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Sunday, May 24, 2020

Just duet

Benjamin has been reluctantly slogging through piano lessons this year. Playing the piano is a skill he wishes he had but it's not really something he wants to put a lot of effort into (in short: he's discovered one life's lovely paradoxes). Getting him to practice is a bit of a battle, getting him to focus is...also a bit of a battle, but—you know what?—we're making headway!

Here he is playing a duet of Ode to Joy with Miriam this morning:



Ignore his funky wrist flops. It's not great form but we are picking our battles over here. He mostly played the right notes and he's mostly on beat and he didn't walk away in the middle of a song to look at that thing he saw out of the corner of his eye so we're calling it a win!


We've also been working on learning how to conduct music as a family, which some of the children appreciate more than others. It's something that looks very easy to do, but is a whole lot more complicated when you try it (another one of life's paradoxes). Rachel conducted our opening hymn this morning and found that she could execute the conducting pattern correctly or she could sing but, quizzically, she could not do both at the same time even though she knew the words.

Conducting music while singing and smiling warmly at the congregation or while trying to remember which sections to cue in while asking various parts to make louder (or quieter) music gets a little complicated. So, as it turns out, conducting music is another thing that requires practice, so practice we will.

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