Hannah Miller diary

My Youngest Piano Student Finally Played a Piece All the Way Through Without Stopping, and I May Have Cried a Little in Front of an Eight-Year-Old

by

My Youngest Piano Student Finally Played a Piece All the Way Through Without Stopping, and I May Have Cried a Little in Front of an Eight-Year-Old – Six months of the same eight bars. Today they just clicked. I was not prepared for how much that would get to me.

I Went to See a Genuinely Incredible Gig Last Night and Spent the Whole Journey Home Furiously Taking Notes on Everything I Want to Steal for My Own Playing

by

I Went to See a Genuinely Incredible Gig Last Night and Spent the Whole Journey Home Furiously Taking Notes on Everything I Want to Steal for My Own Playing – Watching someone genuinely brilliant play live is the best free music lesson this city has to offer, and I intend to keep taking full advantage of that.

An Adult Student Told Me Today That Learning Piano at Forty-Three Has Been Harder Than Anything Else She Has Done in Years, and I Think She Is Completely Right

by

An Adult Student Told Me Today That Learning Piano at Forty-Three Has Been Harder Than Anything Else She Has Done in Years, and I Think She Is Completely Right – There is a specific kind of vulnerability in being genuinely, visibly bad at something new as a grown adult. I have enormous respect for anyone willing to sit through it anyway.

I Finally Recorded and Released My Own Original Song After Sitting on It for Nearly Two Years, and the Terror of Actually Putting It Out There Was Almost Worse Than Writing It

by

I Finally Recorded and Released My Own Original Song After Sitting on It for Nearly Two Years, and the Terror of Actually Putting It Out There Was Almost Worse Than Writing It – Two years of quietly tinkering in private. One deep breath. One upload. Now it exists in the world whether I am ready for that or not.

A Parent Asked Me Today Whether Their Child Was ‘Actually Talented’ or Just ‘Putting in the Hours,’ and I Genuinely Do Not Think That Question Means What They Think It Means

by

A Parent Asked Me Today Whether Their Child Was ‘Actually Talented’ or Just ‘Putting in the Hours,’ and I Genuinely Do Not Think That Question Means What They Think It Means – Eleven years of teaching has taught me that this specific question, however well-intentioned, usually gets the whole relationship between talent and effort exactly backwards.