PIANO FOR "ADULTS ONLY": CLASS INTRODUCES GROWN-UPS TO THE MYSTERIES OF THE KEYBOARD

Following in the footsteps of his musical children, 74-year-old Frank Denton decided to learn to play the piano. After nine weeks of lessons, he grumbles, "I can see why kids don't like to practice."

That may be. But the piano class, taught by Jeanne Tjaden, is an easygoing approach that had the three students -- one was absent -- playing "Jingle Bells" by last week's final lesson.

The class is offered by the Southeast Missouri Music Academy in the Brandt Building at Southeast Missouri State University. Another begins in January.

Denton's classmates were Adele Kupchella, a 51-year-old arts fund-raiser for Southeast Missouri State University, and 34-year-old Debbi Goodier, the mother of 19-month-old twin girls.

When her children still lived at home, part of Kupchella's mission was organizing their lives to include music lessons. Unlike Denton, she enjoys practicing. "It's something I do just for me."

Kupchella's husband Charles, who is the provost at the university, is a former trombone and saxophone player who now concentrates on the guitar.

"I'll never be able to sit down and play with them," she says. "But I never thought I would be able to look at (a musical note) and find the place on the piano where it's supposed to be."

Goodier's husband Benjamin, a dentist in Jackson, plays the violin and her mother-in-law is a pianist. But she attended a small school that didn't have a band, and she missed out on music as a child.

Goodier came to the class not knowing how to read music and says, "It's like learning the alphabet all over again."

Her practice sessions occur after the girls go to bed or during their naps.

"I always just wanted to play for my own enjoyment," she said. "I'd like to go ahead and continue learning for myself."

But, she admits, "If I had any kind of dream come true I would like to perform at a concert."

Unlike other pupils at the academy, the adults don't have to worry about performing publicly, and no one's quite ready for the stage yet anyway.

The practice room is equipped with 17 electronic Yamaha Clavinovas that come with earphones. "They can put the headphones on and nobody can hear them," Tjaden said.

She says the ensemble approach to teaching these adults is much different from tutoring students one-on-one, which requires students to be well prepared.

Denton, a retired building material salesman whom Tjaden kiddingly calls "our problem child," doesn't think he's meant to become a pianist.

"I've gone as far as I'm capable," he says. "I don't really enjoy it as much as I thought. It's hard and frustrating."

Ironically, Tjaden gestures toward Denton while talking about adults who "take to it like a fish to water."

"... Frank is gifted and talented," she said. "He comes from a musical family."

Indeed, his wife plays the piano and his daughter, Diann Daune, is the organist at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church. Both his sons, Robert and Steve, played in Cape Girardeau rock bands as youths. Steve, who teaches math to gifted students, also teaches music part-time in Brownsville, Texas.

"I love music. But I don't read music," Denton admits.

He figures out what the notes are by counting the lines that separate them on the staff.

Except for problems caused by arthritis, age generally is not a deterrent to learning to play the piano, Tjaden says.

"I don't think it's any more difficult. In many cases it's easier. There's more dedication to the decision to do this. Lots of times the parents want the child to do something."

But Denton doesn't think older piano students have an advantage.

"Anything you do new, kids pick it up right now."

He uses the radio-controlled airplanes he builds and flies as an example. "Kids come out there and do it on their own. It took me three or four years without crashing."

Tjaden is a longtime piano teacher who formerly taught at the university and in the Cape Girardeau school system. She also accompanies her husband Dallas, a violinist and former university professor who now plays with a number of symphonies.

When they learn a song or make a breakthrough, Tjaden rewards her adult students with stickers just as she does children. "They like encouragement. And they like the gratification of being able to play a piece straight through."

"It has to be a lot of fun or they won't do it."

Doctors, lawyers, merchants, college students, housewives and all kinds of people have been introduced to the piano through the class, Tjaden said.

They were concentrating on G major and D7 chords during last week's final session.

Kupchella recalls that when one of her children was taking a Suzuki course, she herself had no ability to recognize the difference between notes. "I can hear some things now," she says.

"... I've never been more proud of anything than playing these tiny little tunes."