Piano Lessons

Many parents enroll their children in musical instrument lessons at an early age in hopes of fostering discipline, focus and an affinity for music. What they don’t realize is that focus and discipline aren’t cool. What’s cool is playing the guitar, and most parents make their kids learn some culturally irrelevant instrument like the harp or piano.

If you were one of those unfortunate children, then you were likely filled with poisonous envy every time you saw someone serenade their peers with a simple tune from their guitar. You also harbored secret resentment toward your parents, who didn’t have the foresight to choose an instrument that would make you popular.

The most common choice of instrument for children by their parents is the piano. This is likely because pianos add a subtle elegance to the living room and they can be played at a mild volume. But children don’t want to play the piano. All of their favorite musicians play the guitar, and keyboard players in most bands are easily and frequently replaced. This is why, as teenagers, many piano students eventually attempt to learn the guitar. However, there is a great hurdle that students of the piano need to overcome when learning the guitar: guitars don’t make sense.

If you are one whose first language is the piano, then you probably have a difficult time understanding how the guitar works. This is because a piano’s keys are is simple to play and its notes are arranged in a linear progression; the guitar is much different. This is how a piano player sees a guitar:

This example uses standard tuning on a six-string guitar with twenty-four frets. The guitar’s notes are a maze compared to those of the piano, but this diagram doesn’t tell the whole story.

The use of color in musical notation has long been ignored. By assigning each note in an octave its own color, students can recognize each note much more quickly and easily. This also allows us to more clearly see the drastic dissimilarity between the arrangement of notes on a keyboard and a guitar. For this example we will borrow the electronic color code, since it has twelve colors, and this will promote uniformity between the professions, allowing those in the electronics field to easily transition into music.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Because each string has its own tuning, the colors produce a chaotic spectrum that is sure to confound even the most accomplished pianist. This depiction isn’t entirely accurate, however, since it does not portray the horizontal distance that the guitar’s notes would cover on a piano.

There you have it, a guitar is actually six individually-tuned keyboards stacked one on top of another, offset by several notes. Even if we can make sense of this system, there is still the problem of adapting to the puzzling mechanics of the guitar.

The guitar has a shorter range of frequency than the keyboard. Also, the keyboard can be played with either or both hands, while the guitar must be played with two hands at all times. Both hands operate in basically the same way on a piano, while the guitar requires that each hand perform a distinct function. Furthermore, a keyboard player may strike one to ten different notes at the same time (or more if afflicted by polydactyly), while a guitarist may only pluck one or two strings or strum up to six adjacent strings. Guitar players are also limited by the tuning of the guitar, since each configuration has its own advantages and drawbacks.

One way to avoid some trouble in transitioning from the piano to the guitar is to use open tuning. This guitar configuration allows chords to be played without learning complex fingering.

Although the differences may not appear significant, open tuning produces a major chord when six parallel frets are held together. This allows the musician to play each major chord by simply stretching one finger along a fret.

So you want your children to learn piano? Teach them guitar. Once they can play the guitar, learning the piano will be a breeze.

Possessed

To begin, answer these two questions:

1. Of the movies you own, which one is your favorite?

2. When was the last time you watched it?

Chances are you haven’t sat down and soaked in this classic in quite some time. You adore this film and you have access to it at all times, yet you never watch it. Why is this?

The graph above shows how likely we are to watch the movies that we love during the various phases of release. We can see how excitement and anticipation cause increased viewing likelihood during theatrical and DVD release, as well as small swells upon television premier and DVD purchase. Now let’s see what availability looks like throughout the release period:

If we compare these two graphs, we can see that there is a correlation between the film’s availability and the likelihood of watching it. When the movie is in stages of high availability, the likelihood of watching is increased. This is generally true up to the DVD purchase, when likelihood and availability diverge. What is especially fascinating, and the subject of our focus, is how the likelihood of watching is at its lowest point when availability is at its highest. To clarify: when you own something, you no longer desire it.

Think about all that you desire in life. These are things that you do not currently have. At first it seems obvious and appropriate that we do not yearn for something which we possess, but this behavior is, in fact, strangely self-defeating and masochistic.

Besides possession, or ownership, and desire, choice also contributes to the behavior. In order to desire something, there must be an option for us to desire (choice).

As we can see above, when there is no choice, there is no desire, for we are forced to accept out situation. When we have choice, desire flourishes, for we can then desire all the things that we do not have. When there is an oversaturation of choice, we have no desire; this is sometimes called choice fatigue. For example, let’s say that you just bought a brand new television, but it’s 1960 and you only have 7 channels. Because there are so few channels, and no option of acquiring more, you are forced to enjoy those 7 channels thoroughly. As a contrasting example, imagine you recently subscribed to satellite television, inviting a massive migration of media messages into your home. Despite the gargantuan quantity and diversity of entertainment at your fingertips, you are not satisfied by any of the options. This is due to both an increase in choice, which causes an increase in expectation and, thus, disappointment, as well as decrease in desire, since that which you once craved is now in your ownership. Some would complain that an increase in channels means there are fewer quality choices, but it is precisely because there are more quality choices that our desire decreases. A choice that would have been acceptable before is now rejected in search of something greater.

As for ownership, it is a poison to desire, causing it to wither like a severed vine. There are some situations where we can enjoy, with renewed passion, the things that we own. There is hope. Spain has a plan.

When we unsuspectingly encounter something we own, outside of our control, we are released from the bondage of ownership, free to enjoy it once again. When we find that our favorite movie is being shown on television, or our favorite song is playing on the radio, the shackles are shattered. Even though we could choose to enjoy the thing at any moment, it is only when we do not choose it that we can enjoy it. The exact cause for this exception is obscure, for now let’s just accept it as a gift.

So now that we know how to destroy desire, we also know how to cultivate it. We must preserve our desire; do not own the things you love. Borrow them, share them, rent them, but do not own them. Do not cage the beast of desire.