Sharps and Flats (commonapp essay)
Rays of the early morning sun peep into my room. They fall on my face, and I wake up. I make my way to the living room on tiptoes, careful to preserve the tranquil silence. And there it is, perched on top of a wooden platform, the sunbeams reflecting elegantly from its burnished skin, a giant, mahogany oak structure. My piano.
I lift the covering and out come the keys, black and white. Time stands still as I gaze at them, mesmerized by the way they coexist with each other, in a fraternity. And then I start playing.
The melody of Chopin's Nocturne pierces through the thick silence. Surrounded by the cacophony of musical notes, I become separated from the physical world. My emotions start going wild as I feel energy pulsating through every artery, every vein and every capillary. I am overwhelmed by a force I cannot see and I am rising. I am soaring high.
I fall. The world comes back into focus and the melody stops. What had happened? I looked down on the keyboard and saw my index finger on a black key, a sharp.
A flat was the correct note to be played.
For as long as I can remember, the janus faced nature of the black keys had always confused me. C sharp is the same key as the D flat. D sharp is the same note as E flat. C does not have a flat, E a sharp, while D has both. Key signatures never made sense to me; that is, until I grew older.
According to history, when Bartolomeo Cristofori first created the pianoforte, he called it a "harpsichord with loudness and softness". It was given qualities that none of its parents, the dulcimer or the clavichord, possessed. It was made for perfection.
It is strangely human, the piano. The black keys, how they sound so similar and yet produce tunes so different. How the same key can produce two different meanings and how the same meaning can be found from two different keys. How the piano sounds different, unique, each time I attempt to play it.
Countless are the number of times I have played a wrong note, produced a wrong melody and heard a wrong sound. Wrong sharps and wrong flats have appeared numerous times in the staccatos of my life. I have often sat in silence, looking down on the keys, frustrated by my inability to get them right.
But I practiced.
I got better.
I became good.
I became very good.
I became excellent.
There is a lesson I have learned over my years as a pianist. There are more white keys than black ones. More normals than sharps or flats. And all it takes to hit the right keys, is to play the wrong ones, and learn from it.
I take a shot at Nocturne once more. This time, there are no mistakes. No wrong sharps, no inappropriate flats. The melody is untainted, smooth and mellifluous.
I had done it.
please leave comments...and be real harsh!!!
Rays of the early morning sun peep into my room. They fall on my face, and I wake up. I make my way to the living room on tiptoes, careful to preserve the tranquil silence. And there it is, perched on top of a wooden platform, the sunbeams reflecting elegantly from its burnished skin, a giant, mahogany oak structure. My piano.
I lift the covering and out come the keys, black and white. Time stands still as I gaze at them, mesmerized by the way they coexist with each other, in a fraternity. And then I start playing.
The melody of Chopin's Nocturne pierces through the thick silence. Surrounded by the cacophony of musical notes, I become separated from the physical world. My emotions start going wild as I feel energy pulsating through every artery, every vein and every capillary. I am overwhelmed by a force I cannot see and I am rising. I am soaring high.
I fall. The world comes back into focus and the melody stops. What had happened? I looked down on the keyboard and saw my index finger on a black key, a sharp.
A flat was the correct note to be played.
For as long as I can remember, the janus faced nature of the black keys had always confused me. C sharp is the same key as the D flat. D sharp is the same note as E flat. C does not have a flat, E a sharp, while D has both. Key signatures never made sense to me; that is, until I grew older.
According to history, when Bartolomeo Cristofori first created the pianoforte, he called it a "harpsichord with loudness and softness". It was given qualities that none of its parents, the dulcimer or the clavichord, possessed. It was made for perfection.
It is strangely human, the piano. The black keys, how they sound so similar and yet produce tunes so different. How the same key can produce two different meanings and how the same meaning can be found from two different keys. How the piano sounds different, unique, each time I attempt to play it.
Countless are the number of times I have played a wrong note, produced a wrong melody and heard a wrong sound. Wrong sharps and wrong flats have appeared numerous times in the staccatos of my life. I have often sat in silence, looking down on the keys, frustrated by my inability to get them right.
But I practiced.
I got better.
I became good.
I became very good.
I became excellent.
There is a lesson I have learned over my years as a pianist. There are more white keys than black ones. More normals than sharps or flats. And all it takes to hit the right keys, is to play the wrong ones, and learn from it.
I take a shot at Nocturne once more. This time, there are no mistakes. No wrong sharps, no inappropriate flats. The melody is untainted, smooth and mellifluous.
I had done it.
please leave comments...and be real harsh!!!