Piano Playing (Taking About Something Else Day)

Friday is “Talking About Something Else” Day here at Romance Spinners.  C'mon!  It can't always be about writing.

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"Girl Playing the Piano"
by Sergei Arsenevich Vinogradov
I'll bet she had to play Hanon as well.

We writers are a fascinating bunch. Naturally, we have outside interests.

I play the piano.  Take lessons, have a regular gig on the weekends, and everything.

Piano players everywhere are familiar with the Hanon "The Virtuoso Pianist" piano exercises. ( No, I can’t play it as quickly as in the Wikipedia example.)  It’s considered part of the basic “chops” every piano player has to do including scales, arpeggios and Heart ‘n’ Soul. 

So I’m reading through the preface notes, and one of the final paragraphs says this: “This entire volume can be played through in an hour; and if, after it has been thoroughly mastered, it be repeated daily for a time, difficulties will disappear as if by enchantment, and that beautiful, clear, clean, pearling execution will have been acquired which is the secret of distinguished artists.”

So I’m thinking, “What?  An entire hour every day on Hanon alone?”  Then I remember that I will cheerfully spend hours a day cranking out rough draft on a novel.   Either way, me and Anastasia the Piano Player spend hours wiggling our fingers over keyboards.

I guess it all depends on where your heart (and soul) lies.

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Her Grace has studied piano three times in her life: for a few years as a child, for a few years in university, and for the past eight years as an adult.  She has studied other fields of music, such as violin and voice and minored in Music at her alma mater.  Currently she is working towards her AMusA degree and occasionally teaches other people how to tickle ivories.  But really, she'd much rather be writing.  Don't tell her piano teacher she said that.