Something happened the other day that has literally never happened to
me before... I made a woman cry. Okay, left at just that statement
alone I sound like a horrible guy. Especially for putting it in a blog,
but let me start at the beginning.
Since the summer
started I've not really done much with myself. My first week of the
break I didn't really leave the couch or my bed. In fact, I watched all
the episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix, which is 6 seasons
long. To be honest, I didn't really want to do much with myself but come
the second week of summer I actually had something to look forward
to... my piano lesson.
My piano teacher is excited
about teaching, which is awesome. That's actually her JOB! Not a side
thing that she does to get extra money, but teaching is how she gets by
and she's really good at it. To be honest, I was a little surprised at
how good she was at it when I showed up. After a fiasco with three of
her other students trying to figure out parking, I finally arrived. I
started by playing a single scale for her (my best friend, the C major
scale) and she quickly noted several ways to improve my playing and we
got to work. Those first two lessons were brutal. Playing scale after
scale at painfully slow speeds to make sure my posture and technique
were just right, and after the scales we moved on to other tedious
exercises. But by the third lesson I had made the corrections she was
looking for and we began to actually work on music. I was excited about
something again for my summer.
The difference between that first and second week of
summer were significant. For instance, the first thing I did when I woke
up this morning was pull out the MIDI Controller (still working on a
name for her and she's really upset it's taking this long) and started
writing music for my upcoming wedding gig in two weeks. I'm practicing
my old audition pieces, but I'm also writing my own arrangements of
music for performances. Staying up every morning till 3:00 am writing
music and trying to make something that's worth listening to has been
awesome!
But that brings me back to where I started; the crying lady. I
met with a singer that I perform with a lot and we chose music for a
wedding we are playing in two weeks and then a couple of days later we
met with the couple that's to be married and we showed them what it is
that we would like to play for them. We finally worked out what they'd
like to have played during the wedding and then we started discussing
pre-ceremony music to set the mood. I played two pieces for them; Holy
Holy Holy arranged by Jim Brickman, and Hymne written by Vangelus. I've
played Holy Holy Holy literally dozens of times and I've played Hymne a
bunch as well so they were easy for me, but something odd happened.
While I was playing the second piece I got the feeling that the couple
didn't like what I was playing. Enough so, actually, that they wanted me
to stop. I'm not sure where this came from, but I decided that it would
be best if I kept playing anyways and tried to play the piece better
than I ever have before. When I finished playing I looked up and the
bride-to-be was in tears. She said it was beautiful and that it was the
one piece she most looked forward to hearing on her big wedding day.
WELL HOT DANG! I didn't see that one coming.
I guess it just goes to show how far just a little bit of effort
can get you. I got tears out of the deal. Maybe with just a little bit
more effort I can get into a music program?!?! Who knows...
