#hanonexercise #alanrusbridger #playitagain

I finished Play It Again this afternoon, (that's three weeks or so, which shows how much time I have for reading these days).  It became really very engrossing.  There are some parallels - Chopin's Ballade No1/complete jazz piano beginner in one's fiftiess are perhaps on a par in terms of ambition.  And there's the business of fitting it all into a busy day, though naturally, Head of Assessment is far less onerous than Editor in Chief in terms of hours.

The talks he had with the neurologists were the most interesting - that your brain is more plastic when you're young, but it still is in middle age, and will grow new links and branches to enhance new product memories.  It also made me realize that as much as I love classical/romantic music, I love folk, blues and jazz much, much more.  To oversimplify it somewhat,  I'm happier in a bar than in a concert hall, though I'm pretty happy in both places.

I had an hour with M Hanon this afternoon.  I've got Exercise 1 ok, I can speed up now with the two hands.  I'm also listening carefully, getting the LH and RH notes in synch in terms of time and velocity.  Exercise 2 is lagging behind a bit.  I had to go back onto youtube again to get it descending - obviously it hadn't entered the old productive memory.  I was able to go up and down the keyboard, more-or-less with hands in synch, but slowly.

I didn't get back to A Scottish Dance, really, apart from showing The Bairn what I'd already worked out.  We're putting a row of Monster High dolls along the piano - to make it friendlier to her, but also to give a sense of being watched, because I want to play for real people one day, far away though that day is.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more

How many pallets can you fit in the back of a Fiat 500?

Image
At least 1. Maybe I could have got 3 altogether, at a pinch. Also 200+ gorse seeds, which have begun to look in danger of damping off, so I'm thinking they'll be better off at the allotment in the fresh air. I'm worried about slugs, snails and woodpigeons, though, so I put them in a wheelbarrow, covered with a net. Also this morning, planted a row of beetroot detroit.
Read more