We grew up with a piano in the house and none of the seven of us kids bothered to learn to play it. As a result, even though I’m very musical, I’m not a musician.
My wife bought me an electric Casio full piano with heavy keys for Xmas some years ago. It would sit for months untouched until I got a song in my head and I would sit down to pick it out, then that would be it for another long stretch of time.
In the past year, I was at my brother’s for Thanksgiving. He has a piano (again, doesn’t know how to play it) and some of the kids were plinking around with it. I joined for a couple minutes but couldn’t do anything with it. Earlier that year I’d been at a resort hotel, saw a piano in the lobby, and really wished I could sit down and play something, anything. I felt embarrassed because, again, I’ve had a damn piano in my place of residence for probably most of my life.
So this year, I made an actual New Year’s resolution to learn to play five songs on the piano, so that whenever I would see one out in the wild, I’d be able to sit down and confidently play something at least halfway decent, and play it at least halfway decently.
And so, after committing to the work, I can now play “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” (i.e, Cheers theme song); “He Gives Us All His Love” by Randy Newman; the piano part of “Great Gig in the Sky” by Pink Floyd; and almost all of the piano part of “Layla” by Derek and the Dominoes. For my fifth song, I am currently working on completing “Fred Jones Part 2” by Ben Folds Five.
All these songs are quite simple and rather short, but they are, to me anyway, very beautiful-sounding songs that I think people might be at least a little impressed seeing someone play them.
I can’t play them all with zero mistakes yet, but I’m far enough along I feel pretty confident about going to my brother’s this TG, playing the songs and surprising some people who’ve known me for six-plus decades and would swear on a holy bible that I can’t play piano, same as them.
And moral of the story is: it’s not too late to call the audible.