Back on the horse

I played the piano today, which I haven't done in almost three years. Since I've been feeling better physically lately, it's been getting harder and harder to come up with reasons not to get back to practicing. I was afraid I'd be more or less back to square one, but actually it wasn't that bad. My hands have gotten weak, with the possible exception of my left thumb which I believe must be super strong by now thanks to its unending service to TiVo. So, I'll have to put my nose to the grindstone a bit and do those good old fashioned Hanon exercises. The other part I need to work on most is reading the music. I'm afraid my old enemy the bass clef has come back to haunt me. Every time I think I've learned it, it gets erased from my Etch-A-Sketch of a brain by some health problem that keeps me away from music for a while.

On a more positive note, (no pun intended), I found that I can still read a melody line and play block cords. I even played the cords and sang an entire song straight through, which is way more than I really expected to be able to do on my first day back at the keyboard. It's a simple, but beautiful song -- "Your Memory" by Lost and Found. Does anyone detect a pattern here?

Anyway, one of my reasons for sharing this news with whoever may be reading this is the hope that it will make me keep playing. I've played a couple of instruments in my life (clarinet and bassoon plus piano) but I've never been faithful about practicing. So I state now, for the record, that I intend to spend some time working on the keyboard/piano at least two days a week. One thing I want to do is to re-learn the opening vamp to "Seasons of Love" from "Rent," which I used to be able to play. I'll let you know how it goes.