My Story #92 -- Learning To Play Piano

My Story #92

Learning To Play Piano

Pastor Ronnie Wolfe

When I was seven years old, my family and I lived on a small farm on Highway 330 in Pendleton County, Kentucky.

Someone gave us an upright piano, one of those now old pianos that plays easily and sounds great--we don't hear them much anymore.

Someone in the neighborhood, I heard, was going to give piano lessons to my sister. However, that neighbor moved away, and there were no lessons given.

As the piano sat there all by itself, I wandered over to it and began to play around with it. Eventually I was able, by listening to the notes, to play out a melody from one of the songs that we sang at church one finger and one note at a time. 

As time went on, I learned to put other notes with the single notes; then someone came along and showed me what a chord is. When I put the chords with the melody notes, it sounded pretty good; but then I played all songs in the same key, since I had no knowledge of what a key is.

Later someone explained to me about the keys in which songs were written and sung. When I went to Lexington Baptist College, we were required to take a course in Music Fundamental. This was very helpful. I found out that I played "by ear." This class in music gave me enough knowledge of sheet music that I could write my own music. In fact, the teacher, Mrs. Hodges, proofread the song that I wrote and made one very small change to it.

While still very young, I listened to Liberace on the radio and later watched him on TV. I learned a lot from him as I listened and watched. 

So, I encourage all who would like to play piano (or keyboard now) to just sit down, play with the keys and listen, listen, listen. You may soon learn to play melodies and later the more complicate music. You must stay with your practice, though, or you will not progress.