I bought yet another book of sheet music recently.
That’s what musicians probably do, right? I assume so myself. Going to the music store makes me feel like how I used to feel going to the bookstore or the record store (way back when that was a thing) and I spent hours browsing through the stacked pages of a million potential adventures through grand ideas or creative expression. Sheet music still seems to hold that grip on me.
I bought a book of sheet music that is probably too hard for me to play.
Precisely, it was a thick book of classical standards, two and a half centimetres of paper bound up with literally hundreds of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and a couple dozen more mostly-famous composers. Intermediate piano music.
Don’t get me wrong. I can read music. I’ve been playing some form of instrument for about forty-five years, most recently going on a music journey with the violin. But having delved in a serious attempt to learn how to play the piano this past year I would still neatly categorize myself as a beginner.
And now I have this sheath of music for intermediate players. It’s probably, almost certainly, too hard for me to play… right now.
Confidence is many things, often immeasurable things, but sometimes I need to remind myself that I must have a least a little bit of it: I invested in my future self this week and I bought a book of music that is aspirational, too difficult for me today, but some part of me must believe that tomorrow will be better, huh?
Terms FROm this POSt
- violin
- I write here quite a lot about the violin. It is exactly what you think: that four stringed wooden instrument with the distinctive curved body shape. Played well it is tuned to the range of the human voice, so it often haunts our hearts and reminds us of singing. I have been playing since 2016 when I took it up as an adult student, but one who could already read music. I can play, but the quality to which I aspire is something I will work on for the rest of my life.
