Pig Sty Avenue

I learned that grade 1 arr. of Imagine. Someone on FB pointed out my shockingly droopy wrists, and yes, they had a point. So I moved on to We Wish You a Merry Christmas, determined to get the wrists right. And I noticed the wrists took care of themselves if I played high up the keys. I got so absorbed in all this, playing G major scales properly, with the fingers right, and high up the keys... That was when I realised that those fingerlings enabled me to play high up the keys, and fit neatly into the gaps between the black keys, and that's why, perhaps, the black keys are arranged as they are in twos and threes... After several years of being a little intimidated by the keyboard, its contours suddenly began to feel friendly, familiar, home-like. The hurried advice I had from Flora (my Sauchiehall St teacher) at last fell on fertile ground: it's actually much easier with your wrists high... It's ok to lean forward... Those two half hour lessons back in October have got me ou...

I had a couple of piano lessons when I was home in Sept/Oct. My fingers were all wrong, and I've learned to do C, G and now D scales with the proper fingers.  And I've got a book of grade 1 pieces - not ABRSM pieces, but grade 1 nontheless, - and I've started with Imagine. Really it more or less just follows the sung harmony of the original song, with some simple wee harmonies in the left hand.   The plan is to learn as many grade 1 pieces as I can now in Saudi from this book, (Scarborough Fair, Greensleeves, The Sound of Silence, California Dreamin') whilst I'm here. I hope it gets easier as I go along. Imagine is hard work, though I'm getting here.  Come February, (or thereabouts), I'll be home again, and I'll get the 2014/15 ABRSM Grade 1 syllabus pieces to learn in time for the Summer 2015 exams in Glasgow. I'm hoping that I can more or less sight read grade 1 pieces by then. I'm just focussing on that for now. Grade 2 et seq will have to wai...

I read somewhere, (The Guardian, probs, but can't find the link now), that personal blogging is about done with, that most of us have moved on in social networking terms.  Subjectively, that's probably about right - I used to post here almost daily. And now it's monthly. But it's coming up ten years now, and this does a job that FB and Twitter don't do.  Really, it's a place to note how things are getting along with stuff I'm interested in, but that will tend to make anyone else's eyes glaze over when I start talking about them: photography, gardening, the piano.  Photography is SO noughties, now. I use the iPhone to get photos - and that means I'm just concentrating on the image, no longer on the process and the gear.  And all that gear, like the Nikon F, I was going to put it all on eBay, but it was all purchased and taken so much care of over a decade, it seems a pity to part with it for mere lucre. So I'm going to box it all up and Molly or s...

I've tried and failed now to learn three quite simple pieces, She Moves Through the Fair, Water of Tyne, and Down at the Old Bull and Bush, and it's been such hard work I've not gotten past a few bars on each of them.  So I'm leaving off the pieces until I've spent a whole lot more time with scales and arpeggios.  I was telling Chris at work about this, and he kindly pointed out that I haven't got a good ear - have to admit he's right there, he led us in some singing and he would have noticed.   So I'm working with the scales, still C major, and now D major. I've got all the key's chords, scales and arpeggios on sheet music - an A4 page for each key, thirty or so in all. So I plan to be doing two at a time, until I get really good at one of them, so that I can play it all over the keyboard without even thinking about it, and then I'll move onto another key, always learning two at a time so that I don't get bored with it.   And I've go...

http://youtu.be/Yz7rOwuEzJE That's a link that's made me look at and feel the keyboard in a whole different way.  What he's saying about chords is interesting, but the main thing is about playing higher up the keys - something I've noticed all good piano players do.  I've been playing the ends of the keys, especially as I've been working in C major for the last couple of months.  But since I saw that video, I've gone back to basics, and started back on scales, (C major, one octave apart, up-and-down four or five octaves, arpeggios, and contrary motion) high up the keys. It's a difficult adjustment, and I'm much slower and mistake-prone, but it (literally) feels right.  For example, on the contrary motion scale, I'm aware that when one hand's playing F, the other's playing G: I'm aware because being higher up the keys I'm more in touch with what key it actually is - the end of the keys in C are, after all, the same - only when you...

I said 'wow' out loud playing the first octave of a scale on that Broadwood in Biggars a couple of weeks ago.  It's made me think.  And then having got home and had some practice time on the Kemble, and it's coming out of the comparison very badly. Of course, I could get it tuned again, get something done about the sticky keys, and maybe even invest in some more significant resoration. but is it worth it?  Maybe I should get a Broadwood when I'm finished in Saudi? we could make a wee holiday of it, travelling the islands, visiting second hand piano shops.  

Had the Yamaha keyboard two or three months now. Getting quite adept at scales and arpeggios in several keys. I do the scales two handed, an octave apart, across four or five octaves altogether.    I've got some tips on YouTube, learning to not waggle my elbows, and to sit up straight. I do ten or fifteen minutes every morning before I go out to work, and then another three or four fifteen or twenty minute practises in the evening, more at the weekend.  I need to move on now, and build up a repertoire. At the moment it's pitiful, consisting solely of my old mate Lilliburlero, which I still play several times each day, now singing the There Was An Old Woman words - it was difficult to do at first, singing and playing at the same time, but it seems to be like riding a bike, and I've got the knack now.  Home in Glasgow I bought a book of Songs You Think You Know, a hundred standards with "easy piano" arrangements - I've turned my nose up at these in the past, thi...

At last got through to Jeddah and bought a DGX-230. It wasn't quite what I'd aspired to, but they didn't have any Rolands or Korgs in the shop. It isn't even fully weighted, but it feels comfy to play on, and it's probably just right for the stage I'm at.  I'd gotten so fed up with the feel and limitations of the midi keyboard, that I've done little practice lately, but I'm back at it now with the new toy. Doing lots of scales, hands one or two octaves apart, across three or four octaves. Can do C major with eyes closed. I think scales in lots of keys need a lot of work.  I've also found some words for the tune of Lilliburlero: There was an old woman Tossed up in a basket Seventeen times as high as the moon. Where was she going, I just had to ask it, For in her hand she carried a broom. "Old woman, old woman, Old woman," said I, "Please tell me, please tell me, Why you're up so high?" "I'm sweeping the cobwebs Dow...