My boredom relief

Tom Pinney

At 10 years old, I was just plain bored. So I wanted to take piano lessons.

There’s a sitcom-style studio audience laughing behind me right now, in my head, because usually people don’t curb their boredom by taking piano lessons. But I wanted to play the piano, really badly, because I wanted to do more than sing.

See, at 10 years old, I had already developed a singing voice by singing specials in church and learning how to harmonize from my dad. Literally, at 10, I was singing harmonies with my dad as my mom would take the lead in our Von Trapp family car concerts.

My older brother Tim, at 12, was “too cool” to sing along, but my younger brother Tobias, then eight, was trying to find which line worked for him. My sister D’Ann, at the tender age of five, was singing along with my mom.

I know what you’re thinking: why did we stop with the T’s at Tobias? My parents are such comedians, you should’ve heard them when they introduced us.

“This is Tim, Tom, Tobias, and D’Ann.” (cue laughter because everyone’s expecting a fourth T.)

Actually, D’Ann takes after my father in that she goes by her middle name. Her first name is Tiffany.

That’s what you should have heard: my parents going through all four of us before getting to the one they wanted. “Ti—To—Tobi— Tif— MIDDLE CHILD, GET IN HERE.”

It was usually me.

I’m getting off track. Point is, after learning how to harmonize, I wanted to do more for our little family band, and no one was particularly instrumental other than Tim, and he had only recently started to play the trumpet.

But you can’t start a band with just a trumpet. So I wanted to learn an instrument as well, and because of its versatility, I chose the piano.

There are a lot of positive effects for people who learn to play the piano, cognitively and expressively, so my parents were gung-ho about the idea despite our financial situation. The problem was, because of our financial situation, they couldn’t afford a teacher.

We were a family of six, my dad is a preacher, and my mom is an accountant. We weren’t exactly swimming in dough.

So one day, after saving up for a few months (as my dad did, and taught us all to do), my dad bought me one of those little Casio keyboards and a methods book and said, if you want to learn to play the piano, you’re going to have to teach yourself.

I was like a kid in a candy store. All I wanted was a piano, and here it was. I spent the next few hours playing around with some of the sounds it made and listening to some of the prerecorded tracks before I opened the book.

And then I learned something: music is hard. And piano music is super hard.

Eventually, I started to get the hang of it. It took a few years and a rudimentary education in music theory by playing trumpet in band and singing in the new school choir, but I started to understand what music was.

And it curbed my boredom in a huge way, which was what I was looking for.

I never got to play the piano in a large group performance for my family’s little singing troupe, but little by little, I started to pick up more instruments in much the same way.

Granted, for some, I was totally cheating, but I still count it.

For instance, the way I play guitar is that my brother was taking guitar classes at the high school and was learning to play classical guitar (very beautifully, by the way). I wanted him to teach me how to do it, but he and I weren’t exactly what you would call “friends” with each other, so he taught me a way to play guitar by cheating.

I picked up the bass guitar because I knew the basics about playing guitar and the worship band with Campus Crusade (now Cru) at Ohio needed a bassist. The big difference about playing bass is that you play one note instead of a chord.

I picked up the drums because, as I figured out how to play songs by ear, I learned to pick apart each specific track in a song and set it apart, then mimic the sounds.

And as far as singing goes, I’m still finding harmonies and making them a little more complex to add extra layers to songs. If you ride in my car and hear me sing harmony, you’ll understand what I’m talking about here.

While listening to music has been an experience of the senses for me, making music always started out as a cure for boredom. I sang along with my family on road trips because they were kind of boring, even if we were only driving 5 minutes to pick something up from the store.

I picked up so many instruments because I wanted something to do. Of course, now, I use that talent for good sometimes, but if I’m at home and video games seem like a chore (which happens sometimes), I pull out my guitar and strum for an hour.

And sometimes, I even cheat there by turning on Rock Band and playing that for a few hours.

There’s no right or wrong way to relieve boredom. …Okay, there are several wrong ways to relieve boredom, but I doubt that anyone reading this column relieves their boredom by setting fire to a field of corn or terrorizing children with a clown mask and bloody chainsaw.

Although, if that’s you, I think you may need to have a conversation or two with a professional.

But for me, music is so helpful, so cathartic, that if it only ever becomes my boredom relief in the future, it’s still a cool way to curb boredom.

Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum