The Piano

9-14-09

I don't know if you are aware of this but I am a closet piano player. I am horrible at it but I love to play. I took lessons when I was a child but my teacher moved and then we could never find an appropriate replacement and so on and so on. I picked the lessons back up later in high school and college. While I was able to play all my major scales two octaves, minor scales in all forms one octave, sight read a four part melody, and prepare an etude, that was really the height of my piano playing career. I passed my piano proficiency exam and never really looked back. I love listening to the piano and picking out melodies and chord progressions but I haven't had a piano since I was an adult out on my own. All that changed today.

We bought a piano. We have wanted a piano for a while now. Michael is even more of a closet pianist except that he is actually good. He took 18 years of piano or something like that. He plops down on the piano and starts picking out a Chopin piece he remembers from when he was five. I pick out jingles from the radio. Despite our diversity in playing talent we both wanted to have a piano in the house. I like to use it to help me figure out choir parts or flute accompaniment. So Michael has been looking for a little while.

Did you know that piano salespeople are much like car salespeople? They never want to give you a quote over the phone. They like you to come in and "check out all the inventory". What's up with that? It's just like a car dealer. When we bought our first Camry we knew exactly what we wanted. We walked in and went to a salesman and told him our needs. He tried to up the options and change our car choice. He was always very sly about it, never really being pushy but just rather suggestive. When he finally figured out that we were solid with our needs he got very deflated. Then he was not interested in being kind or polite in conversation. He very flatly filled out the paperwork and went on his way. I would think that a customer who knows what he wants would be more desirable over a wishy-washy loser that can't decide what color to make the interior. Maybe not if you work on commission.

So we had similar issues in trying to get a piano. They were the slick men in suits and ties trying to load down our truck with an extra expensive piano. Fortunately Michael had really researched the pianos and had a solid deal with this company before we arrived. There was some cosmetic damage and we got a BIG discount. The people we ended up working with were very friendly and I would recommend them to anyone in the market for a keyboard. Just be careful that you know what you want. You could go in for a Casio keyboard and come out with a Steinway Grand.

Have a blessed evening and thanks for reading my 22nd blog!

PS. I will just be over here practicing how to play the NFL theme on my new piano.