Piano class is turning out to be much more than I planned on. My teacher is demanding a lot from me. It doesn't seem to matter to her that this is my last class, my last semester. I have told her piano is nothing but a required course for me and I will never play again once this is over. She isn't buying it. I can already play half the workbook and she wants more from me, she wants me to be challenged, and the only way I can be challenged, apparently, is to learn something really hard that needs practicing every day. I just made an arrangement to come up once a week for an extra night and have a room opened for me, but that's not enough. She thinks I should practice a minimum of seven hours a week.
The minimum, according to her course outline, is three hours. Jesus Christ, I have a full time job, two classes, a practice night, and a life. Why isn't the minimum acceptable? I don't want to do this. I'm busy.
I had to return fredlet's loaner keyboard because it didn't have five octaves or full size keys, but that's what the school pianos are for, right? Not according to my teacher. She says she's not pressuring me but she is. She said, "A home without a piano is not a home," when I told her I don't have room for an upright. She said, "Casios are cheap," when I said flat out I was broke. I'm working on Bach and Mozart when everyone else is poinking their way through Chopsticks. She wants me to be a pianist. I don't want to be one! I'm not one! I'm a singer, I don't like piano, it's a horrid big percussive thing and my left wrist aches after an hour and it's not fair.
Also, I'd like to point out it's not like I'm playing the real versions of these Mozart and Bach and Grieg pieces. I'm playing the simplified, piano class versions. Grieg's "Morning Song" can be played with one hand on the black keys, you know. Criminy, I can't find F on the keyboard without counting backwards from A; I can't look at a note on the bass clef and recognize it without counting backwards from F. There's plenty that I just don't know. And my playing is dreadfully churchy, bang bang bang bang, hammer out those chords, left and right hands at equal volume. I'm not good at all. It's hard. I'm challenged, believe me.
She's right about one thing. I'm way ahead of my Piano I class. She wrote out a Russian folk song on the board tonight and I sightread it quite easily the first time through. I cheated, though. I sang it to myself first so I'd know what it sounded like. Is that cheating? Maybe not. So fine, no one else in Piano I is playing chords or sightreading. But why must I work harder than anyone else at my level? Why can't I do the minimum like everyone else as long as I'm making progress? I should never have told her I'm a music student.
I hear Radio Shack is having a sale. I guess I'm buying a keyboard.
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