Foundations Matter...(with buildings AND Music! - Pt. 1)

When I was a kid, we learned this song in Sunday school class at church. The song was about a Wise man and a Foolish man. The lyrics went something like this… “The wise man built his house upon the rock (repeat 3X), and the rains came a’tumblin’ down…The rains came down and the floods came up (3X), and the house on the rock stood firm!” In the case of the foolish man, he built his house upon the sand, and when the rains came down and the floods came up, the house on the sand fell FLAT (or was it, “went SPLAT!”?) ;) The point is…It matters what kind of a foundation you build on!

This is true in the Sunday school song and it’s also true in real life for some people I’ve known. They had to fork out lots of $ to have their home’s foundation repaired. A home’s foundation has the power to drastically influence the home’s overall value. All sorts of problems can develop as the result of a faulty foundation: doors or windows that won’t open or close smoothly, cracked walls, unlevel floors, etc.

There’s a building that’s world famous because of its faulty foundation…do you know what it is? If you guessed the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you guessed right! Well, technically, it’s famous for its prominent tilt, but the tilt is the result of the tower being built on soft subsoil, which had difficulty supporting the tower’s weight. The more they built, the more noticeable the tilt became. Construction had to start and stop twice and took nearly 200 years to complete. They say that if construction had not stopped for a number of years, giving the soil time to settle and compact, the tower would most likely have toppled!

In my many years of playing & teaching piano, I have found this to be absolutely true for musicians, in particular piano players…It matters that you build a SOLID FOUNDATION from the start! And yes, this means all the theory and technique that you balked at as a kid when you were forced to take piano lessons or as a student who even now “just want to know how to play your favorite songs!”

If you really just want to learn one or two songs and be done with it, that’s fine. But, to keep with the analogy of house building, think of it this way...you probably aren’t interested in building your dream home...

But rather, you’re content to just stay at a few nice hotels here or there along the way...

HOWEVER, (back to music)...if you want a shot at becoming a musician who develops the foundational skills that will allow you to branch out into all kinds of music of differing styles or genres, that you can enjoy for the rest of your life, then you’re gonna want to take your foundation seriously!

I'd love to help you build a solid musical foundation! Stay tuned for PART 2 of "Foundations Matter..." in my next post!...

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