I was staying at my mom’s house for the first time since she recently moved. I was surprised to learn that the neighbor played the piano. I could hear her play every other day in the afternoon.
One day, I was working from the kitchen, the part of the house closest to where she plays the piano, when I heard the song.
Oh, this song.
It had some kind of mysterious rhythm, some kind of march. Then a playful melody that jumped around, only to become very serious, trying to say a lot of things at the same time. Then it had a calm approach to reintroduce the melody, while increasingly becoming louder, with more strength. To march again.
This captivated me so much that I jumped from the table and tried to record it with my phone. I couldn’t hear a thing when playing it back. The clock was ticking because I knew the song was about to end. So I grabbed a glass and held it against the wall like they did in the cartoons, and it worked.
I had the recording. So I jumped to the laptop and opened it in Audacity. I increased the volume and tried to Shazam it.
Nothing.
I moved some levels, making it sound better.
Nothing.
I tried a bunch of services online. Trimmed the clip a bunch of times.
Nothing.
Sidenote: I didn’t try to convert it to MIDI and then search for the pattern. It could work, but I don’t know.
Anyway, I also sent it to a couple of friends (thanks y’all), but no dice.
Then it hit me. I was trying to solve this problem using technology. All my efforts were done on the laptop. So I got up from the chair and asked my mom to send her a message asking for the song name—and SoundCloud! Just kidding. Asking her what song she was playing.
She was grateful for the message and told us it made her day. She is a very sweet grandma and she was feeling down.
From that day, she would give us concerts. Only a couple of songs, but she would play at night around 10 PM—something that she didn’t do before. She would play a set and she would play it well.
A couple of weeks later I came back to visit. And today, she played at 10 PM again. Mom told me she hadn’t played at this time since I left.
And she played the song I loved first, followed by new pieces that I really liked. I have no idea how to play the piano, but I just love it. Gonna sign up for lessons soon.
PS: Here is the song.