Piano Is Taming the Beast
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
Piano is taming the beast - said this to my long time client earlier today.
"Huh?" he asked, startled, unsure of what I had said.
I repeated, "Piano is taming your beast. Good for you."
He chuckled in his, I've-come-through-a-bout-of-defensiveness-and-am-learning-to-have-a-sense-of-humor-about-it voice I have come to recognize and cherish after our decade plus of adventures in songwriter land.
He had successfully navigated his right and left hands, counted time, and read the notes on the grand staff and focused his obstinately belligerent fingers into the correct space in time. Eureka! A break through just after breakfast.
This man represents the tip of the iceberg in this remarkable field of study I have been undertaking over the span of a lifetime.
When I was a kid, eagerly soaking up as a sponge all available gleans of wisdom from my hillbilly philosopher turned hit songwriter Daddy.
He took psychology, I took psychology. He took astronomy, I looked at the maps.
I recall countless preverbal hours spent lying on the brown furry carpet of Dad's impeccably air conditioned study, staring at one book in particular - a man's face, black and white - Assagioli. Dad was a fanatic about his study and his enthusiasm and list was contagious.
I reveled in his companionship and thrived like a bright spring flower ever hand in hand with my hero, my daddy.
He was wise, but also innocent in his curiosity - somewhat scornful and prideful when his intellect got in the way of his insecurities.
Naturally he had many, being the recipient of voltage that left him 60% burned in 1974, basically a death sentence to any mere mortal man in rural Eastern Tennessee.
Dad was different. This trauma had happened years before my birth, but the remnants and reminders followed us in ever presentness, accepted perhaps best by me who adored him and only knew him as he was, Daddy.
This he sensed, I think, and basked in my adoration as pure as an unburdened night sky.
Ours was a timeless, pure and special love that comes from lifetimes of recollection crammed into two lonely hillbillies in the middle of the woods Tennessee.
Don't get me wrong. Mama was there, too, and we adored her just as we did each other, but on a different spectrum of wavelength. She was precious and tempestuous, spoilt and determined, the ideal steadfast companion for any man, my dad, her only husband and champion of her life's transformation from single country girl working at the Card & Label to Nashville Hall of Fame Songwriter's Wife.
Dad and I accompanied her to the mall for her shopping excursions, and like blood hounds on the scent, made our way to our stores - record store, book store, bench.
If we were somewhere fancy, we might pop in and see the gadgets or gag gifts.
We never bought (nor were tempted to buy) one of those massage chairs, but Dad did get a set of those electronic LSD space goggles and the ear phones to match.
Mom was in heaven, maybe regretting her decision not to try for another girl child to keep her Laura Ashley dreams alive (about which we have joked.)
She understood the best she could, and Dad and I did our best to include her - or at least not rouse her ire too much at our desire to listen to the same 5 songs on repeat for two weeks at a time after a recent demo session.
It was from my mother, however, that I received my greatest musical gift in my life - the desire to play the piano.
Mom had a beautiful wooden upright Kimball in the front parlor of our woodsy home, and I loved nothing so much as to sit in her lap while she played Big Note Classics, humming and playing and holding me all at the same time.
It was glorious.
The notes and my mother resonated with music of "Beautiful Dreamer" and "The Entertainer" and all was right with the world.
It didn't matter that the couch in the parlor had a sneaky way of catching little toes on its peg-leg hidden by carpet-dusting, 70s high fashion upholstery.
That piano became my salvation in the tumultuous childhood that went along with being part of the Williams clan.
Alone in the woods - with parents home, of course, I sat for hours on that green velvet cushioned stool stretching my fingers forward onto the equally spaced black and white keys.
These were the keys, I decided, that could unlock the universe and make my mother sit still long enough to hold me.
If I could play oh so beautifully, I reasoned, I would be worthy of love and people would feel bad for hurting my feelings - oh so many feelings to hide or deny.
Mostly because my dad had a tendency to die a lot - here and there during a surgery or what not. It happened. I mourned. I grieved. Shifted off to Grandmas or Uncles and Aunts. Loved. Tiny. Terrified.
When I could come home, the piano was there. Stalwart. Silently waiting for my return.
The more I played, the less Mom did. I noticed.
The days would sometimes stretch on with neither of us playing and my mood would inexplicably turn sour.
Dad would look one eye over the edge of his newspaper and ask, "When's the last time you played the piano?"
Thunderstruck, I would come to the realization that it had been too long, days, and my demeanor was the worse for it.
I have read and learned about the reason why the piano is the tool par excellence for encouraging synaptic fusion in young brains, but that all came much later, as I was preparing to teach.
The piano is a great and powerful coordinator of the human being in every dimension - physical, emotional, mental and yes, spiritual.
Is the reason that we don't know the name of the inventor of the piano because it was a gift from God Himself?
I'm just saying.
Seriously - the data to back up this assertation is is well documented.
The piano, specifically, the reading of sheet music and playing the piano on a regular basis is known to improve spatial-temporal lQ by 43% in young students.
When Dad and I were just starting out learning about the mind-brain connection, we encountered scientific literature that said human adults only had so many neurons and no more could be generated. It was thought to be like an arm or leg - you didn't just grow a new one.
But as I have conducted these experiments with students over the past decade and a half, I have seen proof positive that neurons can indeed and do regenerate, at least as a way to explain the dramatic and drastic differences in behavior, demeanor and healthy, positive personality traits that have been cultivated by this course of duty.
The science has, of course, confirmed this.
The piano, how shall I name thee?
Piano, the name itself is short for pianoforte, which is Italian for soft-loud.
This is the main difference between the instrument we know today, and its predecessor, the dread harpsichord, an instrument that attacks its strings with the same timbre and velocity as a swarm of miniature bees.
The piano far improved on this by allowing for dynamics - that is, the ability to play loud or softly, and a dampening effect that smoothed out the tone of the instrument to be more akin to buttery velvet than the brass tacks of the harpsichord.
From having conducted systematic piano lessons with clients over the past 5 years, I have noticed marked improvement in several areas as a correlated result.
1) Greater awareness - of what is and what is perceived
This tendency of the piano to provide consistency in notation, location and frequency vibration helps coordinate the eye - brain - hand connection and encourages accurate, timely response.
2) Self correction - emotionally, physically and mentally
The piano is ruthless. It is a principle. The note on the page is specifically one note and one note only - it vibrates at a certain frequency Hertz - trying to read sheet music is the same as learning a foreign language spoken by everyone in the world. It's hard. You have to practice. It can be frustrating. People don't know how to deal with frustration so well. Piano helps practice that skill.
3) Diagnosis and treatment - reveals dyslexia, blind spots and aversions and working on piano helps to remedy same.
When a person is working on right and left hand, it reveals information about coordination and first principles of the human organism individual to that person. Each person responds differently to systematic training, and there are frequent commonalities among hand dominance and other factors.
Once the diagnostician has assessed the situation, a recommended course of correction can be undertaken that strengthens the entire mechanism.
These are just a few of the benefits of working along these lines toward personal and professional achievement.
Want to do some piano training?
We use the Bastien method, and you can get your books here:
Want to work with me?
Let's have a conversation.
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