Pig Sty Avenue

Travelling a lot during the next few months, so I'll be practising on the 49 key midi with the iPad.  I've had a couple of hours on it tonight. The keyboard feels quite different to the Kemble, of course. But the sound on the free version of the iGrand app is really rather good. Synthesia is less pleasant on the ear, but tonight I got into major arpeggios with it and that was actually surprisingly finger-stretchy fun. I'll go back to them, and scales too - I'm pretty nippy one handed but it would surely be beneficial to get major scales two handed. As I was on the headphones, no neighbours to consider,  I went back to Lilliburlero - still needs work in terms of the rhythm. Interesting, though, to play it on the differently feeling and sounding midi.  I need to get better at Lilliburlero, and at scales, because I should have access to other pianos this summer, but in a semi public kind of place, (a university - it'll be quiet, during the long vac, but there'll st...

I've had Hanschen Klein  (aka Lightly Row ) plink plonking away in my head for nearly three years now, on-and-off.  And I need to deal with Wee Hans this summer. I'd learned to play it, kind of, on the midi keyboard in 2010 with the PSP software.  And then I was working in Roehampton University that summer, and that was my first attempt to play on a real acoustic piano.  It was pitiful.  People kept coming in to the room to see What Was Happening? and Was I Alright? I can't remember the sequence of events exactly, but I got discouraged and gave up practicing a few months later, and something tells me Wee Hans was at the root of that. Whatever, I need to get it learned (after #jollygoodfellow).

Got right through with RH this afternoon - not 100% memorized yet, but almost.  It's an interesting one to learn with.  You need to be spot on with this as regards tempo: people who don't normally sing, will sing it, chorally, so you need to give them what they're expecting, no faster or slower, no awkward pauses.  So, although it's quite simple, it needs to be right. Later, trotted though Lilliburlero a couple of times.  Need to do it once or twice every practice, to improve it and as a kind of personalized Hanon/warm-up/wtf. Best of Elvis Costello PVG sheet music arrived in the post today. It has Shipbuilding and My Funny Valentine , which I want, and which both look graspable for the near future.

I got the sheet music for Big Time from eBay, arrived this morning.  Even the "Birmingham Library DISCARD" on the G of BIG can't spoil its cover.  And the music is something to shoot for one day.  But Strange Weather didn't look too difficult on the page, so I thought I'd give at least RH a go...  Until I get to the first two bars. I mean, those two chords don't look too difficult, do they?  Until you try to play the buggers.  With RH.  Be quite easy with LH, but on RH, the second chord means 2 on the G#, 1 underneath on the B, and poor wee 5 on the E.  If I've even read it right, I get a bit lost that far south of the staff. This might be stretching DIY piano learning a touch too far, and I'm likely going to need a teacher before I get as far as Tom Waits. Blimey.

I was musing last night, thinking out loud, really, whether I should carry on practicing Lilliburlero a bit longer, get it just right, or draw a line and move on.  I was taken aback by how emphatically Herself suggested I should draw that Lilliburlero line and move on.  "I would appreciate it, and so would all the neighbours."   From a learning point of view, also, it's probably right to move on.  I mean, I'm not just learning to play this tune, I'm learning to play the piano, and one tune can only teach so much.  Be interesting to come back to it in a few months, and see how much the macro skills have improved. So here it is, imperfect, (having it recorded adds another layer of difficulty, as a kind of public performance, I found).  Still those gaps between phrases, you can almost hear me thinking, where tf do I go now?  But, there it is.  My first proper tune learnt, first wee foothill climbed. Next, probably For S/He's a Jolly Good Fel...

Playing it right through, without mistakes, (though still not at the right tempo), gives a definite endorphin buzz, albeit a mild one, not a rush in any sense.  It's a bit addictive.  Tonight at past 12 I'm wishing I had a piano somewhere out of everyone's earshot where I could have another hour or so at it. Nearly there. Couple of sticky notes. At bar 5, RH goes to The C, and LH to the E below, and I hesitate almost every time - it's getting better, but every other run through there's that feeling of stepping out over a cliff, and not knowing where I'm going for a second, less, but too long. Apart from that, the first 8 bars, (repeated once, therefore first 16) is memorized/internalized/wtf, and the second part, with all the activity around G is almost there. I've stopped looking at the music, (except as a reference, for example to explain the bar 5 situation).

The methodology is: Play It Again, and Again, and Again, et seq.  The bits that seemed difficult get just a tiny bit easier each time.  Now it's moving to a new stage, which (I think) means it's moving into the process memory, where it seems to be acquiring plasticity as to tempo, note length, velocity and  feel .  To put it another way, when you stop having to think about what note's coming next, you're free to work on it as music.  It's nearly there, meaning nearly in a state to record it for YouTube.  Another three or four hours? Which, means all over a little more than 30 hours altogether.  In other words, one hour per bar.  Which is worth noting for future reference.