Music

Davan asked on and off over the summer about maybe taking some piano lessons. My step dad has an extra keyboard which he's offered up to us on a long term loan sort of situation. I picked it up last week. Davan set it up immediately and started teaching herself how to play.

She was added by a book that her piano teacher had asked her to get. Her piano teacher is an 11 year old young lady who's going into the piano teaching business. Davan is her first student. We're getting a great rate.

Davan has been just flying through the book and sitting down at the piano every chance she gets. She had her first lesson on Friday and just barely scratched the surface of the book. However, her teacher did ask her to do some things she might not otherwise have concentrated on, so it's probably good to have the lessons anyway.

However, I then started to teach myself with her book. At first, Davan seemed happy about this. She shared what she'd learned in her lesson with me and enjoyed hearing me work on songs she'd already worked on. But then we got into reading music.

It's more difficult than the stuff before. I got there first. I'm struggling, but working on it. Davan is struggling but not working on it. In fact, I haven't seen or heard her at the keyboard sense about noon yesterday. That doesn't seem like too long and it might just be that she's into other things, but I don't know. It almost seems like she's given up. She's not even practicing older stuff.

So, there are, I think, two things at work here. One is the more difficult aspect of reading the music. The other is that I'm ahead.

I'm thinking I need a different instrument. Something where we could play together might be nice, but without being is sort of direct competition.

I used to play violin. I was Davan's age or so. I only did it for a year. I regret giving it up, though. There happens to be a violin in my closet. It belongs to my friend, Chris, and is in need of some repairs. She was happy to loan it to me a couple of years ago, with the plan that I'd get the repairs done and use it. I think it might be time for that.