The printer turns on and you run over, waiting for the pages to spit out with a level of anticipation synonymous with waiting for lottery numbers. You’ve been listening to Jesse McCartney’s “Beautiful Soul” in your mom’s car on the way to school for the last three weeks now, and you finally found the sheet music online. It comes out eleven pages long. How does a piece that’s typically only two minutes and forty-two seconds long, amount to eleven pages on the piano? And doesn’t the chorus repeat?
You gather the last of the pages and enthusiastically run downstairs to your piano.
“Did you practice what you’re supposed to practice yet?”
No, you hadn’t. Here we go again, your mom bugging you because you hadn’t practiced your exam repertoire and instead, spend your time frolicking around on Google trying to find the piano transcription of your celebrity crush’s hit single, hopelessly trying to fill the void of feeling satisfaction from playing the piano.
“Ya, I’ll get to it after this.” That was probably the best response you could give her. You lay out the first four pages, since that’s as much as the ledge will hold and you fumble to find the first few notes. The first four notes, typically played on the guitar are arranged here in a dotted rhythm format in conjunction with some syncopation and ties that you’re not familiar with. Weird. Somehow you expected something a bit simpler … something easier to read. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so appealing.
Well, you’ve printed it out so might as well try it. It is your favorite song, after all.
A few bars later and you begin to subtly recognize the opening tune … but something doesn’t sound right. Sure, it’s the same notes and the melody seems to be coming through. The lyrics printed underneath the notes are perfectly aligned so you can sing along, so you try your best. It just isn’t the same.
Is this what it’s like? To find piano sheet music and feeling let down? Isn’t music supposed to be enjoyable? Fulfilling?
Frustrated, you gather up the rest of the sheets and set it aside. Suddenly uninterested and discouraged, you get up and walk away from the piano (again).
On a more rational note: yes, obviously the song would not sound the same on the piano. It wasn’t even written for the piano. But somehow, your naïve self, your innocent musical mind thought that the piano was a magic instrument. That just because it holds all eighty-eight keys—which is virtually every pitch ever known to humankind— you could recreate any piece or song just by playing the right notes on the score.
I think the first time I learned that the piano wasn’t magical I felt extremely discouraged. I felt weakened because it was supposed to be my saving grace. I thought the piano would take me places without me trying. I depended on it for so many things in life: I depended on it for pleasure, imagination, creativity, success. Purpose.
I depended on it to quite literally define who I was. But did it? Can it?
No matter how much you come to recognize that the piano is an inanimate object, and incapable of reacting and responding to your voice and emotions, there is still, always, a glimmer of hope. That is because the connection that we as pianists develop with our instrument runs deeper than most human relationships ever could.