Chapter 11: Musical Hearts

Dear reader,

Wow..your eyes are beautiful...can I touch them? :P

Haha. It's that time of the day again, when you put aside what you are doing and curiously click the link on one of the social media outlets. You stumble across my blog which now has a few visual changes, including a snazzy post widget, and social media contact animation tool. You look at today's topic photo and see a red haired girl in a medieval dress playing a cello while a black cat peers mysteriously back at you. Stay with me, it gets better :D

You wonder what the title "musical hearts" is all about and I give you a cheeky smile and say it's about the music in our lives and how everyone has a musical heart of genius made to enjoy music, play music, or both. At the end of this article I pray that I can give you some inspiration to pick up that instrument that you left behind, or listen to new genres of music to broaden your horizons. Or, to pick up something completely new--to go that extra distance and give music a go one last time. 


This is my story with music. I came to university not knowing how to play the piano. There was an out of tune piano and an organ in the cellars (a small basement) of my university, about 5 minutes away from my dorm. About three times a week I would head down there and attempt to play and it sounded terrible. I had no plan to what I was playing, no knowledge of music at all, and to this day I still can't read it. After a while, perhaps after a week or two, I discovered that the piano would sound less terrible when you made shapes with your fingers (usually with some pattern) and so the first thing I played in musical terms was an F major chord in its basic form. With my three middle fingers I pressed down (like a dinosaur) on the notes F, A and C. At the time I didn't know what these were called, all I knew was that it sounded better than "Grrghghghbuuung". I then learnt that with the same dinosaur claw, if I moved every finger one to the right along the white keys I could make another sound. This time I was playing the basic G major chord, the notes being G, B, and D. I then went back and forth on these two chords and this was my first song. It might have been a great theme to a horror film, especially when students would come in and there would be me sitting in the semi-darkness like a vampire playing the ode to emo.

A month later I looked around my family home for my sister's old keyboard. She had lessons when she was little but never pursued them. It was a tiny thing and it sounded like a robot being electrocuted, but it was  better than the piano at the university. I took it back up with me, plugged it into my room and then with a permanent marker made little stars (*) on the keys where my fingers were to go. From here my ability ascended. Every day I played, until my fingers grew this strange biological memory. I found that I could remember in my mind not the shape of the hand or the sequence of the notes, but the echo of one sound following the last. After F and G, I found A minor, then E minor, D, D minor and C. I then stopped it with the piano racism and tried those black keys. Haha :P. I realized that I could make oriental noises by playing just the black keys alone. I then combined these to make other shapes and here I found Cm, Bb, and F#minor and a wide range of 7's and 9's for those musicians out there.

Over the next few months, I learnt how to extend the chords by drawing out the music into single notes that flowed like water rather than a block of sound. As my ability grew and my left hand became automatic, so I began to improvise with my right. There came a point where my fingers started to see pathways  across the keys such that they could tread over specific keys to make new sounds, like walking over bridges of harmony. Rather than memorizing each note, I saw them (scale in musical terms) as a whole in my mind. At first making my first songs was a flurry of experimentation until I started to dream about piano, dream about music composition and the first song I took from a dream was called "Widow's Eve".

I stayed it with it, and now, as a graduate of the University of Buckingham, with no piano lessons under my belt and no knowledge of musical theory, I have since played in four piano concerts at my university, provided entertainment for the Chinese Liberal Democrats where in both cases I performed my own romantic progressive piano pieces that I composed entirely by improvisation. Journalism students made a documentary about me and my new found gift. I have recorded my first EP at a studio with four full length songs, I have a number of websites (click the piano icon on the homepage of this blog) and I am still composing to this day, and I do all of this as a non-profit hobby on the side.

Now here is the fun part--I want you to do it too. Yes, I'm pointing at you--don't look the other way as if I'm a crazy person :). What I have mentioned above may be described as talent, it may also be described as skill, or just crazy determination. Whether I have one of these qualities, all of them, or none--the result is the same. I believe that with my experience with this art form everyone can pick up an instrument and with the right will power can learn the ways of playing and understanding music. It takes patience, and it takes a little craziness to let go of yourself, it also takes a great deal of appreciation for the art itself. The truth is that if you listen to a lot of music (and different genres of it too) your brain already has a knack for the musical art. :) You already have a great sense of timing and can voice the music well. You know when a song could be better; perhaps you hum or sing in a melody over the song you are listening to. Perhaps you can remember the lyrics of your favorite songs easily. These are the thoughts of a musician :).

I chose the piano for its versatility and that it is the best instrument in my eyes for channeling my emotions and artistry. I want you to go out there and choose something, whether it is a new genre of music, or a new musical instrument that allows you to be free. If playing is not for you, then design beats. I recommend making music on apps like Garageband for your Apple products, or practice singing and dance in the clubs.

Never stick yourself to one thing and this applies to music more than anything. If you listen to R&B, good, but listen to instrumental music too. If you listen to classical music, good, but listen to rock music too. If you listen to rock, great, just make sure you listen to those dancing songs as well. The more music you can have in your life the better--feed that musical heart of yours. When you hear your own heart singing and playing music that's when you know-- you're finally free.
Have a great weekend :).