You know how I wrote that post the other day about listening?  Well, it works.

Archie, as you know, has been having piano lessons for about a term and a half now.  She’s doing really well.  There’s a few challenges – she reads the music once and plays it by memory from that point on.  Her teacher is happy for her to do this, as long as the initial piece is correct!  Otherwise she tends to get herself stuck in a loop

Her fingers are quite small, not the long, lanky ones that a good piano player probably needs but she’s makes up for it in effort.  She’s like I was when I was learning guitar – scales – phooey!  But she does them for me albeit begrudgingly.

Last night, she and I were playing a few pieces together and I got up to help BoyWonder cook dinner. The piano we have is capable of recording what you’re playing and Archie worked this out within 10 minutes of us receiving the piano so we know she mucks around with it.

Anyway, I get up, wander over to the kitchen and she says “Mum, listen to this.”

So I took a dose of my own advice and stopped what I was doing and listened.

She hit the play button and out came this short piece of classical music.  There are some pre-recorded songs on the piano but this is NOT one of them. 

“Who played that?” I asked.

“Me!” Archie exclaimed excitedly.

“What is it?  I think I know it but I can’t place it Archie.”

“I don’t know Mum.  I heard it on Little Einstein’s last year.”

We’d noticed she had a good ear when she was playing.  If she plays a note incorrectly she immediately fixes it up.  But she’d not displayed an ability to play by ear up until this point. 

We’ve narrowed the episode down and it says that it’s a part of Vivaldi’s Springtime (one of her favourite pieces) but we can’t find the exact part in the music.  We’re going to ask her teacher on Monday and see if she can pinpoint it for us because it’s driving me nuts!

So listening is good for us parents too.  Sometimes we get so caught up in what they’re meant to be doing (practice your scales, do your homework, read that book) that we forget that there’s still room for us to be amazed by hidden talents.