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, thinking I'd do better to work with the original arrangements, but I really need to learn to walk before I run. 

Typing this on holiday in Lanzarote, and not been on a keyboard for nearly two weeks - absence is making the heart grow fonder, and being reunited with the Yamaha will sweeten the pill of returning to Saudi, somewhat. I brought Songs You Think You Know to Lanzarote, and I've chosen Down at the Old Bull and Bush to get me started. The idea that's formed is that I want to be able to play songs people can sing along to, in a bar, say. 

After the electronic Yamaha, a couple of days at home with the Kemble showed it's very, let's say, idiosyncratic. I had a play on an old Broadwood upright in Biggars on Sauchihall Street and Oh My God it was gorgeous, very responsive and bright. At some point in the next couple of years I need to decide whether to get the Kemble restored or buy something better. 

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