Music

Often I've been asked the question: "How do you play impromptu on the piano? I could never do that!" Today, I want to answer that question, and share a few feelings on music.

When learning to play the piano, (or any musical instrument) you start by leaning the feel of it, reading notes, and learning different techniques. It is not a simple task. It takes much diligence, time, and practice. But it can be done.

Impromptu, may look like another technique, something else you can learn, something that can be taught, and perhaps it is. But that is not the way I see it.

After you have learned to read music, once you can keep a beat and play many wonderful songs you can stop there. Of course you must keep practicing and playing but once you have accomplished that much you can stop and feel satisfied with yourself, and most people do. I feel however that you can go further, and that I have still further to go.

You see, I believe that music is not learned, music cannot be put on paper or memorized. Because music is free. Music floats on the wind, flows through steams, skips through forests and slides down mountains. It lives in hills and dances in flowers. Music is alive, in each of us. And you have to find it before you can play it.

So you can learn pleanty of songs, you can perform all the songs you can find but until you catch the music in the air you cannot truly play music.

That is how I play impromptu, I sit down at the piano and put my fingers on the keys. I close my eyes and play a note or two, and then I hit the right note and the song flows from the air, to my heart, to my fingers, to the keys and then everyone can hear it! 

Some are afraid to ear the music, to begin to play it and play it wrong. But there is no way to play it wrong. Once you begin to play the music you cannot make a mistake, the music will play itself.

To everyone who is reading this I must sound very silly and you are probably still confused in how to play imporomtu. But someday I hope that many people will be able to hear the music that is always around us. That many will catch it and play it a short while so more people can hear the beauty o the earth singing out to us and hear the fairy peoples songs and laughter ringing through the air. And I hope that this has inspired you to listen to the music, and to listen, for the purpose of catching a few notes of the music alive in you.