[ 3 ☽ 9 ☼ 2015 年 ]

I started playing piano when I was seven years old.

I had a very strict Chinese mother who sat next to me every night. My fingers would fumble on the piano, and my mother would complain because it’d be the 1000th time I’d made exactly the same mistake. My elbows would droop and my fingers would fall apart. She’d yell at me because I wasn’t listening to her. I’d start crying and she’d shout, saying I didn’t have the right attitude. I’d cry and cry and cry. I’d cry.

I’d just keep crying and crying.

I cried every night for a very long time.

I thought I hated piano.

I hated almost everything about it. I hated the recitals, I hated practicing, and I hated being bad at it. I couldn’t remember the notes and I hated the embarrassment of sitting up there on the stage fumbling over a missed section.

But I was also too stubborn to quit. My mother would threaten making me quit piano, and then I’d really really cry because for some reason nothing seemed more horrifying than that. I don’t even understand why.

I just kept on playing piano for eleven years.

★ ★ ★

Video game music and piano transcriptions saved me.

They saved me because I didn’t truly begin to appreciate piano until I found these pieces. When I discovered Yiruma and Tong Hua (Fairy Tale), my eyes were suddenly opened to a world of piano pieces that I actually enjoyed. I printed out sheet music and saved them in a binder. They were precious to me; little pieces of joy that I could run off to and elope with whenever Mendelssohn and Schumann was not haunting me.

They were my secret little garden.

Nowadays, with me no longer taking piano lessons and all those Classical pieces forgotten, I come home from university and I’m confronted with that little black upright piano.

That tiny little bench I spent so many nights of my childhood.

Nowadays, even with the lights off, I’ll run my hands over the piano and feel the keys. I’ll let my hands wander and explore those familiar corners. Even though I never learned to improvise, my hands shift through familiar patterns that I know by heart, and disjoint motifs and fragmented melodies just come out.

Nowadays, I play piano whenever I’m lonely.

Nowadays, I play piano whenever I’m sad.

Nowadays, I play piano whenever I have nothing to do and I have murky feelings swimming under the shallow surface of my chest.

If I see a piano nowadays, I want to touch it.

★ ★ ★

Let me share with you my top ten most played piano transcriptions that sit at the top of my little binder of sheet music. They’re like my best friends, because these are the sounds that accompany me whenever I’m sad or stressed.

Like the time when my grandfather died and I played piano all night.

Or when I got dumped by the person I was going out with.

All these sounds, I hope you enjoy.

★ ★ ★

1. Eternity ~Memory of Light and Waves~ (Kyle Landry)

2. Kiss the Rain (Yiruma)

3. One Summer’s Day (Joe Hisaishi)

4. Hallelujah (Kyle Landry)

5. Merry Go Round of Life (Joe Hisaishi)

6. To Zanarkand – Final Fantasy (fugu-chan)

7. Reset – Okami Piano Arrange (Capcom)

8. Circle of Life – Lion King (Kyle Landry)

9. Sweet & Sweet Cheery – Golden Time OP1 (Animenz)

10. Shanghai Teahouse ~ Chinese Tea – Touhou (Tenmon)

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【 anonymousmatcha - written 1458 days ago 】