Step Post Project Reflection – Aidan Johnson
My project was in the creative category. I used the distributed funds to purchase a keyboard piano and two months of weekly piano lessons.
The first time I ever played piano was in second grade. I took lessons for quite a while before quitting in my third year of high school, and over time lost much of the skill of playing piano and the connection with music it brought me. At Ohio State, I chose to pursue a science degree, but I would primarily consider myself a creative person. I enjoy writing and stories especially, but music has always been an important part of my life. Without a way to reliably practice piano or play music at all in college, I felt like I was missing out on something important. With that in mind, I decided to try and reconnect with music by using the step funds on a weighted key keyboard and piano lessons.
In combination with weekly lessons, I now have a reliable way to practice piano on my own time in my own space. For me, piano is not only about learning and connecting with music, but a way of teaching patience, consistency, hard work, and critical thinking. In other words, it is a difficult skill to learn. While I am not learning piano from the ground up, I am playing harder and harder songs the more I practice. It is my end goal in the far future to be able to easily pick up difficult pieces and play them for myself, and while that is and will be slow going, I am confident that I will be able to through hard work and dedication. Through this summer experience, I have not only reconnected with a part of myself that I did not know how much I missed but given myself a personal goal to strive for that is outside of my career or academic pursuits.
It was very hard at first. I had not played or read sheet music in a long while. I tried to rely on my retained knowledge and muscle memory to play songs, but my teacher, Mrs. Miller-Fry was very astute in her lesson plans and started me off on simpler songs that helped me relearn the basics of piano and music theory. It was the foundation I needed to start again.
At first, I slightly overestimated my piano playing ability. As a part of the Columbus Conservatory for piano’s program, I was allowed to choose a few songs I wanted to learn for myself. I selected one well known song I have always liked and wanted to play, Merry-Go-Round-of-Life from the Hayao Miyazaki film, Howl’s Moving Castle. It is a very flowing, if not a little melancholic, waltz that has an exciting, grand melody. Despite how much I like the song, I realized that it would be much more of a challenge than I first anticipated when it took me a few days of practice to even get a decent start at playing the page. It was clear I had a long way to go.
Mrs. Miller-Fry chose more songs for me that fit my skill level, and I began to gradually progress. While I am not currently where I once was, it is an improvement over the first time I did more than fool around on a piano in three and a half years.
I’ve always been interested in playing music. Aside from piano, I played trumpet throughout middle and high school. In high school, I played piano for my school’s show choir and got to travel to competitions. While I missed doing this, I missed even more the creative aspect of piano. Some people, especially instrumentalists who don’t play the piano themselves, see it as a “flat” instrument because there is less room for expression compared to, say, string instruments, which have incredibly wide sound capabilities. In my opinion that could not be further from the truth. The piano player has lots of control over volume and tone and can alter the entire meaning of the same piece just by playing differently. This is an important skill and art, and it is one that I used to have a better understanding of, until I started to play again. One piece that I am learning that is helping me reconnect with this ability is Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. It is a challenge to reconnect with my own creative, expressive energy to perfect this piece, but it is also a joy to do so. I can say with confidence that pursuing this goal of playing piano has been an excellent endeavor that I am expecting to enjoy for a long time.
This project is important to me for a few reasons. Firstly, I enjoy the feeling of achieving something. Going from knowing nothing about a piece of music to being able to understand, play it well, and make it your own, is a very satisfying experience. Secondly, I want to have more hobbies. In college, I lost a lot of free time and as a result, some of the interests and hobbies that I had. Finally, and most importantly, I love music and want to be able to play and understand it. I want to be great at something not related to my career, and think it is worth it to spend time and money to achieve this.
Permission from Ashley Miller-Fry was given for this photo.