Humans of FHC: Sarah Raisch
More stories from Ashlyn Korpak
“I taught myself how to play when I was probably five. I had played before I was five but it wasn’t actually teaching myself. My mom actually plays the piano and she taught lessons but she didn’t teach them to me so I just found some of her piano books that she used with her students and just started teaching myself. I learned how to play by ear more than read music, so at first it was just listening to the songs and playing it out and eventually as I got older I learned to read music. So I’ve been playing piano for, I guess, thirteen years now, which is crazy.
With piano, you can do so many things. So I play in the worship band at my church, and I can accompany people for solo ensemble and other competitions. I teach piano lessons now to elementary age students, which is so fun. It’s the best job I could possibly have. It’s just a very universal instrument. There are pianos everywhere and I can just sit down and play. People love it and I love it.
I actually took lessons for about five years and then now that I’m teaching piano. Basically, once you learn enough, you don’t have to take lessons anymore; it’s just making sure that you still keep sitting down and playing even after you’re not taking lessons.
I really like movie soundtracks; for my birthday I got La La Land. So I’ve been playing that nonstop. I love playing songs that people know and that when I play people go, “Oh yeah I know exactly what that is.””
(Senior)
Ashlyn Korpak is a senior and entering her fourth and final year on The Central Trend. You can almost always find Ashlyn in The Central Trend room. But,...
Biplab Poddar • Jan 19, 2018 at 12:53 am
Thanks for sharing this.I’m currently working on the f# minor nocturne! they’re beautiful pieces. Don’t get me wrong, you have to be strong and confident to be successful in just about anything you do – but with music, there’s a deeper emotional component to your failures and successes. If you fail a chemistry test, it’s because you either didn’t study enough, or just aren’t that good at chemistry (the latter of which is totally understandable). But if you fail at music, it can say something about your character. It could be because you didn’t practice enough – but, more terrifyingly, it could be because you aren’t resilient enough. Mastering chemistry requires diligence and smarts, but mastering a piano piece requires diligence and smarts, plus creativity, plus the immense capacity to both overcome emotional hurdles, and, simultaneously, to use that emotional component to bring the music alive.Before I started taking piano, I had always imagined the Conservatory students to have it so good – I mean, for their homework, they get to play guitar, or jam on their saxophone, or sing songs! What fun! Compared to sitting in lab for four hours studying the optical properties of minerals, or discussing Lucretian theories of democracy and politics, I would play piano any day.
But after almost three years of piano at Orpheus Academy, I understand just how naïve this is. Playing music for credit is not “easy” or “fun” or “magical” or “lucky.” Mostly, it’s really freakin’ hard. It requires you to pick apart your piece, play every little segment over and over, dissect it, tinker with it, cry over it, feel completely lame about it, then get over yourself and start practicing again. You have to be precise and diligent, creative and robotic. And then – after all of this – you have to re-discover the emotional beauty in the piece, and use it in your performance.