Rusty

After more than four years of piano study, Megan decided to take a year off.

Ok, that’s a lie: I took a year off.

A couple of months ago, however, I suddenly realized to my utter horror that my Starbucks vanilla bean frap fund had run dry. I urgently needed to supplement my government warehouse pittance.

“Ok, Megan, when do we to start classes again?” I asked her in passing one day.

A week later we were sitting at her piano, and I watched in shock as my former wunderkind hunched over her keyboard like Quasimodo, twisted fingers pounding the keys in hideous cacophony. She had gotten—oh, dare I say it?—rusty.

I panicked.

Immediately, I put her on an emergency prescription of all the major and minor scales, arpeggios, and cadences, supplemented with a heavy dose of Hanon’s Le Piano Virtuose. She was not even to look at the piano without using the metronome. And if she could convince a doctor to surgically implant it in her brain, even better.

For sight reading, we reverted to the beginning of her adult method book, burning through six or seven short pieces a week. She wasn’t to bother getting them to performance spec—just get the notes under her fingers and move on. I had her hand-copy Bach’s Minuet in G for theory review, identifying terms and chord sequences (more on this subject in a future installment), and then start preparing it as a potential performance number.

A month and a half later, Megan’s command of the keyboard in all the keys is much smoother, and in Hanon we’re starting to crank up the metronome as her control allows. She has recovered proper posture, thanks to my frequent ruler brandishing. We’re slowing down through her method book and spending a little more time on interpretation. Megan has been released from the ER. Rustiness is in clinical regression. Recuperation is nearly complete.

Note: Megan is not her real name.