Lesson #3: Enjoy the Journey

This is part three of a series titled 6 Lessons Playing Piano Taught Me.

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” –Marcus Aurelius

Many people profess an interest in learning to play piano, but few actually do it. Whether they've never taken lessons or have forgotten much of what they learned from a childhood piano teacher, the most common excuse I've heard for not pursuing musical study later in life is a lack of time. While it's true that children generally have more free time than adults, adults have more control over their lives than children. If something is a priority, they'll make time for it.

When I started taking lessons I was, without even realizing it, wanting to know the answer to a single question: Is it worth the hours and weeks and months and years of practice? It was a long time before I could answer that question in the affirmative, and until then all I could do was wonder and hope.

I teach guitar lessons in addition to teaching piano. Most of my guitar students can, in a relatively short period of time, learn to strum along to their favorite songs. But playing piano requires a higher degree of precision than strumming basic guitar chords—although at a more advanced level of playing guitar can be quite technical. Learning to operate the left and right hands independently can also be difficult and time-consuming for pianists. Coupled with the complexities of note reading and a number of factors unique to each individual, it's hard to say exactly how long it will take to develop basic competence and eventual mastery. I knew I wouldn't be an expert immediately, but I thought two years of playing would be enough to reach a satisfactory ability level. It wasn't. And it would have taken me even longer if I hadn't discovered chords.

When I was very young we had a few music books that contained chord symbols. I taught myself how to play a few songs using basic chords. The results were somewhat satisfying, but I always felt like I was cheating somehow because I hadn't taken the time to learn to play bass clef notes. As an adult I wanted to learn to play piano “right,” so I avoided chords. As it turned out, chords were far more powerful than I had thought, and my definition of “right” was exactly wrong.

For the first several years of my piano training, about 80% of my time was focused on note reading while the remaining 20% was focused on chords and lead sheets. A lead sheet contains melody notes and associated chord symbols such as C, Am or G6. There is no explicit left hand part and it's up to the musician to decide how the left hand should be played. It wasn't until I reversed my approach and started spending 80% of my time learning chords and 20% reading notes that I finally started to hit my stride as a pianist. The reason I found satisfaction and success through chords is that I moved beyond playing simple block chords—hitting all the notes at once, usually just at the beginning of a measure—to playing broken chords, inversions and other creative rhythmic patterns to add interest, variety and virtuosity to my performances.

When I talk with adult students about chords the initial response I get is often similar to my own initial response. Chords are cheating, and they want to learn how to play the “right” way. Some people I’ve talked to are so caught up with the idea of playing “right” that they fail to play at all. Perhaps this is because they also have a subconscious belief that the only way to learn to play “right” is to begin at age five and therefore they've missed their window of opportunity. But “right” is relative, and I only found success after re-examining my ideas of what a piano player ought to be.

I encountered a similar mental obstacle when I began writing songs. After a few simple pieces I created several longer works and the required effort left me drained and unenthusiastic about composing additional songs. When I finally let go of my lofty ideals of what a composition ought to be and instead focused on writing music for the sheer pleasure of it, I began to experience greater success and my skills started to improve. The idea of “good enough” found a place in my life and defeated the creative rigor mortis I had been battling. My composing skills weren't improving while I was doing nothing and only dreaming of greatness. When I shed the burdensome weight of expectation and just wrote the notes as they came I began moving forward again.

One of the mistakes I made early in my development as a pianist was wanting to be better than I was. This might sound like a positive characteristic, but I wanted it so badly that it created high levels of frustration and canceled out many of the benefits of playing. Looking back, I wish I had taken the time to more fully enjoy each stage of my progress. When I was a beginner I could have focused on mastering the beginning repertoire, and I could have done the same as an intermediate player. I wish I had simply trusted the process of learning instead of constantly worrying about whether or not I was doing the right things.

As my skills continued to develop I found myself pushing harder and harder to play increasingly difficult pieces. I achieved a high degree of competence but found myself always working at the edge of my abilities with no strength left in reserve. When I pulled back just a little to a more comfortable level of growth, I experienced greater satisfaction.

There have been times in my life when I've made a conscious choice to do something difficult and frankly not very enjoyable in the hopes of obtaining a worthwhile reward at the end. If I'm not careful, the constant pursuit of future joy can rob me of the joy that is right in front of me. “Suffer now so you can enjoy life later” may work for certain temporary endeavors, but as a lifestyle it hasn't served me well.

The only way to arrive at a destination is to begin, then continue. Finding joy in the journey and not just the destination increases my desire to keep going once I've started. The idea of “arriving” may at times seem more appealing than the journey itself, but in my experience arriving is simply an opportunity to continue the journey at the next level. When I believe my understanding it complete, all progress stops. But when I embrace the process of pursuing mastery and savor each new experience, then every step can be taken with joy.