Monday, January 19, 2009

Open Question: Have I been making fast progress, slow progress, average progress...?

Speaking in generalities; I know everyone is different. I started piano lessons when I was 10 but quit when I was 12 because my teacher sucked. Well, initially I left because she got way too snotty about my personal life (like giving me crap for calling my parents by their first names instead of 'mom' and 'dad', and when we switched to lessons at my house she wasted half a lesson making me build a barrier against my kitten because my teacher was afraid of cats. Not allergic, afraid) and then later I realized that all I'd learned to do was sight-read well enough to find patterns and fake my way through the rest. We'd never done any theory or anything. I think I made pretty fast progress. There was then a two year gap between lessons, meaning I started again at age 14. Now I'm up to Moszkowski's Spanish Dances (duet arrangements), Bach's little preludes and fugues, and stuff around that level. I'm 16 now. Due to bad family circumstances I can often go a whole week without practicing...but when I do practice I can have whole pieces on the level of the early Bach preludes memorized in two days. So is two years to get from starting back at the beginning to being at the level of music I'm at a long time, short time, or average time for the typical person who isn't a prodigy and has to deal with stuff like school? My parents have never objected to me calling them by their first names. My mom never said, "Go ask Dad if you can do that," she said, "Go ask [my father's name] if you can do that." Honestly, it would be weird if I called them Mom and Dad.

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