Pig Sty Avenue

After half an hour or so with Johnty Alouette tonight, I gave Nate at pianolessons.com a go.  He doesn't mess around.  After the first four minute lesson , I was doing the C, F and G triads, and learned the concept of  a root, (the wee dog-like left hand).   So I had another half hour up and down the Samson's 49 keys, with triads and roots. Managing to get an hour in most days is no trouble - Emmerdale and Coronation Street see to that in the week's early evening, and of course weekends are fine.

Hmm.  Really minimalist Deco, isn't it?  1936, apparently .  It's really growing on me. Most importantly, it sounds lovely, too. Looking forward to going through all the octaves with the old 2-5-1 on Saturday afternoon.

CNV00047 , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . I've got a big bag of film, but this is the last photo I'm going to take for a while. Awaiting inspiration. And anyway all leisure time energy is going into piano learning. NB: where the lamp is, that space over Herself's left shoulder, is one of the piano's putative spaces.

A whole new situation, beyond plink-plonk-plink has opened up this evening, as I start to practice these chords, in C. It didn't seem to take all that long for my RH fingers to get into the right shape.  What was even more encouraging, after a few goes-through, the LH seemed to just follow RH, like a wee dog.   Chords, man!  At first it seemed like, "Oh yeah, there's no way four fingers can go..."  And then... yes they can!  And then...  it's just a question of getting faster. All of this, mind, with the Native Instruments software which came with the keyboard, and which I've eventually, kind of, got to work through a laptop. I'd rather be doing it on a proper piano.  Speaking of which, the Kemble in the West End is still on the go.  The seller reckons  £60 - 90 for delivery, and says it wouldn't need re-tuned when it got here.  I've arranged to see it Saturday afternoon.   Meanwhile, in other news, I got out on the bike...

Sometimes you wake up and there's stuff you've just got to get down before you start work... We need a real piano.   There's a place in Paisley .  It's my birthday in April, but anyway I'm not talking Steinway, here.  There's a Rosner going for less than 300 quid, refurbished and tuned.  And a Kemble from someone in the West End for less than 200...  We need structure and incentives, and the most obvious one is the ABRSM jazz piano exams.  There are exams in November, and Grade One seems like a reasonable goal.  And it's "we" because this is The Bairn and me.   Meanwhile, if I'm actually going into a piano shop and sitting down, I want to be able to play some bloody thing.  The Jazz 2-5-1 chord progression looks like fun, and I can learn that on the Samson.  "Voila", as Johnty Alouette would have said.  

the book queue , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue .

I've gotten to 52 years old, and learned just now that the lyric is gentille alouette , and not - having learned the song during a Tyneside infancy - Johnty  (a diminutive of John or Johnson back home) Alouette.  I'd constructed Johnty Alouette as some bloke performing mysterious antics in French, like Frere Jacques, and had no idea it was a rather cruel song about torturing a nice wee lark.  Blimey. But the tune is fun to play, with the two wee scales, RH then LH, and the long LH note as you do a RH scale, which is a first toe in the water of two hands playing together. It's great, this Synthesia. And with Alouette, I've begun to pay attention to the stats table, showing numbers of key-errors and percentage playing speed.  I'm aiming for no errors and 90% when I'm learning the melody, before going on to the rhythm. I suppose Synthesia's  limit will be reached when you get pieces which mean you need to be looking at your hands more, and can't watch...

In the snow! , originally uploaded by AlexanderNixon . Boy and Laura.

I'd learned The Monkey and the Mirror,   and then started playing it from memory, first with the music as an aide memoir, and then looking down at the keys.  This was a revelation - the way ahead is to memorize these simple pieces, and just carry on with that as I get onto more complicated ones. I played around the octaves with it, putting the hands opposite end of the keyboard, then one around middle C, and the other elsewhere.  And then I did the baby version of the first bar of We Three Kings , (that link's to a slightly more sophisticated version), and realised I could do all of it's five notes in one hand, and that was great fun, getting the velocity right, and trying to keep the fingers flat on the keys. There's another app we've got, PianoMeter , which looks interesting - purely for music-reading purposes: probably that's a bit down the road.

Untitled , originally uploaded by Pig Sty Avenue . She doesn't like that hat, she tells me. It keeps riding up to leave her ears exposed.

This post on Language Log is interesting.  It's worth listening out for specific examples.  It indicates that this is a useful bit of language, and not just a pc way of avoiding gender labels.  I'd suggest we teach it at B1.2 or thereabouts.

This Synthesia's great fun.  It's all about dexterity, for now, I'm thinking - just keep getting more accurate on increasingly difficult bits of music: which might take a year to get to any kind of breakthrough. Not to lose sight of notation,  I'll investigate Noteflight when I've a bit of time.  There's also Sheet Music Editor .  Haven't looked at apps for the iPad yet.  Initially, I want to note up the simple bits that I'm practising on, and blog them if possible. Meanwhile, as a lifelong Guardianista and keyboard student, I couldn't resist shelling out at Waterstones (Amazon?  Amazon?  Who the fuck are Amazon?) for the Alan Rusbridger book .  Be good to have a shot at Chopin's Ballade  one day.  Though my personal goal is more modest, it still looks bloody difficult: Maple Leaf Rag . Two to three years, maybe?

In July 2010 , I was probably hearing the word "app" for the first time.  Things have moved on now, and there's an iPad in the house.  I got started yesterday with Synthesia , on dear old Au Clair de la Lune: only three notes, with only the right hand. But here's the thing: back in 2010 I was just concentrating on getting some kind of mental link between the notes on the page and the ones my fingers were hitting on the keyboard.  Which I kind of did, but with no regard for tempo and rhythm, so it must have sounded like...  just a series of notes. This Synthesia shows you the musical notation, but is not dependent on it. The notes fall down as in Tetris, and you have to hit the right keys.  You learn the melody first, quite easy, but then you have to do it rhythmically, at the right time, and paying attention to both the length of the note and the velocity.  It feels much more realistic. It's also difficult, in the way a computer game is difficult, eve...