Pig Sty Avenue

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.