My Piano and Me

Silence. Around the room, nothing is spoken – just the dead, impeding sound of nothingness ringing against my ears. Only one thing sits in the room – 88 keys, 88 different strings, 88 different notes, yet three septillion different ways to play it. And there it sits, waiting for somebody to play it. Almost as if it were a house cat waiting in the dark for anybody to approach, pet him, and make him purr. Yet, no one dares.

It started in the 7th grade. My friends were all quitting music and bragging about it all the time. Though I loved the piano, I started thinking of quitting.

My pieces started to become less interesting to me and more challenging. The worst of it came when I played in a recital, and I was placed alongside the younger students who had not learned what a chord was yet. I felt utterly devastated because I thought I was much better than that. Yet, my teacher was placing me with less experienced kids. I wanted to quit! But I loved music. I thought about all the free time I’d get, but all the people I looked up to regretted quitting. All my inspiration for music came from artists who played piano, and what teen wouldn’t want to be like Bruno Mars or Freddy Mercury.

I was torn; I knew I had two options: quit the piano or make changes in my approach to piano lessons. I decided to give it one more try. I asked my piano teacher to do less drill-like pieces and more pieces of songs that I enjoyed listening to. This sparked my interest back and challenged me even more.

Now that I think about it, continuing with the piano helped me improve in ways I never realized. It taught me the secrets of success behind science and math, sports, and focus. I began to excel in my classes. The piano no longer was boring to me, but instead became a puzzle, which I had to put together to make a melody. I started taking this philosophy to my classes, specifically in science and math. The science labs became patterns that I was able to connect to concepts. It allowed me to be creative when it came to problem-solving issues. It built my confidence.

Finally, in recitals, I was no longer with a less experienced group. Though recitals make me feel stressed and worried, they taught me how to succeed by focusing on what was in front of me by always taking it one note and count at a time. Most importantly, music helped me learn to release bottled stress, sadness, and anxiety out into the world for everyone and no one to listen. I applied this in my tennis matches to win game points and ultimately win matches. I kept calm, focused, and in control to reduce stress.

To be completely honest, after years of practice and reaching the skill which I am now, I thought that the piano taught me all of its secrets. Yet it didn’t. The music pieces became longer, gruesome, and refined with more notes and chords to play, which made it even more complex than before. At times, I questioned whether I would be able to even learn a piece of music. It took hours, and so much of the time was spent correcting the wrong notes I played. Still, I stuck with it and pushed through.

All the lessons that the piano taught me I carry inside, and it made me better, stronger, and more persistent. This gave me the biggest realization in my life; that all you need to succeed is to have discipline, to learn from your mistakes, and to try again. Thanks to music, I am not afraid to be passionate, explore, make mistakes, rethink things, and try again. All these qualities make me an exceptional student.