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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about someone learning how to play an instrument.

Posted in Nonfiction on Oct 26, 2022

Submissions are closed

Sorry, we are not accepting submissions for this prompt as it is not part of an active contest. Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy Prompts account.

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✍️ 75 stories

“The Best Remedy” by Will Blue

Submitted to Contest #38

Don’t you just love music? Everyone loves music, even though they may deny it, which they would be crazy to do. Even if someone doesn’t like a certain genre of music, they like another. Maybe they like all music, or just one song, but they still like music. Maybe they loved music as a young kid but didn’t enjoy it as an adult, but came back to loving it when they were old. But they still loved music at one point. You know what else many people love? Making their own sound of music. Making a song or piece unique. Maybe even making a comp...

3 comments 3
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“Cali’s Letter To Her Pen PAL” by T L

Submitted to Contest #38

Hello to my Pen Pal in Maples,Hey! My named is Cali and I love to play the violin. My mom just had a baby and he likes to hear me play my violin as well. My violin has a strings and a stick that you used to play across the strings. I am in grade four and take violin lessons from my teacher; he is a very good teacher and is very patient with me. Here is an recent story about playing music:“Ok Cali, it is your turn to play in front of the class. What do you want to play first?” said her teacher. “I would like to play Happy Birthday for my cous...

6 comments 6
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“The Duende” by Larry Jackson

Submitted to Contest #38

Emerson Welch was a low-level bank associate working at a small neighborhood branch of a major financial institution. Each day he performed his responsibilities as supposed. At the end of each workday he’d return to a modest urban home where he resided with his mother. Once in his room he would sit in quiet contemplation, waxing poetic his indifference to his mother’s relentless nagging. Mostly about his not practicing enough. He guessed she had a point. Then again, her premature proclamation of him being a child prodigy had overwhelmed him ...

2 comments 2
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“Dyslexia ” by Blane Britt

Submitted to Contest #38

I come from a musical instrument playing family. My dad played the piano and was famously noted for playing two of Rachmaninoff’s etudes that some say qualified as the hardest piano music ever well, probably more than two, but two stand out to me as being among the most challenging. Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux are in two sets, op. 33 and 39. His op. 39 is overall more challenging, and more in the vein of his contemporaries such as Scriabin and Prokofiev. My mother played the Lyre Harp. The lyre is a string instrument known for its use in ...

2 comments 2
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“Escapism” by Ethernia Thiadi

Submitted to Contest #38

I've always wanted to learn a musical instrument. Any musical instrument. I believe it would help me relax, but well, I just don't have the skills or talent. Don't you just need time to practice? Time is a luxury for me... and with my current financial situation, a tuition is out of the question. In the first place, I have only two instruments at my home: a recorder and a guitar. The recorder just sounds obnoxious to the people living with me, and the guitar... Well, my fingers simply won't cooperate to coordinate. It's a guit...

1 comment 1
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“Diary of a Plague Year” by Yair Ron

Submitted to Contest #38

Dear DiaryWow did that sound like I’m thirteen. Jesus. Ok, so we’re not calling you that. How about… Diar-dude. Dia? Di. Yea that’ll work, I guess. Should I just erase all that? Where’s my eraser?Ok, so update. While I did have a few pencils left over from… something, I do not have any erasers beyond those nubby cruds at the end of said pencils and we both know those won’t do, so that’s an ixnay on the eraseray. I guess I could switch to just Word, but I dunno. A diary should be physical. Digital just doesn’t have the same heft, ya know?Anyw...

1 comment 1
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“The strings of fate” by Laura Watts

Submitted to Contest #38

This is the story of how I changed the world. I didn't mean to. Not at first. It all started with a virus, and a very old guitar.I was bored. Very bored. So bored, I jumped at the chance to do anything. People in my neighborhood had been tested positive for the virus, so I had decided to buy all my food online, and never leave the house, but that was a mistake. Or maybe it wasn't. I don;t know yet. Maybe changing the world was a good thing.One day, a dusty old guitar was mailed to me, with only a tiny note attached:"Sadly, your grandfather h...

1 comment 1
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“The return of a forgotten ability” by Reannah De Souza

Submitted to Contest #38

If you listen carefully you can hear the old piano at the end of the music corridor playing a simple melody by a student named Arina who had been in the school for 3 years and had finally given up of caring about her future, she had given up on trying which lead her to fall asleep during almost every one of her classes. Now it was a Friday afternoon and she had been given the task of taking a huge amount of math's papers into the storage room after her sudden outburst when a boy behind her poked her in the back whilst she was asleep she was ...

0 comments 0
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“TUBA” by Rody White

Submitted to Contest #38

Dave sat back. He knew that it was the shine from the sun hitting the window but he really thought the tuba seemed to smile at him. He hadn't always wanted to learn to play the Tuba. ''The Tuba is the best musical instrument you can learn,''. Okay gran. ''Because of it's versatility,''. We get it gran, you like the Tuba. ''When I was in school, I had a beautiful Henderson Tuba''. We know gran, we have heard the story like 500 gizzilion times!! ''I always wanted to learn something meaningful, not like a guitar or the drums or boring old instr...

0 comments 0
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“A Bargain” by LeighAnne Ferreol

Submitted to Contest #38

I don't know why I bought it, but I knew it was a bargain. Usually, old instruments could still go for a few hundred bucks in good condition. I had no idea why this one was so cheap. Still, the price wasn’t the only reason I bought it. I just happened to pass it in an antique store, and something told me to grab it.  I had just moved to a tiny apartment in the city from a big house in the country. My bank account was drained from the divorce and I was feeling pretty pathetic. I thought having something beautiful in my dingy place might ...

1 comment 1
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“What Is It?” by Skylar Schylar

Submitted to Contest #38

“Hey Mom!” Martin greets his elderly mother hunched over in pain as she opens the door.He walks in. “Ahh, still looks the same, smells the same, and feels the same,” he admits while surveying the inside of his childhood home, the light walls and dark carpet and bleached-spotted curtains and the sound of a static television. “So, Mom, how ya been?” He notices her struggling to reach her armchair in front of the TV with a basket full of jumbled yarn resting beside it. He helps her sit down, and she returns to tangling her swollen fingers in a ...

0 comments 0
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“Chopin's Nocturne” by Samadhee Ismail

Submitted to Contest #38

Have you ever regretted something--like for example, you wished you had done that before and you deeply regret about that? Well, I do. I do regret about something. And that something is, I wished I had learned to play the piano while my grandmother was still alive. It was one of those moments where I regret the most.***1939, Warsaw, PolandPapa is reading newspaper in the living room while Mama is playing the piano. She is playing one of Chopin's nocturnes on the piano. Mama looks lost in the music, her fingers delicately moving on the white ...

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“The Time We Had” by Lucy Nesbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #38

It's the walls that I notice the most, out of it all. They're a different shade. Or maybe a different texture. Everything felt perfumed when he stood in a room. It was like a soft stroke from a pastel in hand, just blurring the edges, smothering the home in a softer, muted, warm color. It's those walls that show the lack of him, more than anything. The echo of my feet off the tiles clamors back and forth, echoing through the emptiness that is my home now. I glance once more around, just to notice. That's what they say to do, you know. Notice...

7 comments 7
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“If Music Be The Food of Love” by Mia Bond

Submitted to Contest #38

1581, London, Richard Burbage I close the door as gently as possible, it’s wooden slats create a muffled thud as it meets the frame. An involuntary shiver runs through my body as I am assaulted by the deceptively brisk morning air, it is nearing spring, but winter's touch still lingers. He is persistent. It is barely sunrise and the fresh morning dew adorns every surface, as gems on the decorated decolletage of a rich maid. I debate, but for a brief second, risking returning to the house to add another layer. Deciding it is not worth the ris...

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“Peter's Banjo” by Mitchell Coulthard

Submitted to Contest #38

When I first moved into my new rental, I had no idea what was in store for me. As with any tightly packed cluster of units, the neighbors can be... well... let's just say they can be an integral part of your daily life.You meet a few taking out the bins... a few pop up occasionally at the mail boxes. Even coming and going from work or sitting around on a weekend can find you bumping into one or two. Well, this time, my neighbor was not what I expected... or wanted, truth be told. At least not at first.He was an old fellow. Likely somewhere i...

0 comments 0
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