Day 5

Spent 10 minutes first thing after work on the left hand of the song. Listening to deep piano music on my way home from work helped brewing my motivation. Although it is unfortunate that SoundCloud has now succumbed to the interruptive ads selling their pro membership. They are not entirely to blame, perhaps. They need some way to sustain their hosting at least. Although to think that they are now owned by Spotify, leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Very confusing to try to read the score, while all along I had been identifying the notes with my emotions alone. Reading scores and listening are two completely different functions in my head that don't quite talk to each other. Maybe not yet.

Then my tablet's low battery warning interrupted my flow. I probably could have gone a bit further, but the fear of the tablet's low battery, where I read my scores off of, urged me to wrap up soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 7

Image
I almost didn't want to upload it. It's that bad, but I have to. I want to make it nakedly obvious how difficult it is to be completely unfamiliar at something. and a reminder of how everyone starts out like me. Although next week I'll probably just go back to songs at my skill level. One cringy reminder of what it's like to be a beginner is more than enough for this project, I reckon. There is something particularly cringy and uncomfortable with the way I paused so often, like "get on with it already!" kind of discomfort as I watch myself. Perhaps this is what teachers mean about staying in the same tempo no matter how slow you play. An inconsistent tempo that doesn't mean anything is essence to agony. Now that my first week's progress is done, time to fall back to "The Joy Of First Classics" by Denes Agay so that I can at least make some satisfactory progress.
Read more

Day 4

Where has all the time gone? I came home, had a light dinner while messing with Minecraft, and it was already 9:30pm when I realised I have yet to touch the piano. I spent a few quick minutes messing with the same song as yesterday, this time putting a bit more faith in playing with both hands. However I was doing it by memory. I need to go back to the score and double check the left hand melody. It is more motivating for me to play with full flowing emotions, my hands and body gracefully moving with the melody, with not much care of technique and tempo. It helps when this is such an emotional song with an irregular tempo as well. Teachers out there will scream at me for doing everything that's wrong about learning the piano, but I have to find my own way to stay motivated. As with all things in my life.
Read more

Day 8

Had a late night tonight but I managed to squeeze 15 minutes into a new song, from the book of Ghibli animation soundtracks. This song I'm not familiar with from Valley Of The Wind has a much easier pattern to recognise, and I find that I can sight read quite well one hand at a time. Yet I'm still dumbfounded as soon as I put both hands together. I'd have completely forgotten what I had just figured out with one hand and I had to read from scratch if I try to play with both hands. It's a struggle and at the same time an interesting realisation. Somehow it tells me that, if I treat my tactile information from both hands at once as something that's different from when my hands operate separately, then I'll be on the right track to improving my sight reading when I play with both hands. Our body coordination can be such funny and magical feelings. I see why typing on a computer keyboard is different from playing on a piano keyboard - you only ever hit one key a
Read more