Trying to Learn Piano: 4

The cheeky fellow in the picture above is from a new Ipad app that I purchased in the hope that it would speed up the painful process of learning to read sheet music.
His sprout like visage has replaced the previous picture (some sort of Ipad update) which was of a very grumpy looking Mozart.
Grumpy Mozart would appear to scold me whenever I failed to score acceptably highly on his music reading tests.
‘Screw you Mozart’ I would think. ‘It’s not my fault that you have ridiculously high standards’.
Probably if my father had forced me to practice piano for hours and hours every day in a locked room, I would also have been a child prodigy.
Mozart’s father would today have had a safeguarding case opened on him by social services faster than you could say ‘Minuet in G major’.
I picture poor child Mozart rather like a white wigged Michael Jackson. Forever staring plaintively from his practice room window at the happy boys and girls playing outside. Knowing that he could never be a part of their normal world. Maybe Mozart also had a creepy Neverland style ranch (although in his case it would have probably been themed around the brothers Grimm). Maybe he spoke in a high girlish voice and Moonwalked onto the stage for piano recitals.
I have started listening to more stuff on classic FM in recent weeks. I suppose that classical music is much like any other genre & that for every ‘Automatic for the People’ perfect album there are hours & hours of mind numbingly awful ‘ filler’ tracks.
I have in the past few weeks heard one or two pieces of music which made my blood thrill, my balls feel bigger and brought me closer to God. For every one of these I have heard probably couple of hours of repetitive scratching on violins and people approaching the piano as if it were an Olympic ‘speed playing’ event rather than with the intention of playing anything worthwhile.

It is my understanding that piano’s could not be manufactured until after Bach’s death and so they are a relatively new kid on the block. But seriously, come on people. No wonder folks are so slow to jump on the classical music bandwagon when it appears to actively discourage new passengers. This week I accidently turned on Classic Fm late at night and it was totally different. Music from films and modern videogames. Tunes you could really hum. Why can’t they play more of this stuff during the day. But no, back to our regularly scheduled program of Baroque scratching and Alled Jones milking the crap out of his career.
I tried to learn violin some years back but it wouldn’t stay on my shoulder properly so I stuck it in the loft for a while. I found it the other day and the fretboard bit had come away from the body.
I smashed it up and burnt it in my shed.
It felt good.

Although the noise that I was able to get out of the violin could not have been described as ‘thrilling the blood’. It was heavens sweet song compared to the plastic saccharine tones dished out by my Aldi keyboard.
The keyboard boasts over 100 tones & I believe it. I have taken more than one hundred craps in my life but I would not presume to digitally capture them and claim that they were workable instrument facsimiles.
I have been through all of them & managed to find five which do not cause me to wince with every key depression. Despite this, my children love playing the horribly arranged demo songs and my daughter has developed her own words and dance to one of them which she insists on doing whenever she finds me trying to practice scales in the shed (the keyboard is not allowed to live in the house with my other instruments).
Oh well, let’s see if I can score more than nine points this time.