Tuesday 7 March 2017

Lesson 2

As I do have some musical background (some piano in school, guitar, and violin), I had progressed through the book at home at a greater rate than my tutor expected, so after a short time, we looked at one of the pieces I struggle with.

"Shop-a-holic" (the first piece in the previous video I uploaded) was what we looked at.  We worked on keeping my accelerando neater, and keeping control of the ritardando rather than relying on my "intuition".  The final few bars were also a stumbling block, as this piece follows a pattern that increases in speed then throws some legato at you with a change in pattern.

Coming away from this lesson I felt good, I have something to work on now with this piece, while familiarising myself with later pieces ready to focus on them.  But this now feels more musical, and less like a technical piece.

It can be amazing what 30 minutes with a teacher can do.  Roll on Lesson 3.

Sunday 5 March 2017

Week 1 done

Since it is my 2nd lesson tomorrow, I suppose this marks the end of week 1.

I put together a short compilation summarising the pieces I have worked on so far.  I have not recorded the exercises, and these pieces do still need some work to polish up.  The floating pinky finger does need to be fixed though too!

You'll have to excuse the video quality, the case for my go pro has a crack across the lens :(

The pieces in this video are as follows:

1.  Shop-a-holic
2.  Minuet
3.  Past times
4.  Oh when the saints!
5.  Minuet 2


The journey begins

My music journey started over 2 decades ago.  Growing up with my grandma playing piano. I learned the basics as a child, with stickers on the keys.  I played "keyboard" through school, right hand melody, left hand chords with a variety of built in backing tracks.


I then fell for portability, I played guitar, and violin, but these never really felt the same.  I recently started looking at modern digital pianos and a week later I had a music lesson booked, and a Yamaha Arius YDP-163 in Rosewood.
 
Learning an instrument is tough, at 30 with a 30 year old self critic it is even tougher.  Hopefully this blog keeps me motivated, and helps others along their journey too.

I'd also like to say thanks to Vaibhav Sinha with his blog that inspired me to document my journey.