Janice Galloway's story about Piano Course, Book A (The Red Book)

When I was 11, the family, against every calculable odd, acquired a second-hand upright piano. It was a nice piece of furniture, but my mother saw the main drawback within minutes: somebody would want to play it. And that means money for lessons. The somebody, of course, was me. I'd seen Liberace on TV and I wanted, passionately, to play.

Miss Hughes, who lived in a sheltered flat with paper-thin walls, took me on, and that was when we acquired it: the John W Schaum Piano Course, Book A (The Red Book) Leading to Mastery of the Instrument in Easy Steps. Despite the seven bob (35p) price-tag, my mother bought it. The book had a red baby grand on the cover; its first page was blank with an instruction to draw around your own hands and number the fingers, one to five. A flick through the rest showed tests, tips and interesting facts ("A mazurka is a Polish Dance") and – joy! – little drawings with each eight-bar tune to colour in, once the piece had been learned. I remember in particular the welcome page from Mr Schaum, an American stranger, wishing me, some anonymous Scottish nobody, "Good Luck and years of happy playing!" because it moved me to tears.

I still have the drawing of the hands, the tests with answers in my 11-year-old script. There are my first terms – lento, allegro, mysterioso; the thick five-line stave with coin-like empty note-heads containing their single-letter names. I remember looking at those letters, drawing round them with one finger. This book was a pencil outline of the map to Another World. It would teach me music.

My mother had hoped for Lerner and Loewe show tunes requiring Grade Six. What she got was "The Wood-Chuck", "The Little Elf", and a beautifully simplified “Nutcracker”. She got more in due time. And I have kept the Schaum. I know it was no great shakes – more "Baseball Song" and "Hoedown!" than the snippets of Chopin and Mozart and Bach I learned to love. But they were first steps. They led to free lessons at secondary school, the orchestra, the Purcell and Britten that caught my imagination and Changed My Life. My first piano primer gave me a language of only seven letters, yet containing every sound imaginable. Mr Schaum, Miss Hughes and mum, thanks.