Tuesday 1 April 2008

Teaching piano

I'm trying to teach my girls to play the piano. It's taken a while but at last I've been reminded about a fundamental thing, which is that you can't play piano until you can sing. Until you've got the sound in your head, sitting in front of a piano keyboard is just typing practice. Artur Rubinstein taught me that, in a couple of minutes on a documentary. But I keep forgetting.

So this morning Violet, Ruby and I were in the kitchen and I was asking Ruby to sing with me. 'C-D-C-D-C-D-Ceeeeee' Just those two notes. We pushed a bit on the repertoire from time to time to include A, B and E, but hey, easy does it.

This is as basic to playing the piano as learning Romans 1:1-17, and Romans 3:21-26 is basic to learning Christianity.

Learn it! Learn it in Greek, even if you don't understand it. Then take it apart piece by piece, think about it, pray about it, and reassemble it. One day you will wake up and see the Lord Jesus face to face, and understand in full what it is that you've remembered in part.

But be warned. If you do not, in the grace of God, understand it, then do not attempt to learn it. Return it to the shelf, because if you learn without understanding, it will return in fiery judgement on the last day to condemn.

Whereas any fool can learn to sing, and it's good fun too.

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