So I sat down for .87 seconds last night (that was about all the free time I had) and started with my latest adventure of learning to accurately play the piano. I dug out my old Peavey DPM-4SE synth of the closet and set it up next to the piano. Since it was late, Georgia was in bed and Irelyn was trying to sleep, I thought it’d best if I practiced with headphones.

Well, the Peavey hadn’t been used in, oh I dunno, years. So boot up was a spectacular failure. When I bought the damn thing in ‘95, Peavey had assured me the 4SE was obsolete-proof because of its firmware based technology. Which was all fine and dandy until they stopped building them. Plus, they failed to tell me that they must have based the original OS on early beta releases of Windows 95 because the thing has a lovely tendency to crash.

Well, when I booted it up, the screen was nothing but jumbled bits. Then a lovely message of SYSTEM ERROR 0xE0013FF popped up which translated into English means ‘Dude, you’re screwed. Go home’. Touching any of the buttons caused the screen to hose back up so trying to navigate was impossible.

Then the memories kicked in.

Don’t ask me how I did it, because it wasn’t a conscious effort. The last time I had used the synth was as a MIDI trigger for the computer, so playing it was unimportant so long as when I hit a key, the signal was sent out. The last time I actually had used the synth as a synth and had to use the screen had to be at least 4 years ago, possibly more. But even back then I had issues with the instrument similar to what I saw last night. And, true to their word, the DPM-4SE could be reset & reprogrammed on the fly (the so called obsolete-proofing). The problem is you had to navigate through menus to load the info off of a disk. Amazingly, my fingers disconnected themselves from conscious control and punched every button exactly right and reloaded the programs. Problem solved.

So, happy with myself I sat down and started reading my new book on learning the piano. Since I played sax in high school band and was fairly proficient in guitar, a lot of the intro stuff was boring, but I forced myself to go through each step as I have to relearn how to sight read. There was a ‘clapping’ session to get the feel for rhythm and the book’s author uses the British terms of quaver,crotchet, semi-brave, etc which totally blows my mind. I think if I see a reference to a Quasihemidemisemiquaver I’m going to call it quits.

So far, so good. Nothing I wouldn’t have expected. The exercises came in their most simplest form. With the right hand play C D E F G F E D C. Then the left. Lather, rinse, repeat. No big deal until I had to play them both at the same time.

Turns out, my right hand can be trained to do just about anything within a very, very short amount of time. I guess the 30 plus years of being right handed helps. But my left hand is useless. My right hand pounded out the 5 notes perfectly at any speed I wanted, but the left hand floundered like a teenage boy trying to unhook his first bra. And then it kicked in. That old feeling I’d not felt since high school. Pure, unadulterated frustration.

What is the most frustrating is that I can play Fur Elise, a large portion of Tocatta & Fugue in D minor, and a few little ditties that give the impression I know what I’m doing. But, as I found out last night, those are mechanical reproductions, not actual ‘playing’. So I’m resigned to the fact that yes, I will sit for 30 minutes at a time playing Mary Had a Friggin’ Lamb over and over and over until my damned left hand figures out what the hell is going on.

I do plan on, however, learning enough by Christmas so we can sing a few carols as a family.