Old piano.

Earlier this summer, Kierstin and I bought an old upright piano from the 1930's from Shuff's Music down in Franklin. We put it near our dining room table...in a corner of the house where the 80 year old hardwood floors could help it sing. It's in great shape and has a funky looking cover on the front of it...almost looks like a giant old-time radio. We love it and I've been playing it almost everyday.

I learned piano when I was in 10th grade. My family had moved from Dayton, Ohio to Johnstown, Pennsylvania during the summer break from school and I found myself in a new town where I didn't know anybody so to pass the time that summer I did three things:

1. played Street Fighter 2 on Super Nintendo with my three brothers
2. read The Lord of the Rings (which blew my mind)
3. taught myself how to play "Hey Jude" on the piano by finding chords with my acoustic guitar and my Beatles Fake Book.


I would sit there for hours and play all throughout the afternoon....Hey Jude over and over and over again. I was totally obsessed with The Bealtes- especially Paul's songwriting. John's songs were cool to me but Paul really grabbed me with his melodies and geeky coolness. This was also the summer that my Dad bought me Sgt. Pepper on CD....not my favorite Beatles record (White Album for me) but it knocked me out. I listened to it all summer and then went to Wal-Mart and bought Magical Mystery Tour....what a cool time that was discovering those albums.

After "Hey Jude", I learned how to play "Imagine", "Long and Winding Road", "Let It Be" and The Eagles' "Desperado". Don't get me wrong...I wasn't really learning piano...I was playing songwriters piano...block chords and the occasional passing notes between changes....a very different sort of piano from what Cason, Josh, Ben, Pardo, Fitchuk and all of those real piano players do.

But even still...I was playing a new instrument and it felt amazing. It still does. I love holding down the sustain pedal and getting lost in the mush of chords.

I wrote a piece for a class at Belmont during my senior year. It was a Harmony III class...the bane of my musical existence at the time....theory is so....mathematical...I hated it and had to study so hard just to get a B but looking back I'm so glad I had that class. Anyways I turned in this instrumental I had written for piano and we all had to play our composition for the class...after I got done playing mine the teacher said to me..."Nice piece but you need to learn to give the sustain a rest!". He was half kidding and half serious.

I told him that I thought it sounded cool. He told me that it was not correct to play that way. I felt like a piano rebel!

Or a guitar player who learned piano by way of The Beatles Fake Book.