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Showing posts from April, 2014

Broadwood

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.  

Have scales, need tunes

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