Pig Sty Avenue

I'm still a bit ahead on The Lincolnshire Poacher. And it's quite interesting, the lag between it and Dance of the Hours, because it means I can see the learning process in operation. I can read music, but not yet sight read, which means simply that I'm much slower at reading than I need to be for playing. And that in turn means I need to memorize the pieces. It takes a long time. I've been learning The Poacher for months now. I can see progress now that I'm giving it an hour almost every other day, but it's still not quite memorized, sometimes, less and less each session, I'll momentarily lose the flow. Likewise with Hours. But as those last memory wrinkles get ironed out, I listen more, get the tempo right. It's easier with The Poacher, because I can hear the song in my head, though, disconcertingly, it's in a Benjamin Britten arrangement , - Devin Barad in that link, but I can hear Peter Pears, assassin of trad tunes, singing it. I think Dudley...

Practising this last week or so has consisted of ten minutes before I leave for work in the morning, and sometimes I get time in the evening, too. I’m nearly there, and if I can get several hours at the weekend, this particular hare should be in the poacher’s bag and headed for the pot. It’s almost at the right tempo, and I can sing along to the melody in my head; (I want to sing along to it out loud eventually, but that can wait). I’ve emailed the ABRSM local representative to see if I can get a more precise date for the exam than the vague 7th November to 10th December that is given on the website. To put it bluntly, I will struggle to learn 2 more pieces by early November, but another couple of weeks would make a difference. Really, I’m 99% committed now to getting this done this year. I’ve even started thinking about Grade 2 pieces, and have just had a look at the syllabus. I’m thinking of doing the Mozart, Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen; Holst, Jupiter; and the trad Scottish Piper o’ D...

Job, family, household, dogs, allotment: there are an awful lot of other calls on a piano learner's time. One day this week I only got a few minutes practice, mostly I've been getting the "academic hour". It's coming together, anyhow, and I've almost got it memorized now. I've almost tracked down a piano at the University. I recall last year seeing a room with pianos in, from the corridor when I was on my way somewhere else. I'd almost begun to wonder if I'd dreamt that, but one of the porter's confirmed that there are such rooms with at least one grand and one upright, and he told me which building they're in. So I'm getting closer. The Poacher should be in the bag by month's end, inshallah. Memorization is the point where I can get it up to speed and musical.

Well kind of day 12, ish. I don't think I practiced Thursday & Friday, but did two hours on Saturday, first time I've ever practiced that long. Nothing Sunday, but got an hour tonight - I would happily have gone on, except that it was causing some domestic disharmony. I think I might have reached a plateau, so tonight I slowed down and tried to concentrate on memorization and not making mistakes, rather than picking up speed, which I had been doing in the previous couple of hours. So I was slowly puzzling out the hands together at each note, and each bar, and I can understand how that would become tedious to a listener. Especially as the piano is now slightly out of tune, according to the app I've used - everything a semi-tone higher than it ought to be. But I'm going to soldier on with Poacher now, before I get the tuner in. Want to be able to play something to check it out whilst he's packing the tuning forks away. On my self imposed Grade 1 exam prepar...

No practice Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but got an hour last night, and another 40 mins tonight. Two hands coming together sufficiently for me to be able to step back from it as I'm playing and working out their relationships. Slow, and an occasional pause for thought. It's gone from painful, to difficult, to hard work, to enjoyable in less than a fortnight. Maybe another 10 hours to get it "passable"? Which would mean 26 academic hours (including 3 hours for each hand separate) in total. Which, in turn, means I can get a 20 bar, grade 1 piece in a month, and am therefore on course for the exam in November/December.

What's an "academic hour" when it's at home? It depends on what academic institution's representative you ask. And some places, Universities, mostly, have longer periods of tuition than an hour, often 90 minutes. But in a 90 minute lesson, most teachers would break it down with changes of pace and activity after an "academic hour", doing something else. Which lasts between 40 and 50 minutes, but sometimes it's an actual hour. One of the reasons we have this is that after an academic hour, students need to get to another classroom, or the teacher does, and you give them 10-20 mins to do so, (5 minutes in some places, regarded as stingy). Also, attention spans for learners tend to be a few minutes either side of three quarters of an hour. So when I say "Day 9" on the Lincolnshire Poacher, I mean I've done an academic hour of practice, warming up with scales, probably, so say 15 mins of that, 30 with The Poacher. But because I am my ow...

Another hour; actually, 2 half hours. Getting closer, but still very slow and miles away... Thinking about concentrating on memorization as a technique to learning to play it. But, maybe that's what's happening anyway. Mostly, just now, it seems to be a question of speed, I'm extremely slow. But slow isn't a bad thing: I can hear the structure of it, and like the tune more.

So that's 5 hours now. A bit better in some parts, but reached a plateau, it feels like. Or maybe not. A time measure came out at 3.40something minutes, so that's 7x slower than it's going to be, which means there's a long way to go. Ugh. Still a struggle.

And Day 4 means 4 hours. I'm really surprised at how well it's going. There's a long way to go, mind: I timed one of the play throughs, and it was more than 4 minutes; 8 times longer than it will be. But I've got the feel for it, it's recognisable to my ear, and I can almost understand the relationship between the RH melody and LH harmonies. AND I've almost memorized it as a two handed piece. The shape of learning so far has been: 3 hours RH, (though frankly I'm assuming that, it was ages ago). Ditto LH, (really). About 3 hours of painful neurological shenanigans, with 2H, a real bloomin' slog. Now around 4 hours and it's still difficult, but I'm engaging with it, "Oh yes, that's why that LH thing happens here." "Oh I've read that wrong, it must be... ah yes;" (my knowledge of notation being imperfect but improving). I'm blogging about this in such detail so that I can compare notes on the next piece I ...

Well, looks like I only started 2H on Saturday, so I'm now 3 hours into that - practice sessions are almost 100% Poacher, this weather, maybe a few runs up and down the F scale to warm up. Still a long way to go, but could feel it coming together today. I mean, a sympathetic listener might have thought, "Hmm, that sounds like the Lincolnshire Poacher he's murdering there, very slowly..." I mean, it's becoming itself. Kind of, maybe, passing the pain barrier, or about to.

I learned the LH quite quickly, really: maybe 3 or 4 hours at the most? So today, I got back on an old Danemann grand to start both hands. Painfully slow, of course, but no real mistakes. The learning processes going on are fascinating to me. It's so multi-layered. I've learned each hand, but it's almost as if I'm starting again when I go to 2. Meanwhile, I'm having to read the music again, even though I've already learned it, but now of course the new task of reading 2 clefs simultaneously. Sometimes I decide not to look at the music, but look at the keyboard and my hands, and try to weld together the memories for each hand. I had an exchange on Twitter with my old pal Philip , who doesn't agree with learning each hand first. I thought that RH>LH>2H was orthodoxy. I tried to jump the LH stage with The Poacher, mind, and I think I could have done that eventually, but learning LH first, I'd say, is probably going to make it easier in the long run....

This afternoon I managed to get a go on this Yamaha Arius. "Authentic sound and natural touch," apparently . First time I've had a go on a digital piano, apart from a quick shot on the ones in Biggars . Played a few scales, and then got back to The Poacher LH. First thing I noticed, playing high up the keys as I do, they seemed to be ever so slightly closer together, which made me liable to, say, play A and hit G# enough for it to sound slightly. Maybe the keys weren't too close together, but on an old acoustic, the fingers slide between the ebony, whereas they will rub on the plastic of a digital? I've never played a modern acoustic, with plastic keys, and I'm keen to see how that feels. The sound was nothing like an acoustic. Kind of dull, lacking... the plumpness of a real piano. And the action, no, no, no. An acoustic has a kind of rocking sensation to the keys, probably something to do with the hammer action. It's quite a subtle thing, but ev...

The plan to jump from learning RH and then jumping to 2H didn't really work. I plodded through it 2H, but there's a lot of new moves to learn with LH that need to be learned on their own - several chords, for example. The fingering at bars 2-4 is pretty easy, and that's repeated at 14-16, but elsewhere - like 11-14 - the chord progressions are a bit tricky. I was delighted to realize today that there's a sad-trombone in LH at bar 18, (the end of the 'suddenly slower'); brilliant. The RH I can play at the proper speed, about 32 seconds , (note to self, mind and wear cool sleeves, something a bit Tom Waits, if recording video of myself piano playing for YouTube). So I had the notion to time myself playing LH. When that gets to 32s, I'll be right for 2H. So the 1st go through was... Two and a half minutes! So that's five times slower. It's those chords, and frankly, the fact that my sight reading - especially on the bass clef - is gash. Nil de...

That auld poacher, is getting like Lilibullero , as a tune to irk family and neighbours, so I need to get it under the belt. Had RH pretty well for ages. I've played the LH through a few times, but not fluently or at the right tempo. My biggest problem with pieces has always been, RH, fine, LH, fine, 2H, oh my God! So I'm just going for 2H, missing out learning LH on its own. And that seems to be working, when I got down to the 1st proper practice of it tonight. Concentrated for 40 mins on 1st 4 bars, and spent the rest (20mins) going through it all. Got through it, can't say "sight read", but read and plonked along slowly anyway. I'm just going for ABRSM Grade 1 100% now. I want to play the blues, yeah, but I need to learn to play first. And The Beatles never learned to read music? Yeah, yeah, but I'm not one of The Beatles. Just focusing on the grades, and screening everything else out. Bottom line, grade 6, say, means you can play most popular music...