Family Feathers

I'm surrounded by people who are musically gifted and somehow I feel cheated in that department. My singing is best used to calm crying infants who are unable to speak about my made-up lyrics sung in the wrong key.  My piano playing, up until now, has been atrocious at best.  I have one song memorized and after 30 years, nobody really wants to hear Fur Elise again.  When the kids are sitting around playing guitars and singing their latest original works, jumping in with an early classical Beethoven composition just doesn't work.  It's a mood killer of greatest proportion. None of these children have taken a music lesson so I wondered how they could play so well when I, who sat for years in Mrs. Perry's den, counting out notes on her piano, can not. They all play by ear.  This concept has always baffled me as I can't understand how someone can just sit down at the keys and "hear" the right notes.  Things just don't work that way.  But, now after fif

I'm surrounded by people who are musically gifted and somehow I feel cheated in that department. My singing is best used to calm crying infants who are unable to speak about my made-up lyrics sung in the wrong key.  My piano playing, up until now, has been atrocious at best.  I have one song memorized and after 30 years, nobody really wants to hear Fur Elise again.  When the kids are sitting around playing guitars and singing their latest original works, jumping in with an early classical Beethoven composition just doesn't work.  It's a mood killer of greatest proportion. None of these children have taken a music lesson so I wondered how they could play so well when I, who sat for years in Mrs. Perry's den, counting out notes on her piano, can not. They all play by ear.  This concept has always baffled me as I can't understand how someone can just sit down at the keys and "hear" the right notes.  Things just don't work that way.  But, now after fif