Learning Theory

A little while ago, I was at the piano dragging myself through “Sweet Home Chicago,” trying to develop some blues piano chops. My wife, Padma, has been learning a little bit about piano, and she asked me, “When two people sit down and play the piano together… how does that work?”

I started to play the different parts of “Heart and Soul” to show her how four-hand piano works, but I realized I hadn't played that song for maybe 35 years. I learned it on my Grandma's piano one Thanksgiving when I was a litle tyke. My older cousins were playing it, and they taught me to play the melody part. It became something of a tradition every year after that, when I would drag one of them to the piano to play it with me.

Now, the way I learned piano as a kid was completely by ear. My Mom, Grandma, and one of my aunts played piano, and all of my older cousins played as well, so I was exposed to a lot of music early on. Maybe there was some talent that ran in the family, because I was playing simple melodies as early as four years old. When I first learned to play “Heart and Soul” with my cousins, I was probably around 8 or 9.

Several years later, my Mom bought me a book on music theory. I never got too far into it, but I did learn enough to read music. I never learned to sight read all that well, but it was enough that I could drag myself measure-by-measure through a piece of music until I memorized it.