Play Me A Song, You're The Piano Boy

Warming Up

Richard Herring reluctantly playing the piano circa 1976. Picture by Don Hannan

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“Do you want to hear me playing some Mozart on the piano,” asked Ernie before knocking out a pretty solid one-finger version of Ode to Joy by Beethoven. Those guys are interchangeable though. As time goes by Mozart is just short-hand for any of that kind of classical music.

He’s had a couple of piano lessons and seems to be into it for now and although he works via numbers on the keys, his sense of the rhythm and the length of the notes is sound.

He tires of things quickly, but I am hopeful he might have the musical talent of his Aunty Jill, rather than being a bodger like his dad.

I attempted to play a two-handed composition of my own that I wrote about 42 years ago. It’s really just a downward scale with a couple of chords against it, but it sounds quite good and the muscle memory was there and I nearly got it right. Just as when I had to play a trumpet in the Inside Number 9 stage show - if you don’t think about it, a lot of that stuff is in there.

I was made to learn the piano as a kid, even though my tiny hands and lack of musical talent made me very much unsuitable for instrument. I got to Grade II, but was desperate to escape. Sadly the only way to move on with my strict parents who were insistent on trying to equip me with skills and make me a better person (idiots), was to take up the trumpet. Which made me almost as miserable, but which I am now glad I did as I was able to bedazzle the Inside Number 9 audience with my undoubted skills.

Reliving the glory days in The Headmaster’s Son

I had to play in the school band, which I both disliked and was bad at - once when we played in a competition at the Royal Festival Hall I ended up playing a solo, but accidentally playing one off-key note just after everyone else had finished. I did get a merit at Grade V trumpet because it counted towards one of the papers of my music O level, so I applied myself. I also scored 100% on Grade V theory.

Then I escaped the trumpet, but only by taking up the euphonium, like a sort of musical version of the Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly - he took up the trumpet to stop the piano, I dia-know why he took up the piano..... I also ended up having singing lessons as I got the lead in the school musical, which I didn’t mind so much as I got to show off and sing solos at concerts and do funny introductions.

I slightly regret not carrying on with the euphonium - but the one I had belonged to the school so it’s 40 years since I’ve played one.

Eventually the resentment at my parents for forcing me to do all this stuff has mellowed a little and I should really thank them for spending their hard-earned money on trying to turn a clod of earth into a musical genius. I am not going to thank them though, however noble their aims. I never fully understood calculus as I had to go to play in the brass band when we had that lesson and I knew this stuff wasn’t for me.

So I don’t want to force my kids into doing anything that they don’t really want to. Though Ernie, who is like me in many ways, often says he doesn’t want to do something, but when he goes and does it he has the time of his life. He does seem to be liking the keyboard for now (though wants to play electric guitar, which is at least cool - I think my problem with all the stuff I had to do was that it was so dry, old-fashioned and uncool and I was uncool enough on my own without having to lug a euphonium around with me).

Two lessons in and he’s already had more enjoyment out of the piano than I ever got. I am swelling with a pride that my parents must never have felt at my own pitiful and mournful attempts at piano. So he’s doing well, even if he doesn’t know his Bach from his Berlioz.

Chapter 2 of Everything Happens For No Reason is now up for paid subs on Substack.

I am hoping I can do a chapter a month and that if it’s any good it will be a book. But I am mainly seeing it as a writing exercise to see if I can do long-form prose. Let me know what you think. The link to the free first chapter is on that post.