anymore.) So maybe things would be different if I felt pressured to give concerts or record cds, but now I just enjoy it. And maybe that's a lesson that you learn when you take up piano. The rewards come later. For me, 25 years later