Pig Sty Avenue

Here's a new practice regime I've started today: Lilliburlero (x2) - 2-3 mins Mozart Minuet in G (x2) - 2-3 mins Learning Sailor's Song - 20-30 mins All Grade 1 scales and broken chords, x2 - 20 mins (?) PianoNotes game, using keys from Grade 1 scales. (optional) - 10 mins Learning another piece outside Grade 1, eg Waters of Tyne (optional) - no set time Theory book (at keyboard) (optional) - no set time 1-4 plus one from 5-7 are must-do every day, with more at the weekends or if I'm feeling keen in the week.  The reasoning is that I've decided to go with the ABRSM grades to give me structure, so I should therefore use that structure in practice.  Eventually, probably a month or so from now, Sailor's Song  will join the repertoire, to be followed by Chattanooga Choo Choo . And I'll start each practice playing the whole lot through, x2, plus anything else I manage to learn.  This should keep me going until I get the proper keyboard and som...

Sent this week with fairly short practices, usually half an hour a day. I play through Lilliburlero  and the Minuet several times each.  And then some scales and broken chords, mostly C major.  And then  The Sailor's Song.  Sometimes I'll play on PianoNotes. But it feels like I've reached a lull.  Sometimes it's a bit of a chore.  And it's demotivating that after all this time and God only knows how many play throughs, I still can't really play Lilliburlero or the Minuet.  I know all the notes, but there are still hesitations, they don't exactly flow. I think the bottom line is I need a teacher and a proper keyboard to practice on. I can't see anything on line for lessons locally, so I need to think about that one.  And I really need to get out of the hotel and get a flat before I get a proper keyboard.  Which is a whole other story.  Meanwhile, I'll plod on with the midi keyboard and learn everything I need to for Grad...

Temporarily taken aback last night to think I'd lost Lilliburlero got me thinking.  I've been too long stuck in the Minuet and G major.  So this morning I played my meagre repertoire through, several times. I went back to C major scales and broken chords as well as G major.  And then I got started on Swinstead's Sailor's Song , a jolly wee tune , and worked on the first three bars, RH, LH, and then both. So, the plan is to learn the Swinstead, and then Chattanooga Choo Choo , all the while not neglecting Mozart and Lilliburlero , and also practising all manner of scales and broken chords.  I'll need to work out how much time to spend on everything.  I also want to study musical theory, and I've got an ebook for that.  Part of my reasoning for changing focus from one piece and its key, to several pieces and keys, is the realization, (again, courtesy of my old mate Lilliburlero ) that it's impossible for me to get any piece ...

A lot of practice today.  Spent some time this morning with the Minuet, playing it through ten times. And then this evening I sat down at the keyboard and had another ten, but was feeling somewhat minueted-out.  So I thought I'd play Lilliburlero for old times' sake, and... I'd forgotten it. I had to dig out the music, and spend I don't know how long getting it back.  But it did come back.  Memories of the summer in Bedford and the Bluthner where I learned it, and the midi keyboard felt very clumsy by comparison.  Having got Lilliburlero back into the process memory, I went back to the Minuet for a couple of play throughs.  I know my process memory is capable of holding the two tunes, but I realised you need to keep playing the repertoire, even if it does only consist of one and a half tunes, as mine does.  It's difficult to be objective, but the Minuet playing seemed better, perhaps as a result of shuggling the neurons with Lilliburlero?  Anywa...

Because I'm still a very slow reader, I can't really play anything properly until I've got it memorized. I got there this morning with the Minuet.  Which means I can stop worrying about which keys come next, and start listening to it, and getting it to sound right.  It's also much more enjoyable to practice once I get past the decoding stage.  This morning I played it right through twenty times, and was surprised to look at the time and find that I'd been practising for nearly two hours. And I have plenty of time.  It's the Haj eid just now.  Nothing much to do in Saudi at the best of times, but even less during a holiday, so there's plenty of time to practice.  I'm keeping note of exactly how long I practice, and how many times I play the piece, and how long I spend on the note reading games, too.  I'm doing this because I expect learning times to get shorter as I move on to the Grade 1 B and C pieces, and I want to have some data to indicate that...

During a day of orientation seminars, of varying quality, I put together a schedule for practice for the coming week on my iPad calendar.  I've divvied up the Minuet into four parts, and set out to devote my daily hour of practice to just one section, that's four or five bars.  That's working through them 2H, playing quite slowly for the most part, and memorizing them, too.  I should finish that procedure later today with the last part.  And then I've got several days off work coming up next week, with nothing else much to do, so I'll then go on to playing right through, 2H, as I did with Lilliburlero on the Bluthner, Play It Again, and Again, and Again...  With no work to do and time to kill, I won't be limited to an hour a day, so I could get it in the locker by the end of next week.  It'll need a bit of work on a real piano to get it just so, but I'll have done the donkey work.  I've also started to make a note in the calendar after pr...

A breakthrough this morning, giving a definite few tickles to the old endorphin production: I've got all LH of the Minuet in the locker: memorized and all joined up.  The last couple of weeks, I've been warming up with G major scales, all over the 49 keys.  And then broken chords, ditto.  And then the Minuet, RH one day, LH the next.  Because I'm still a fairly slow reader, I find this the only tedious aspect of practice and learning, decoding from the page to the fingers.  But it's worth it for the morning when I get there, at least with one hand, and can play it all through from memory.  RH tomorrow, and if I get a good run at it I should have that memorized too. Although it's trickier than LH, I've probably spent more time on it over the last couple of weeks.  And then Sunday, I can get started with two hands. Which will be hilarious, the notes which tripped off the fingers with one hand just seem to get lost somewhere w...

The midi keyboard felt weird and unpleasant at the start of this week, but I've gotten used to it after a good hour of practice everyday.  Lilliburlero has become a benchmark: last weekend I was all over the place with it, now it's fine, and quite good fun to play it on the app's various virtual pianos.  I spent the three nights this week with various scales and broken chords, but I'm just practising the G majors now because I've gone back to Mozart's Minuet in G.  Been on the first 8 bars for the last three or four nights, RH only, sometimes spending the whole time on one bar, just over and over, getting it right.  For example, today I spent a long time on the opening two notes, using fingers 5 and 4, and making sure my hand was right, that I could get the keys at full velocity without moving my wrist. I'm not setting any time estimates on how long it's going to take to learn, as I was wont to do in the past.  I'm really enjoying...

After a week in transit, (three nights in Al Khobar dealing with admin, and then three nights becalmed in a "suite" at the hotel in Yanbu whilst waiting for a single room to become available) at last I got a room where I'm likely to be staying for several weeks whilst house hunting, and so got unpacked and got the keyboard out onto the writing desk. The iPad was recharging, so I had a go at the Native Instruments software on the laptop. I couldn't get it to work, and it kept crashing - probably too much for this laptop's wee processor, and for my technical abilities.  So I downloaded some open source midi software.  It's less than 1mb, and it's ok but it's got a delay which made playing Lilliburlero feel really weird.  It's usable for scales though, so I spent some time with C major and G major.  I might actually get a couple of benefits from using only the midi keyboard for a month or two. The keys are heavier on the fingers, and it really fe...

I started back on the Mozart Minuet in G major.  But I got a bit bogged down around bars 6 and 7, and I'm blaming that on an ability to concentrate properly as I hourly check my inbox for the email with eticket for Saudi attached.  I should have been gone yesterday, but everything there is still going slowly after Ramadan and the Eid.  So it looks likely to be next week now. I'll have a couple of days in the office in Al Khobar, and then will likely move on to Yanbu.  Teaching actually starts on 1st September, and I'm hoping to be sorted with a flat by then. I bought the biggest suitcase I could find in TK Max on Sauchiehall St...  But the midi keyboard is slightly too big for it.  So I'm going to have to pay for extra luggage, or take it as hand luggage, or whatever - I don't know what airline it is yet. I'll get back to Mozart once I'm settled in.  Meanwhile, I'm concentrating on G major scales and broken chords.  I've got the scales, (eac...

Had another hour on the Bluthner yesterday, playing Lilliburlero again and again and again...  It's not perfect, and sometimes I have a slight hesitation.  But I could sit down at a piano anywhere and play a recognizable version of a famous tune, which was the plan.  It's time to move on. Well, not so much move on, as return to. Return to the ABRSM Grade 1 syllabus, that is, scales, broken chords, and pick up where I left off with the Mozart Minuet in G major K1.e. And I'm likely going to be flying out to Saudi middle of next month, so I need to come to terms with learning on the midi-keyboard. I can't say, now, when I'll be able to get hold of any kind of 88 key weighted instrument out there. I'll probably be working in a small city, which from the online evidence has no kind of music shop. Though it will have a shifting population of oil industry ex-pats, so I might get something interesting, second-hand, from a departing musician. Who knows, a harmonium o...

I've spent three hours or so this weekend with Lilliburlero, getting quicker, and then realizing it was getting too quick overall, the point was to stop inadvertent rests. So I'm working on that, playing it right through, over and over again, and the rests slowly disappearing.  I might have it just-so by the end of this week. But the point is, I'm reaching a new place. I know all the notes, (more or less, the inadvertent rests are caused by a slight memory lapse, and search in the effective memory, "is it a LH G or F goes with RH A that's just coming up?... er... Oh fuck!")  But as I lose those memory gaps, and it gets into the process memory, (and that's palpably happening this weekend), then it's a whole new thing - trying to make it into music - the tiny gradations of tempo, that make all the difference between tranquilo , say, and the left-right-left of a march. I can only repeat, wow, man, a whole new level. But I'm still miles out, as ...

Been getting between 15 mins and an hour each day.  The dance studio where the Bluthner is located gets incredibly hot, this weather.  It's got floor to ceiling windows on one side, and despite blinds that side of the studio's like a 20x100 ft radiator. Anyway, I've done a few scales, Hanons, etc, but mostly it's been Lilliburlero.  I had to work with the sheet music again until end of last week, but I've got it (re)committed to memory again now. I can play it over and over, mistake free. The tempo's improving, but it's still not at Marching speed yet, though it's no longer a lullaby.  But I had a brainwave this afternoon: the tune as I've learned it has become a tune of its own, with that tempo, and slight rests at points which were difficult, and even though I've mastered them, the hesitations have become embedded. So the next stage is to listen again as I play, and make it musical. In the bigger picture, I'm going back to the Mozart ...

First practice in nearly a month, not on a Steinway, but on a Bluthner. It's a battered old thing, but is in tune. I did a bit less than an hour, and my knuckles are glowing somewhat now. Surprised to find that I'd (practically) forgotten Lilliburlero, and had to puzzle it through with the music in front of me. It's interesting that I hadn't actually fully memorised it, though it felt as if it was embedded last time I played it.  This is subjective, but it felt as if recalling two hands working together was the difficult part - a melody alone might have been easier, but it was as if the two handed learning had overwritten the earlier RH melody learning.  Got the first seven bars back ok, and puzzled through the rest but haven't got it all back yet. Another hour should restore it to the process memory, and then I can get back to actually practising it again.  Which I'm looking forward to, practising on a strange piano with its own history, it's a bit like a h...

Travelling a lot during the next few months, so I'll be practising on the 49 key midi with the iPad.  I've had a couple of hours on it tonight. The keyboard feels quite different to the Kemble, of course. But the sound on the free version of the iGrand app is really rather good. Synthesia is less pleasant on the ear, but tonight I got into major arpeggios with it and that was actually surprisingly finger-stretchy fun. I'll go back to them, and scales too - I'm pretty nippy one handed but it would surely be beneficial to get major scales two handed. As I was on the headphones, no neighbours to consider,  I went back to Lilliburlero - still needs work in terms of the rhythm. Interesting, though, to play it on the differently feeling and sounding midi.  I need to get better at Lilliburlero, and at scales, because I should have access to other pianos this summer, but in a semi public kind of place, (a university - it'll be quiet, during the long vac, but there'll st...

I've had Hanschen Klein  (aka Lightly Row ) plink plonking away in my head for nearly three years now, on-and-off.  And I need to deal with Wee Hans this summer. I'd learned to play it, kind of, on the midi keyboard in 2010 with the PSP software.  And then I was working in Roehampton University that summer, and that was my first attempt to play on a real acoustic piano.  It was pitiful.  People kept coming in to the room to see What Was Happening? and Was I Alright? I can't remember the sequence of events exactly, but I got discouraged and gave up practicing a few months later, and something tells me Wee Hans was at the root of that. Whatever, I need to get it learned (after #jollygoodfellow).

Got right through with RH this afternoon - not 100% memorized yet, but almost.  It's an interesting one to learn with.  You need to be spot on with this as regards tempo: people who don't normally sing, will sing it, chorally, so you need to give them what they're expecting, no faster or slower, no awkward pauses.  So, although it's quite simple, it needs to be right. Later, trotted though Lilliburlero a couple of times.  Need to do it once or twice every practice, to improve it and as a kind of personalized Hanon/warm-up/wtf. Best of Elvis Costello PVG sheet music arrived in the post today. It has Shipbuilding and My Funny Valentine , which I want, and which both look graspable for the near future.

I got the sheet music for Big Time from eBay, arrived this morning.  Even the "Birmingham Library DISCARD" on the G of BIG can't spoil its cover.  And the music is something to shoot for one day.  But Strange Weather didn't look too difficult on the page, so I thought I'd give at least RH a go...  Until I get to the first two bars. I mean, those two chords don't look too difficult, do they?  Until you try to play the buggers.  With RH.  Be quite easy with LH, but on RH, the second chord means 2 on the G#, 1 underneath on the B, and poor wee 5 on the E.  If I've even read it right, I get a bit lost that far south of the staff. This might be stretching DIY piano learning a touch too far, and I'm likely going to need a teacher before I get as far as Tom Waits. Blimey.

I was musing last night, thinking out loud, really, whether I should carry on practicing Lilliburlero a bit longer, get it just right, or draw a line and move on.  I was taken aback by how emphatically Herself suggested I should draw that Lilliburlero line and move on.  "I would appreciate it, and so would all the neighbours."   From a learning point of view, also, it's probably right to move on.  I mean, I'm not just learning to play this tune, I'm learning to play the piano, and one tune can only teach so much.  Be interesting to come back to it in a few months, and see how much the macro skills have improved. So here it is, imperfect, (having it recorded adds another layer of difficulty, as a kind of public performance, I found).  Still those gaps between phrases, you can almost hear me thinking, where tf do I go now?  But, there it is.  My first proper tune learnt, first wee foothill climbed. Next, probably For S/He's a Jolly Good Fel...

Playing it right through, without mistakes, (though still not at the right tempo), gives a definite endorphin buzz, albeit a mild one, not a rush in any sense.  It's a bit addictive.  Tonight at past 12 I'm wishing I had a piano somewhere out of everyone's earshot where I could have another hour or so at it. Nearly there. Couple of sticky notes. At bar 5, RH goes to The C, and LH to the E below, and I hesitate almost every time - it's getting better, but every other run through there's that feeling of stepping out over a cliff, and not knowing where I'm going for a second, less, but too long. Apart from that, the first 8 bars, (repeated once, therefore first 16) is memorized/internalized/wtf, and the second part, with all the activity around G is almost there. I've stopped looking at the music, (except as a reference, for example to explain the bar 5 situation).

The methodology is: Play It Again, and Again, and Again, et seq.  The bits that seemed difficult get just a tiny bit easier each time.  Now it's moving to a new stage, which (I think) means it's moving into the process memory, where it seems to be acquiring plasticity as to tempo, note length, velocity and  feel .  To put it another way, when you stop having to think about what note's coming next, you're free to work on it as music.  It's nearly there, meaning nearly in a state to record it for YouTube.  Another three or four hours? Which, means all over a little more than 30 hours altogether.  In other words, one hour per bar.  Which is worth noting for future reference.

I should have it all memorized this weekend.  Had a really good practice yesterday getting from bar 17 to 28, and now there's only 25-28 still a bit fuzzy.  I've found that I need to play it through RH a couple of times  because playing 2H seems to mash-up memory of RH a bit.  And also sometimes do a few octaves of 2H Hanons to get the fingers working together, (Hanons are good for THAT, at least).   As I memorize Lilliburlero I've been thinking about Rusbridger's Play It Again , and the problems caused by his excellent sight reading which led to difficulties of memorization.  This feels like a fundamental difference in approach between people who love serious/"classical" music, and those who love playing around with jazz/folk and anything else.  For the former, often great sight reading is combined with a reverence for the music as passed down on paper from the composer.  For the latter, the sheet music is a point of departure: follow the melo...

Pretty well got the first 8 bars, (which of course repeat, so that's the first 16) but still rather slow.  Moved on tonight to bars 17-20, which are great fun: whilst RH is doing it's little wander at C4 and down to G, LH is going note-for-note from C2 to G, and then back down to F. Lovely. Fairly easy, too.   I made a little foray in to the remaining 12 bars. Another couple of hours should get the whole tune into memory, and then it's just a case of Play It Again, and Again, and Again... until I get it to the BBC speed of (I think)  ♩ = 126.   And then.  I'll have climbed the first foothill to its peak.  Just another week or two away.  And then.  I can go into any piano shop, any University refectory or hotel lobby (which have a piano, of course, and many do), anywhere in the world, and play Lilliburlero, which, surely, almost everyone in the world will have heard on the wireless.  And then, I'm a piano player, albeit with a reperto...

Today was one of those practices where two hours goes by and it's felt like 40 minutes.  Getting on quite well with 2H on the first 8 bars.  It occurred today that the learning process is in four stages: Decoding (from the sheet music); then Memorisation: playing it over and over again until you know the sequence of notes (RH, LH), and then their relationship (2H);  at this stage the notes will not be the right length, and on a nippy wee thing like Lilliburlero, it's going to be slow, so that bring us to, Speeding up, getting the time right, as well as the notes' lengths; finally, Musicality - making it sound good, making it your own bit of music.   Or DMSM for short.   For Lilliburlero, I'm on course to reach that final M, both hands, about a week from today... 

Tonight rubbed out all the fingerings for the RH because tonight I got the RH all the way through, play-it-again, play-it-again.  Still a bit unsteady around bars 24-27, but another practice should iron that out.  Had a bit of fun at the end of practicing, did the RH part a couple of octaves down the keyboard, with LH, and then with RH, but a couple of octaves up the way. This isn't better than sex, btw, but playing a piece all the way through, relatively smoothly, even just RH, gives a very nice endorphin rush of some kind.  Very nice.  Not something which can be commodified in any way.

I got another version from music-scores.com , arranged by Anne Christopherson ,  the version in Country Dances had something  not-quite right around bar 12, (it wasn't quite like the "BBC version").  The Christopherson has no chords in LH, which should make it easier, but the fingering on RH has been a puzzle I've spent the weekend working on, eventually getting it last night.   Which begs the question, is puzzling out fingering a good exercise for the beginner?  It felt helpful.  Coincidentally, there was a good discussion about this on Today, yesterday (8.20), between   " Dr Alexandra Lamont, a senior lecturer in Music Psychology at Keele university, and Tasmin Little, an international concert violinist" , and one of them, presumably Ms Little, described three stages of attachment to a musical instrument:  Physical (for her, the way the strings felt as she held the violin); Intellectual, as you decode the music from the page to the ea...

Keys sticking, and it was seriously interfering with practice.  I had a shufty on YouTube.  I took out a couple of the offending keys, and also non-offending keys, and compared the felts as per what this bloke says .  But they didn't look any different...  So, not thinking really, I just pushed the keys from their ends, towards the body of the piano...  Eue-bloody-reka!  Absurdly simple, intuitive, effective.  Voila. And then I got back to a sticking-key-free practice.  First few bars two hands.  This is great fun - I'm playing it well, and it sounds lovely with two hands, it's just v-e-r-y s-l-o-w.  Unlike southern parts of the UK, SW Scotland's very wet and forecast to continue so.  Which, encouraging us to stay indoors, means I might get right through it two hands this weekend, and can start to speed up in the week.

All the way through with RH today.  Bit hesitant in parts, but not missing any notes, and zipping along.  Another hour or two should have it nice and smooth, and then I can start on LH. This is fun, and Mozart's coming off very badly in comparison - in terms of enjoying an hour's practice.  The Country Dances book has 160 wee tunes in it.  I got another book of music off of eBay in the post today, Irish Pub Tunes , which has 50 or so tunes. I'm wondering, maybe I should learn all 200 (or thereabouts) of these.  Then I'll have pretty good technique, and I can maybe start on the accordion.  The long term goal has always been to play in a pub   for beer and supper and the hell of it. Jigs, reels and Irish ballads are what goes down in pubs. There's nothing to stop me going down the ABRSM Piano Grade road, too, in the future.  But I'm going to go all folky, just now awhile.  

Got nearly an hour RH today. Can play it right through now. But the main thing is, I had a series of eureka! moments around bars 10-13, realizing how those wee three 8th notes worked in relation to each other and their neighbouring quarter notes - kind of.

I've nearly got most of the RH - with hesitations and the music in front of me.  Got 40mins on that this afternoon, and another 20 mins or so tonight.  I'll probably spend most of the rest of the week on RH.  LH is going to be hard work, probably. Just search this tune on YouTube, and read about it in Wikipedia, and you'll see it's got an absurd amount of subtext - the kind of subtexts which could earn you a punch or two in the mouth if approached at the wrong angle in certain parts of the UK.  All of which means it's a bloody good candidate - arguably better than Mozart's Minuet in G - to be my first tune to learn properly all the way through. Here's a nice version, (there are many more):

Lilliburlero , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Here it is with my fingering notes. I've got the first dozen or so bars with the RH, in a fairly long practice today, (about 90mins). It's great fun. I should get the rest in another hour or so. LH is going to be more problematical, there are chords and this is fairly new territory.

In the post this afternoon arrived 100 Irish Ballads  which cost a couple of quid on eBay. Hmm, it was just the melodies, but heigh ho I wanted a break from the minuet, so I learned the first six bars of Carrickfergus, which was great fun. I got carried away and bought a full piano version off of music notes.com... But when I played the midi it was a flowery elaborate arrangement, not my scene at all, man.  So what I need is a bookful of traditional tunes with straightforward piano arrangements.

No practice yesterday, and today was 20 mins or so.  Bit of a lull.  Got some insight, today. I did LH bars 9-12, just kept playing it over and over... And (this is the insight), I'm not just learning to play the Minuet in G, I'm learning to play the piano: I need to learn this sequence of ten (or whatever) notes, and learn it like billy-o.  I mean, play it all over the place, slowly, quickly, just like it says on the page and ten other ways besides. And I need to learn God-knows-how-many, thousands(?), of other sequences of notes and chords, too.  With each hand and with both hands. This is what you do.  And then one day I can look at a sheet of music and say, "Oh, aye."

The problem I've had with learning Arabic in the past, from a teacher in Libya, (lordy, was that painful) and from various commercial products, is the predominance given to writing.  I understand why that happens, from a cultural/historical point of view, but it's just NOT helpful in Second Language Acquisition terms. So this time around I'm going to give Maha a go:

Just half an hour last night on bars 9-12.  Not much progress.

tricky wee finger changeover , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Tonight I got both RH and LH on bars 9-12. Putting the hand together is coming along, except for this bit which is a repeated note each hand, but wanting a finger change. It's ok, maybe a bit out-of-time with the separate fingers, but it's got that startled rabbit phenomenon that seems to go with the territory of getting to grips with the two hands on a piece. Another thing tonight, I got it that, actually, I do know the difference between quarters and eighths, of course I do - it's one of those things, you can't really get it through conscious thought. Spent a bit of time this morning looking at digitals. The only question is whether to get one before or after I get to wherever it is. And that's a known unknown you'd have to say: it could be Dubai, it could be some one camel town in the middle of nowhere...

No practice yesterday - lazy morning, and then I got absorbed in the forums on the ESL Cafe about the Middle East , digging back through the threads, sorting the sheep from the goats from the nothing-knowns in potential employers.  It's a tricky business. But I got a good old practice in today, (a "good" practice, imo, is one which has probably lasted more than an hour, but you didn't take a note of the start time, and lost all sense of time).    Spent all of it on bars 9-12, getting RH just-so, and then almost getting there with LH.  The calls of Sunday dinner prevented me putting them together. Later today I did a bit of googling to help me with reading - working out note lengths, and slurs.  I think I'm getting there.  Whilst doing the RH with bars 9-12 I've been playing the notes in different ways, not just tempo, but clean, and slurred; longer, shorter.  And then this evening I went on eBay and bid for Beatles' hits 1967-70 piano music, on t...

No practice the last couple of days - laid low by some kind of chest infection, but in recovery this morning so  I got a good hour at lunchtime.  Spent ten minutes in the comfort zone of the first three or four bars, but then launched nervously into the unchartered waters of bars 9 to 12. I've pretty much got the RH.  It was a sheer joy actually - and shows why beginners need to be told what fingers to use.  The ABRSM recommended 1 for a G#, and that just didn't seem right, awkward, but, ah-ha, then up to the F nearly an octave away, with the pinky, and then down through the fingers to the C... lovely.  And then a similar move with the next arpeggio...   The LH more or less mirrors this, but I only made a start on it. I hope to get that later today or tomorrow, and put them together this weekend. And get the last four or five bars early next week so that I can start working through it all together, howsoever clumsily and slowly at first. Speaking of slowl...

Spent an hour on the first four bars just now.  I can get the B-C-D-D-C, and G-A-B-B-A bit up to animato, which is nice.  Where I've still got to work is: I seem to be holding the 2nd note of the two note phrases, at the beginning and then a couple bars along, for just a bit too long. I can manage it fine, quick and snappy into the B-C-D-D-C on RH alone, but both hands, there's just a pause, and there's a G just hanging in the wind... Whereas, (if you listen to the first 6 seconds here) it should just crash ahead, animato , forsooth. I should be learning some more bars from further on in the piece, I know, but I'm still not feeling very well, I've got a fearful cough today, so wanted to stick with what I knew. Mrs Kemble, btw, is behaving pretty well. The sticky key phenomenon seems to diminish with playing. If money was no object, I'd get one of these . But if money was no object, we'd have bigger place, and then I'd get one of these .

No practice yesterday - some kind of virus kept me horizontal most of the day.  It's wearing off this afternoon, though, so I got about 45 mins on the Minuet.  Practised stuff I'd already learned.  Getting the individual arpeggios ok, but getting them all glued together is going to be another matter.  And Mrs K is acting up. That sticky C4: I got the little board above the keys off, and got the key out... and put it back again.  And it worked.  Then the adjacent D went awol.  No problem with the left pedal depressed...  So I kind of worked around it, until... the lid seemed to give a clunk, of its own volition, apparently, and then everything was working again beautifully. Haunted. I'm revising the time estimate on this.  Another month, maybe.  But that's fine, it's fun to play a bar over and over again when it's Mozart.

No practice yesterday.  We ate out, and then went to see Faustus , which was all good.  We went to Coia's for the dinner, and the halibut was splendid.  The play was funny and disturbing.  Hadn't realized it was so unashamedly moral. But today's been a good old lazy Saturday, and I've just had nearly an hour's practice.  It was all work on dressing the building blocks.  I'm hampered because C4 on the Kemble has taken to sticking.  I was to get David out to do the concert pitch tuning in August, but it looks like it'll have to be sooner than that.  When he gave it its first tuning he advised plenty of playing, see what cropped and, heigh-ho. But I did the first LH arpeggio over and over, and the first two RH notes, again, over and over, concentrating on keeping my other fingers on the keys, inactive.  Then I did the next bar, 8 I think it is, which has a declining run of four notes RH, two LH, and then a trill.  It all looked really d...

What with a long day working, and looking for work, and the dishes, and Newcastle v Benefica in a few minutes, I got about 25 mins or so tonight.  Went back to those first few bars, and realised it was mournfully slow. So I started on the (RH) A-B-C-C-B, and just kept on at it, getting faster and less blundersome.  Ditto the (LH) G-A-B-B-A, (Gabba, gabba, hey!).  RH was much the quicker.   I've started putting them together. I think this is it, that I'm doing the right thing - just focusing on bits, (bars, phrases, arpeggios, wtfs) - and getting them better and quicker and into the process memory, and hopefully adding a wee bit into the overall technique by so doing.  It's a bit Hanon like, as in mindlessly repetitive, but unlike Hanon it's a building block in an actual piece of music. I think this is it: choose your "bit" of music, and keep at it until you can play it both hands, fortissimo, allegro, pianissimo, any-way-you-fucking-like-imo.  And then an...

don't give up _ owl , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . 'nuff said

Two sessions today, about 40+30mins, (though I rarely keep a good note of the time, and it passes by quickly).  Started the first and finished the last with the Hard Bar.  But mostly I spent time on the preceding bar, (bottom left hand corner of the first frame on the YouTube clip below), which I realised I couldn't do with both hands.  It's difficult because the first LH note is a half note - everything else is a quarter.  So that was a challenge, remembering to hold that longer.  I got there, kind of.   There's a long way to go on this, still.  Another week and half is beginning to look optimistic.  Maybe end of the month.  I got a rush of blood to the head with this, the first few bars seemed to easy.  Remember, I'm just in the littlest foothills of the first mountain of a range of mountains.  Meanwhile, to paradoxically inspire and depress, here's the full grown up version, played by a grown up - whilst being, mind, a work wr...

Only half an hour tonight - honestly, I think I was finding avoidance strategies, thinking, "Maybe it would be beneficial to miss a day?"  And it has been another long work day.  But I gave it a go, and it's definitely speeding up, maybe  ♪ =88? Another thing I noticed was that when I set the metronome going - at 80 I think it was, initially, -  I speeded up straightaway, as if I'd been waiting for a beat to march to.   If I get a full hour's practice tomorrow, I should get there with this bar, the neural connexions are growing-in.  The next bar looks a bit tricky, too - maybe trickier.  And then the remaining dozen or so bars look ok.  So, maybe, a first performance of my first ever piece of music by, say, not this weekend but the next?  Say, around 20th April?  As I wrote in an audio transcription I was working on today, "[gulps]". 

hard bar , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . Spent 40 mins tonight. Still very slow, but I had a couple of shots with the metronome and it's gone from 50 to 72, or thereabouts. Is this it, then? This is the nitty-gritty of learning to play the piano? Play it again!

To reflect cultural scruples in the region in which I'm looking to be employed in the not-too-distant future...

I had about 20 mins going through and putting the sharps where hitherto I'd put naturals.  And then I came back later and gave it a few runs through, and it's ok, though still slow and clumsy.  But I'm pressing on to get the whole piece, get the feel for it. So I moved on to bar 7, (is it 7, though? I need to look up how we number bars - 4, according to the ABRSM, looks like 5 to me).  Anyway, five notes RH, quite straightforward, and three LH.  I can do each hand separately, slowly, heavily, quickly, lively, anyway you bloody well like.  But together!  I can feel the information jumping across the neurons, looking for a connexion, finding none, and falling into inner space... I put the metronome on, and it was at 52 - the suggested speed is 126.  So someway to go with just that one bar. Which, it must be said, looks like the heaviest one in the piece.  It's interesting, though: you'd never get this with Hanons, would you? This two-handedness ...

A note-to-self which I'll update periodically, of books to take with me: Silver: A Return to Treasure Island   - Andrew Motion The 5 Simple Machines - Todd McEwen Umbrella - Will Self Narcopolis - Jeet Thayill Life After Life - Kate Atkinson Here Comes Everybody - James Fearnley The Devil I Know - Claire Kilroy The Teleportation Accident - Ned Beauman Empires of the Sand:  The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 -  Efraim Karsh ;  Inari Karsh A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle That Shaped the Middle East -  James Barr Eden To Armageddon: World War I The Middle East   - Roger Ford

I got about 50 mins this morning, before a visit to the Glasgow Science Centre .  I ran through the first four bars, which are fine.  Did a bit of playing around with the tempo and the velocity.  And then I got started on the RH with bb 5-7.  It was just a sequence of notes, slowly and clumsily played.   I listened to the versions on YouTube again, and got my ear into it, and picked out the two arpeggios, (I think they're arpeggios, my terminology is imperfect), B-G-, -E and G-E, -C#, and spent most of the time with them, working out the fingers, for which suggestions in the ABRSM didn't feel that right, I mean they say the B-G is 5-3, but 5-4 would feel more natural.  However, I'm persevering with the suggestions, on the basis that these people know infinitely more than I do. Then I realised that I hadn't read the first four bars right - there's an F# where I was playing an F, but I had to stop practicing to go on our outing.  I had a quick run ...

psa , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . He he. Glasgow Science Centre.

Got the first four bars just now, both hands.  Would have got the next four, but for a couple of glasses of vinho verde with excellent scallops, at The Fish People , (Herself had the salmon, and The Bairn fish and chips, and all plates were cleared and good reports given). That was after a visit to the Scotland St School : nary a piano in sight, but "scales charts", which I couldn't make out, on the early 20th century classrooms' walls. The classroom made to look 1950s and 60s gave Herself and me a nasty shiver as we walked in. I only got 45 mins or so on the Mozart tonight, and even modest amounts of alcohol prohibit learning, I'd say.  But it's a start.  Probably a week or so to get it learnt, and the same again to get it musical? Meanwhile, here's someone else having a go from YouTube: I don't know if it's my ear or my imagination, but the above video, and the one I blogged last night  both sound really, well, digital - all questions o...

Being off work this week, I was able to get 90 mins all told on the Prelude No.1 in C Major this afternoon.  Still with the first twelve bars, both hands, quite slow and with mistakes. Then I finished with a lot of the time just with the right hand, doing the first four arpeggios: G-C-E (x2), A-D-E (x2), G-D-E (x2), G-C-E (x2) (again), and then the big stretch at A-E-A (x2).  I kept playing them all in that sequence, all being well until the last one, which I'm beginning to get the hang of, though it's a literal and figurative stretch.  I could get the next one, F#-A-D, too, but was really uncertain if I was fingering it right... I've decided to shelve the Prelude for now.  It's 60-something bars, which is a lot of bars with guesswork on the fingers. I don't want to get into any of the "bad habits" which I keep reading are so difficult to get out of later.  I'm pretty firmly in the anti-Hanon camp now, (though I did do a few quick one-handers of Exer...

I printed the music off last night and had a quick go at the first couple of bars, right hand.  I got another couple of quick goes this morning, and then an hour this evening, getting up to bar 12, still on the right hand.  Like, wow, man.  This has blown poor old M Hanon out of the water.  It's practice which is beautiful.  Be-oo-ti-ful.  No fingerings on the music I've got.  I think there's a book available, but I can't find any suggestions about fingerings online.  So I'm just puzzling it out as I go.  Not sure if this is A Good Thing or A Bad Thing?  And I'm also not sure about the hands methodology in learning and practicing this - should I go through the whole piece RH, and then LH?  Or do (say) 16 bars at a time, and then put the hands together?   I can work this stuff out.  Meanwhile, I'm actually learning a real bit of Bach , ffs, and I can do this .  It's going to take two or three weeks, mind.  ...

Been away to Tyneside for Easter, and the only practice has been on the note-recognition app.  Which has given time for some thought about how to best use practice time "going forward". This is a fairly effective hatchet job on Hanon.   What chimes most with me is that Hanon is mostly both hands doing the same thing, an octave or two apart - but when do you need that to play something? A quick google got me to Bach's Prelude 1 in C Major . And I'll print that out and get started on it tomorrow. I've also got the music for We'll Gather Lilacs... and that looks quite simple. Sorry M Hanon, you're getting the elbow: Johann and Ivor are much more interesting companions.

I was musing yesterday on where to go next with the piano , and rather like the man walking home from a good lunch at the pub suddenly realized I'd left The Bairn behind.  What was needed was a bit of lateral thinking and a two-birds-with-one-stone approach. I went through all of the pedagogic materials which came in the piano stool, and they look ok, but they're very dated, the most recent going back to the 60s.  I don't know if music pedagogy has moved on as much as language during that time, but I'd probably regard a 1960s ESL text book as worse than useless. So I've ordered Tunes for Ten Fingers , which looks as if it will be the kind of thing she can play/work with herself.  Me too, of course.  After that we'll move onto Piano Time 1 .  Or maybe jump to 2 , depending on where Tunes for Ten Fingers has left us.  

Of course, it's funny when Tories fall out with one another, but this dispute between Michael Gove's henchmen and some unknown unfortunate called Loughton is hilarious.  The sentence allegedly given to the Spectator by said henchmen smacked me between the eyes this morning, mainly because I'm spending most waking moments editing text.   What's an "incompetent narcissist"?  A very vain person who has mismanaged life so badly they don't have any mirrors at home? Or, stopping to admire their shop-window reflected image, realize their hair is somewhat disarrayed, and...  bugger, they've misplaced the comb.  Narcissists really need to be on the ball, you know.   And we can take some comfort that he's only obsessed with self-promotion, I suppose.  Imagine if he'd been obsessed with something else, too - trainspotting say.  He'd have his work cut out, standing on the end of the station platform, noting down the numbers of trains going by, and...

David the piano man tuned the Kemble and put the saggy keys right as part of the service.  It was interesting to see under the hood, so to speak. The saggy keys were caused by something on the key itself, which he was able to put right easily enough.  And some of the tuning pegs were coming a bit loose from the wrest plank, which problem can be cured with super-glue, apparently.   I also realised that what with the tuning pegs coming loose, and the sound board gradually losing its curve, pianos don't last forever.  Maybe we'll get a new one if Molly or I get past grade 5 or 6 one day.  The Kemble will do for now. I got chatting with David and he's looking to make a move into EFL, divining, as I have, that FE in the UK is buggered and you need to head for the palm trees and the petro-dollars.  I'm beginning to look forward to it now as a new opportunity and adventure, rather than an irksome economic necessity.  The likelihood is that I'll be heading ...

...The fact is, we're not going to get to the UAE for months, and once out there, buying a digital will likely not be top priority as we cope with all the hundred demands of life in a new country, with a new job.  I don't know for sure what the music-shop or online-delivery situation will be.  And anyway, I've realized, especially as I get that tiny bit better at Hanons and scales each day, I really, really enjoy practicing on the Kemble, despite the saggy notes that keep going AWOL.  So I'm going to get in touch with this man tomorrow, see what he can do. On the sight reading, I've got a few apps, but the one that seems to work best is Piano Notes , (actually that one I've linked to looks much more sophisticated than the one I got from the app store...)  I think I've started to internalize the relationship between the notes on the staff (just the treble clef for now) and the keyboard.  The version I'm working on has the treble clef and the bit of the...

Today, -  in the wee moments of reflection I had between editing and writing a load of tests, - I'm thinking, where am I going with this piano playing?  And, indeed, why am I going there?  How am I going to get there...?  There's a social history aspect to this.  I'm fascinated by the idea that since the 1920s, people would go and see a movie, like the songs in it.  Or like the songs they'd heard at a dance hall.  Maybe they'd buy a 78.  But the best bit of that is, they'd buy the sheet music, and at least one person in the family would be able to sit down in the front parlour and play it.  And they could play it at parties, and dance, and sing along to it.  Fifty years later, the young woman who fell in love at one of those parties, could find the music in the piano stool, play it, and remember.   I suppose this went on until the 50s as a common phenomenon, and continued in some households for longer. The music in the piano ...

I had a couple of short practices yesterday, and then a good forty minutes in the evening.  Mrs Kemble is not at her best, and I think I'm going to have to regard her as largely ornamental until she gets tuned and tweaked, whenever that is.  Definitely going out of tune, and more keys are sagging, failing to respond, sticking.  Maybe it's the heat in the flat, or maybe the dealer did just enough tweaking to be able to sell her.  At two hundred quid, I'm not complaining, because even if I've got to spend that much again, or more, I'll have a lovely 1930s upright at the end of it.  But investing cash in Mrs K this year is probably not the best use of resources. So that means back to the Sampson for now.  And "going forward", as we used to say in Shanghai, I'll practice on whatever pianos cross my path, and get a digital in Dubai or wherever.  Going back to the how-I-learned-photography pattern, actually, digital might be the best way for the first coup...

I managed to get half an hour yesterday.  Hanons, mostly.  I did Hanon No.2 two-handed, quite slowly, making sure it was just right.  Same with No.1, but more quickly.  And also single handed No.1s, fast, which was fun.  Also some scales.  I came unstuck trying to do two handed scales, with the RH going 1-2-3-1, and  LH 5-4-3-2-1-3 - it means I'm going onto RH thumb when LH is proceeding merrily through the fingers.  This will need some work. Bad news on the old Kemble though.  Now that I've got my hands working together on the Hanons, hitting the notes one or two octaves apart, with the same velocity and at the same time, it's clear that she's slightly out of tune.  Also, several more keys above middle C are "sagging".  I can get a tuner/technician out of course, but I'm wondering if it's worth it just now.  See, I'm well on the way to working a summer school down south, and then heading off the UAE in late August.  The...

Got about 20 minutes on the Kemble yesterday, and then an hour on the Samson  before  bed. Hanons of course, and doodling clumsily around No.2, which was interesting. Finished by starting the first bar of Star Dust, which brought me up against A fingering problem for the first time.  Almost no practice today, a bloody work day, likely to be the first difficult day of a fortnight of them, as I go hell for leather to finish what's likely to be my last meaningful project before I start working notice and getting ready for something else. Hoping that the next workplace, whichever one of the current contenders it turns out to be, has an auld Joanna to hand. Which thought made me wonder why we pronounce it to rhyme with that lady's name in Geordie?

Obviously. I realised today that I'd been playing Hanon No.2 in quite a musical way. In C major, it's C-E-A-G-F-G-F-E-D, and I'd been playing the G-F as (roughly speaking) eighths, and the others as quarter notes, that is playing the two pairs of notes as a little shimmy, and the others drawn out, quite a simple little melody.  I'm learning to get them all the same length now, and it sounds quite different. So I was doing Hanons today, and Dorian in D, and C major scales, one handed, but changing the fingering as I went, and trying to keep the notes all the same despite sometimes getting back to the D or the C with a finger short, or a finger over.  That was fun.  My pleasure was diminished somewhat when I realised that the B next door to middle C on the Kemble is a bit poorly - not 100% responsive.  Saggy.  I'm sure this can be sorted, and it would benefit from some tweaking of strings and hammers and I-don't-know-what, but ought to hold back on any more pi...

Most educational institutions have a piano. For those long Friday afternoons, however, hiding from the desert sun, the Samson would be ok, but this is more like it .

Will want a pair of bins to go with this .

Cisse and Ben Arfa posters. 

I was listening to The Cure on the gummies tonight, and it got me thinking, I want to be able to improvise this, bit slower, bit bluesy, keep the singing.  I could hear it in my head.  Now, this is very nice , but it's not the way I'd want to do it.  So that's what I'm aiming for, really, to read music and to be able to improvise around almost any melody.

Over an hour on Hanons on the Samson last night.  And then again on the piano this lunchtime. Hanon No.1 is coming along nicely with the two hands, each note sounding in synch with its pal, and all being the same length, so that it's getting a kind of marching rhythm to it.  No.2 still has some way to go.  Last night, with the headphones on, I practiced knocking the hell out of the keyboard, hitting the keys with full force.  And after a lot of that, going gentler.  Same again today on the piano. After half an hour of more of the Hanons, I started on the scales from the Jazz Piano Scale book: Dorian on D.  It took me a few minutes to work out the pattern of the fingering - which is actually pretty simple, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5, and away you go back down again.  Beautiful.  I did both hands separately, which is all you need for Grade 1.  Hanon, Hanon, scales and Hanon. So the headlines the last 24 hours, apart from the new Pope,...

Also check out "Don't Get Weary" , (children) - it's a peach.

This from Piano Clues will be helpful when I move on from Hanon 1 and 2.

Got this last night -  £13.99, - and had a go before I went to bed.  It's pretty straightforward: eight "acoustic" pianos, plus metronome if you want it, and some other tweaks on volume, "ambience" etc.  The sound, with headphones, is very impressive.  The sound from the app, that is, I'm still with room for improvement: single handed Hanons are ok, velocity is getting more even across the the five fingers.   But the two hands are not synching exactly, and it can sound awful.  The good thing about using the Samson with the app and headphones is that you can hear the notes with merciless clarity.  So that's cool.  The Samson had been gathering dust for a week since the Kemble arrived, but it's definitely got a role (apart from travelling) in checking precision.  The weight is quite different, the keys feel very springy after the Kemble - but that's ok, I want to get used to as wide a variety of keyboards as possible.   That merciless ...

I had a couple of wee two handed Hanon 2s during the day.  Then sat down this evening for a proper practice.  Went very slow with two hands on Hanon 2, and made less mistakes, but it didn't always sound right.  Then I went alternate hands on Hanon 1 and then 2, left pedal, striking the keys as quietly, but as consistently as possible. It took a lot of concentration - what I noticed was that because you've got to work fingers 3&4, the one which follows be it 2 or 5, will strike the key too hard.  Also, maybe Mrs Kemble isn't the most sensitive of pianos - though I don't know that, being almost a real piano virgin until she arrived in my life.  I'll have to saunter into a piano shop and give a Steinway the benefit of my Hanon exercises when I get the chance, see how something expensive feels by comparison. Anyway, after half an hour, and I don't know how many trips up and down the keyboard, I was kind of getting there, each not being about the same velocit...

Thought I knew this, but, not really - okay-ish with pitch, but time and that...  Anyways, here's a link http://readsheetmusic.info/readingmusic.shtml Did some more Hanon 1s and 2s today.  2 is easier descending, and 1 is easier ascending - what's all that about?  Still slow and clumsy, but slight improvement. ABRSM Jazz Piano stuff arrived this afternoon.  It does look do-able in 12 months, but I need to spend the next month or so on the Hanons AND on getting up to speed with musical terminology in general and jazz in particular. I got the music for Hot Cross Buns via google, and taught The Bairn it.  A first (tiny) baby step in the knowledge transfer aspect of this.