There are a few “dangerous” things that can happen during Thanksgiving. One of those, apparently, is to talk to your brother-in-law, who happens to be a sound engineer, about (yet again) thinking about learning to play a musical instrument.

This wasn’t my first time considering learning to play. I’ve been deep in an electronic music binge for the last couple of weeks (I’ve always loved it, but this time I think I went overboard), and my on-again-off-again fling with classical music is back - currently I’m listening through my headphones as I type. So, fueled by good food and too many drinks, I explained to my enabler, who was sitting across from me with dangerous interest in his eyes, that what I actually want to learn is making electronic music. When you talk to someone who professionally tweaks soundboards and used to be (or is?) in a band, you get a solid recommendation and a solid price tag.

Money was the only thing standing between me and musical mediocrity—until two days later, when the NY State inflation refund check arrived. My partner held it up with a smirk: “Congrats. You’re officially screwed.”

A week later, my Roland GO:KEYS was waiting at my doorstep.

I stopped feeling overwhelmed three days ago—after mounting it on a stand and accepting that “playing music” for me means labeling keys with labels I usually use to name USB cables. My curriculum consists of YouTube tutorials on musical notation and Wikipedia deep dives into why “C” is the default key in Western music. (Spoiler: It’s the only major scale with no sharps or flats, making it the “Hello, World!” of music. Add a medieval monk to the mix who reinvented music teaching after the music of the time, and well… I did say it was a deep dive, didn’t I?)

Anyway, here it is:

A blue Roland GO:KEYS 3 keyboard rests on a stand with headphones hanging below it. A barbell under one of the beams, and a subpar AI cleaning technique can be seen on the carpet at the bottom right, where JTR removed his used socks from the frame. Tsk tsk.

So far, I’ve mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (my musical ABCs, as you can see from the labels) and reconstructed an old Jewish lullaby from childhood.

If my photography hobby taught me anything, it’s this: Go slow, laugh at your mistakes, and ignore anyone who says you “should’ve started younger.” (which I kind of did by the way, and it was horribly boring then).