As a musician, one of the greatest assets you can possibly have is an awareness and appreciation of your ability. This is not quite the same thing as people telling you that you play well. It is instead your being able to celebrate your talent and skill on your own, even when no one else is saying anything about what you do, or how well you do it.

If you think about it, most of the time when we perform we worry more about the opinions of others than we do about the skill required for us to play well. 

However, more important than the end result is being able to look at ourselves and consider the fact that mastering an instrument is an enormous skill, just like being a great chef, a great swimmer, or a great chess player. It is an ability that only happens through an incredible amount of hard work, and often struggle. There is a lot of time, patience, and consistent refining of one’s abilities that must go into being able to do anything well, so taking pride in your ability to play the piano, and celebrating the time it has taken you to acquire that skill, is absolutely essential to your progress.

The Lightbulb Moment for me is when I realized that I am not just someone who plays the piano, but by playing it, someone who is also a skilled technician. Not like the technician who tunes the piano, even though that person is skilled as well. Instead, a technician in the sense I understand exactly which notes and chords to play in order to create certain sounds; how to position my fingers to play at a certain volume; how to use the pedals to create a certain effect; and how to transform the black lines and dots on a sheet of paper into actual music, which then allows me to bring out in the instrument the best of what it is designed to do. That is a skill, and in many ways makes one a kind of piano technician because of an ability to understand all of which the instrument is capable.

A doctor’s skill is knowing how to look at a person’s symptoms, decide what is wrong, and then determine what needs to be done to heal them. An architect’s skill is knowing what is needed to put bricks, cement, nails and wood together to turn them into a skyscraper. Michaelangelo’s skill was, as he said, knowing how to “see the angel in the marble and carve until I set him free.”

As a pianist you are able to look at a page full of lines and dots, a piece of furniture made of a keyboard, wood, and strings, and use your hands to set the music free. Not everyone can do that, and many who know how cannot do it well. A person can go to the piano and hit the keys with their fist to make a sound, but that is not the same thing as making music.  It takes the skill of an expert to be able to play with an ability that makes a piano do what it is fully designed to do.

So every time you sit down to play, celebrate that skill.

Take pride in the work you have done to learn the instrument, and the ability it creates in you to inspire others. That is something that makes you more and more of an expert with every hour you practice, and every concert you perform.  

Learn to celebrate your skill, and work to become even more skillful each time you sit down to play.