Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Ever feel like giving up?

Thanks very much mate, I appreciate your kind words, and those of Euphonatrix. I'm not really all that wise though. My other hobby is doing an occasional bit of writing, so I've just learned the trick of writing the character of a wiser person and then pinching it for myself... ....

Interesting to hear the feedback from those who have looked through Concert40's previous posts. It does sound like it's high time to drop the "poor me, nursing my dreams..." line and move on to a bit of action. The longer you leave dreams the grander and more inflated they get, and the bigger the gap between fantasy and reality becomes. So the sooner one gets on the road the better.

Cheers,

Chris

Just for the record, while it was awhile before BradKY, the young man that got the piano, posted again, he has started again recently, first here:

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/21166.html

and a couple of times since. His post got buried fast over in the piano corner. And in his profile he has a big "thanks all" after his piano brand. So he's still around

That said, there are for sure ways to get started playing piano if one really wants to, and the ideas here point the way -

Cathy

you can always buy a cheap digital piano to play in your apt, even with headphones on. many people do that, including me, since i have to practice mostly at night.

once you got a piano to play on, it will boost your desire and motivation to play for sure.

Oxford has got it right on.

Don't quote me on this because I am not 100% on the words. Heck I am not even sure it was Jack Nicklaus who said this but I think that it was. The story goes that one time a gentleman walked up to Jack and said, "Mr. Nicklaus, I would give anything to play golf like you do." His reply was something like, "That is not true, sir. You see, when I started taking golf seriously, I got up every morning and drove 100 balls before most people got out of bed. And I hit 100 chip shots before most people had their first cup of coffee. And I putted 100 times before most people had even showered. And I did this every day for five years. Now tell me which part of that are you doing?"

The point is that most of us, myself included, spend a great deal of our lives wishing that a magic genie will come out of our toilet and endow us with all of these abilities and riches. But the real answer is simply deciding to do it and then doing it. We as a species, and Americans more than ever, look for the quick fix and instant happiness. We will spend more time and money trying to win the lottery or win it big in Vegas than we will spend on educating ourselves and working to better ourselves. I know because I teach middle school now and all of my students just know they are going to be ball players or famous and rich rappers. They couldn't care less about achieving in school because they don't have time for it and, "There ain't no reason to work hard to make money."

I am 53 and just started learning piano. I don't consider myself good enough to even post a recital in the beginners forum yet. But I am having fun and I am learning a little. As long as I use the head phones my wife of 34 years says I play great!

If I didn't practice my hour each day I would probably waste it watching reality TV shows anyway.

So what have you got to lose? At most the cost of a digital piano which is what... maybe $300-$1000 new and much cheaper used? Big deal! Most people wiz this away on beer or cable TV in a few months.

Just do it and Get Er Done!

Hi all:

I thank you all for your comments. Even the "tough" responses, I truly appreciate. I will not post here again, until I have something to post. I will not "talk" about my plans, until "after" I have "done" something.

Thank you all.

C

I feel I have to give a bit of a backround on myself to clarify where I'm coming from.

My mom married a bum (my biological father) who never worked a day in his life. So when my mom had my brother then myself she worked 2 jobs to have a 1 bedroom apartment and the things we needed. Despite that she always had time to take us to parks, museums, zoo etc etc.

She never went on public assistance or asked anybody for anything. She even paid her own mother to watch us during the day while she worked.

When I was 5 and my brother 8 she re-married my father. We gained a 5 year old brother from their union .

I have 3 heroes in my life. My mother for working her fingers to the bone in a factory to maintain us and my dad who has worked all his life never missing a day of work to maintain my mom and her 2 kids and my older brother.

We grew up poor in material stuff since my dad is a factory worker but we had an over abundance of love.

We had 1 tv in the house, sometimes we had a car sometimes we didn't. No phone but what the heck we are a close knit family and those things didn't matter.

I remember my brother having a paper route and getting up at 4am everyday to deliver papers prior to going to school so he could have that nice shiney bike, or stereo, records etc. He was never a scholar but graduated from HS went into the Army, retired from there and now works for the cable company. 3 months after he started he got promoted due to his impecable work ethics. He's my 3rd hero. He kind of doted on his son and daughter a little too much. He's the one with the son who constantly wants things to happen without him trying. He is in the Air force now making us proud.

My little brother is kind of my hero too. He has 4 sons. The 3 oldest are in college now, one just graduated from engineering. The other one is finishing architect school, the third is in his second year of pre-med and the little one is finishing HS and going for engineering.

Those kids grew up in PR and didn't have much either except for a lot of love and a good christian upbringing.

My little brother worked hard for Phizer pharmaceuticals got 2 degrees while working full time, does National Guard, raised 4 beautiful Christian sons along with my sister in law by his side.

I've always been a hard worker as well. Everything I have is because I worked hard to get it. I have my mother, father and brother as examples.

So forgive me for not having sympathy for people wanting stuff to fall in their lap. If you're not a quadraplegic or have some mental disease, work for what you want.

I think it's time for me to become a Smithsonian resident :p

just dont get it ... um... missed tha point...

:rolleyes: err.... can we get a new gremlin..
I want one of me banging my forehead against the wall ...

...

Some people don't see major breakthroughs when they are staring them straight in the face. My turn for the head banging gremlin, as well as one of jubilation for the quoted post.

LOL OG... I hear ya. Very nice post. Reminds me of an incident I had a few years back. We were car shopping, and after I had a list of possibles, I started eliminating some models as too expensive. The salesman, wanting me to purchase the most expensive he could sell me, started by saying he could give me a bunch of free stuff to "take the sting out of the price".

My not-so-quiet response was to give him a speech on just why I did not want anything I did not earn. Everything I possess, I worked for. Why would I want to reduce my possession's value by accepting something I did not deserve or work for?

Much to my suprise, a got a round of applause from some of the older shoppers, and looks of pure dis-belief from some of the younger ones. I admit I was just a tiny bit of a jerk, but I just hate high-presure tactics, and I did manage to shut-up the saleman.

My lovely bride will not go car shopping with me ever again....

Oxfords gal, truly beautiful post.

More power to you and to those like you.

Concerto40,
Please never give up this dream of playing music you want to play. As Inominato stated, 'Where there's a will, there's a way.' and this was so true for me when I began to take piano lessons at our local college. I had no piano so I would drive to the college and practice quite a bit there.

I didn't actually acquire an upright piano for a few years but in the meantime I was really quite pathetic. For example, I visited my friend discovering his child had a crude wind driven keyboard intended for children and borrowed that. It had maybe two octaves of smaller than normal keys, there were buttons on the side to sound chords as accompaniment. Really basic but I figured, 'oh well, what the heck?' I was so unself-conscientious about playing what little I knew on any piano or organ that happened to be in my vicinity. I was just so hungry to eventually play music I heard in my head. So as I said, don't ever give up and someday you'll hear your fingers playing sounds that'll make you so grateful you persevered. To this day I still want to make sounds I hear in my head. I'll be learning the piano for the rest of my life and hope you will too.

Please pardon my snippage, but in the interests of brevity....

My background is similar to Oxford's Gal's. Raised poor, had to fight, scratch and claw to get anywhere. I also had enough of my own issues that I've had to start over a couple of times.

It's one of those "starting over" episodes that's brought me to this place as a result of learning piano. Without going into a lengthy ramble that would probably come across as self-pity, I really can't be a lot clearer than that. However, I look at it as a blessing because it's given me the chance to follow the love of music that's always been in my heart. I never pursued it (although both my grown sons have masters' degrees in music) because I wasn't in the position to devote the time and mental energy to make it happen.

Now I'm in a place where I have the time, and I have the commitment and I've decided that I'm going to give it the best shot I can, because that's the way I do things. I have a habit of saying, "If something's worth doing, then it's worth OVERdoing." I suppose I'm a bit obsessive/compulsive. But I find that to be a benefit in things I want to accomplish.

Back on the original topic, ("Ever feel like giving up?") I was at that place about a year ago. I was ready to sell my basses and amp and all that went with it. I was floundering and didn't know why. What I had to do was go back to the very beginning and re-examine everything that was involved in my playing. I found that I had to re-learn how to use my right hand to pluck the strings. Then I had to re-learn to use my left hand to stop the strings. And finally I had to knuckle down and learn more about music. And that got me here.

I feel very fortunate in having several wonderful friends who encouraged me not to give up but to keep moving forward. Their advice was spot-on. I needed to go back to basics and see what I was doing wrong and fix it.

At the low point of my bass playing, one of these friends asked, "don't you have a simple piece you can play just to enjoy making music?" I had to think long and hard to answer that. I didn't have one. So I started working on something very simple that I could fall back on to reassure myself that I actually DID have the ability to play and while the progress might seem slow, I WAS making progress.

Over the past year, I've made what I think are pretty large strides in my music. I can actually read a little bit of it. I know a little theory now. And I can sit down at that thing with the black and white keys without terror or complete alienation attacking me immediately. This all came about because I had a couple of good friends who encouraged me and the willingness to start over (seems to be the story of my life) and do things a little closer to "right."

So far, so good. But it sure felt hopeless a year ago. Now it feels great.