Nerves

Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day.

Many of you haven't heard that I have been called to be a pianist in the Relief Society (our church women's group).

I haven't played piano for over a decade, and stunk even then. Seriously, I never mastered reading sheet music, and have no idea what a lot of those swoops and swirls written on the page even mean....and after 3 years of lessons, its fairly obvious that music is not one of the talents that was handed to me on my way to Earth. If I desperately needed to play something, and had enough time, I could write down the name of each note, and then play one fingered tunes, as playing more than one note at a time was definitely beyond my ability.

Now, I have been fine with my lack of musicality; I have been given other talents that I enjoy and I do not feel like I am lacking in any way for not being able to rip through a Beethoven sonata on a moment's notice. Until now.....

Well, lets be honest, I was called to be a Primary pianist about 20 years ago and that was much, much worse. Because the children were allowed sometimes to pick what songs they wanted to sing, and, with my being unprepared, they often were stuck singing A Capella. Playing in the Relief Society wouldn't be so bad, as I will know a week in advance what songs we will be playing and they aren't expecting brilliance.

So tonight I went over to the church building, downloaded sheet music in hand that has the notes scribbled all over them. I practiced, and then practiced some more (we are singing 2 songs tomorrow) but I still am a bit worried. Its my first Sunday playing, but I was having a hard enough time today playing the right notes, without having to worry about following our music conductor's lead. If I try singing along, forget it, I lose my place entirely. I found out today what works is mentally singing the notes "A, B, A flat, D" as I was playing them....

Who knows, given a few weeks or months, maybe I can get to where I can play more than one finger--maybe all the upper hand notes at the same time? Perhaps, if I continue a bit longer than that I can even someday figure out the bottom hand, or is that just wishing for too much?

Regardless, I will stay the course and play as best as I can......

I'm still nervous about tomorrow's first "performance" though.