Children do this a lot, and I can be a little more sympathetic as an elementary music teacher to a child's desire to explore sounds and express creativity. But this doesn't prevent me from closing the piano cover when one of my students "visits" me during the lunch hour and sneakily slides onto the piano bench while my back is turned.
I expect children to try to get away with this. But adults? The grown-ups who do have the nerve to plunk away on unoccupied instruments probably shouldn't. In other words, these ivory-ticklers are typically not the next Chopin or even Liberace.
In my music room, I try to instill in children that our classroom instruments—the piano, Orff instruments, small percussion instruments, my guitar—are not toys. They are not there to create chaotic noise. They are for making music, and if they are not making music or beautiful sounds, they should not be played.
Most of my students get this (at least while I am present in the room). A former student visited me the other day and brought a friend from high school. Her friend (who had not be one of my students) started playing around on the temple blocks.
"Hey," my former student said before I uttered a word, "stop playing those. They're not yours."
See, I've trained my students well.
Now if only I could train adults . . .
People have played little ditties on the piano they learned in high school while I am trying to set up for a program. (You all remember that simplified version of the Richard Marx song . . . "Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you." It's not so prodigious that you can play it now at age forty.)
Parents have come to my classroom to ask me about volunteer opportunities only to be tempted by the shiny glockenspiels on my shelves.
I have even seen people encourage children to play around on instruments set out for a music program. (I guess they don't understand that these instruments can cost thousands of dollars.)
I have been to restaurants and hotels where an open piano seems to be an invitation to any Joe Schmoe off the street (who usually ends up giving us his emotional rendition of "Heart and Soul").
Trust me, no one wants to hear that from anyone over thirteen.
So just a little advice to our wannabe musician children (and adults)—before you make a beeline to an instrument in a music classroom, public place, rehearsal hall, etc., consider the following:
1) Have you asked permission?
2) Are you sure you are that good, that we will really benefit from your opus on the auto harp?
3) Am I in the room? Because if I am, please remember that I have been around sound all day long, and sometimes a few moments of silence is the most beautiful music.
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