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Showing posts from November, 2014

Something Has Happened

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

Making the Grades

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