It's midnight with no moonlight in my room. I sit in front of the keyboard and decide to play. Even in the darkness of the night, my hands were familiar with the keys to work around them. I played softly with my fingers pressing each key like caressing a baby. After all, the piano was my baby in some metaphorical sense. I played the C major scale and other scales and chords on it. Continuing this midnight vibe, I played soft songs- River Flows In You by Yiruma, Carol Of The Bells, Up theme song and chord progressions. Chord progressions are chords that sound good together, played in any order to appease the ear and strength the pianist's fingers. I have been studying music theory in the morning and learning about all these new things. The feeling of researching your interests is addicting. It's the fine wine poured endlessly in your mind. Like wine with a bitter taste, knowledge in the first drink is somewhat the same. My music theory was in small pieces with nothing interlinking with each other. But like wine, when it finally comes to you, you are swept in the feeling of euphoria. Tonight, all those bits of information decided to link themselves. I sat there, overwhelmed by the big picture of music that came into view.
I had an inconsistent relationship with the piano. Like, the popular trope- from hate to love, applies to me and the piano. At the start, I used to hate the tediousness of pressing keys and attending piano class while my friends played. I wasn't fond of my teacher, who used to shout in a loud pitch with a heavy accent or that I had to play the songs of her choice with my little fingers. It made me soon stop playing until one evening when I felt lonely and decided to play. I started again with no teacher and just me and the piano. The intimacy with the keys grew, and I fell in love with those musical yet silent in a way I can't explain notes. The piano became my companion until life got busy again. With my study load, time was scarce, and I again stopped playing. When I returned, the keys had gone old, and new technology made my old friend undesirable and obsolete. That keyboard was in my life for 15 years with not much maintenance. The yellow keys had completed their role in my life.
With a lot of pleading, I got a new keyboard and touched the white matte keys. It felt surreal how beautiful it looked with the black keys over the white. It was the opposite of the night sky, with shining stars over the black sky. My journey started again with just me and the piano. Cause of old times, it was easy to figure out where to start and how. I started studying music theory and playing my heart desires. With the help of an online course on music theory, the desire to read those music sheets as my third language and play with my feelings sparked.
After weeks of addiction to this serene activity, I failed to see my progress until now. Suddenly, all the pieces fell into place. The various attempts of me trying to learn piano felt worthy of it. Sitting now, in darkness with the keys, I felt strangely vulnerable. I played the keys with the softest touch. The music again gave me a fragile, delicate sense of silence. A harsh breath could have shattered this, but that didn't happen. This moment stretched infinitely like a thread without breaking. It reflected my journey of so many years as I finally saw it. The music is gorgeously structured and makes you love humans and life for what it can create. Music originates from the C major Scale. Like a tree and its branches, it's wild and, yet beautiful, growing in every direction. This scale is the first music lesson. It starts from the white key named C, on the left of the pair of black keys. You play all the white keys in order until you reach C again. It creates a pattern you can follow starting from any key, and you will get a Major scale. Next, you can get its minor, Chords, Sevenths and everything else. The music grows from just one scale and will never fail to astound me.
The beautiful part of all this musical knowledge is that all of it is so connected. All the notes, scales and chords are interlinked. My heart is glad to have a piano in my life, to play it and study it. All connections are grounded in human relations and so many aspects of life. The phrase- small world is proof of connections made by humans. It is like all humans can be linked together. Even though the chain would be infinitely long, it will come to me. No love gets wasted in the end. It will come back to you in one way or another. All we need is to live and love while we can. Music sure is gorgeous and built, wild, soft and harsh and anything you want it to be. Music is the language present all around and takes my heart everywhere.
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