This is very similar to my Math series from a few months ago. In Part 1, I explore how my brain works through a subject that's not language-related. In Part 2, I connect all my conclusions to language learning.

I learned piano all wrong.

You might be wondering what the "wrong" way to learn piano even is. If you learn it, you learn it, right? Well, I beg to differ. I made the process harder than it needed to be. The main issues all stemmed from a refusal to read music. My brain is just not suited for that skill.

Apparently there's a personality type who, during childhood, often refuses to learn to read and memorizes everything instead. Now, I love reading text — always have. But reading two staves of music notation? No, thank you!

Don't get me wrong, I did succeed in learning to read music. To give you some context, reading music requires the following:

• almost instantaneously identifying notes and other symbols on both treble and bass clefs at the same time
• taking key signatures into account
• reading and playing almost simultaneously without looking at your hands

Sheesh, I want to take a nap just thinking about all that cognitive exertion.

So why did my brain not like reading music? Basically, I find it a hazardous endeavor. You have to keep your brain engaged the whole time — there's a lot to process and keep track of. And you don't know what's coming until you're there. It's a bit like driving in a fog. It doesn't matter how accurate the GPS is; you're bound to get a little anxious.

A principle in science (either physics or chemistry) states that kinetic matter wants to move from a place of higher to lower concentration, the path of least resistance. This is also how we humans operate. We want the easy option. If it doesn't exist, sometimes we make one.

So how do you keep yourself from facing the unfamiliar all the time? Make it familiar. The more familiar a song is to me, the less pressured I feel. The solution that I devised was only reading the music until I didn't have to, until I had familiarized myself with it enough that my fingers knew where to go by memory. In fact, my fingers still remember many songs that I haven't looked at since childhood, even though my eyes struggle to make sense of the sheet music of said songs. You see, I had stored these songs into long-term memory instead of short-term memory.

And don't get me started on key signatures. I didn't truly learn those until later in life. Yes, I passed my weekly scales, chords, and arpeggios — but the point of that exercise was completely lost on me. I didn't want to think about what all that meant in terms of music theory. To me, a key signature just told me which keys not to press.

For example, in C major/A minor, play all the white keys and none of the black keys. In F major, play almost all the white keys except for B. Instead, play the rightmost black key in the cluster of three black keys in a row. (That key is Bb, but I didn't think of it as such.) In E major, just give up.

Pianists usually start reading music in C major/A minor because there are no accidentals (in my mind: black keys) to worry about. The higher the student progresses, the more accidentals they have to keep track of. I remember trying to sight-read in some key signature like A major, and I missed every accidental. The teacher said, "I thought you already learned this key signature!" to which I thought, "Oh, thaaaaaaat's what those scales are for?!?!" I always wiped my mind clean of of last week's scales so that I could focus on the present week's! And now you're telling me I have to remember and internalize this stuff? "Working" memory — ha! — more like shirking memory!

My long-term memory apparently decided that memorizing entire songs was easier than holding in my working memory which keys I wasn't supposed to press unless I saw a natural sign. Like I said earlier, the whole thing felt like whack-a-mole in which a hammer would whack you if you forgot which key you were in. And this is how I circumvented reading music. Memorizing songs comes easily to me since I have the ability to play by ear (i.e., hear a song and intuitively know how it goes and replicate it to some degree without guidance). As the songs increased in complexity, my long-term memory continually rose to the challenge. It was a cycle.