In writing tutorials, I've been told again and again; write what you know. It's easier to shape a character that has the same personality traits as yourself, or lives in the same town, or has the same experiences. Look at any writer; many elements in their novels will be in some way or another autobiographical. The familiarity of these settings and experiences makes it easier to process your thoughts into written words.
I've discovered that the same is true for playing the piano.
With my move, my (digital) piano has found a place in the middle of the living room, which means I literally and figuratively cannot really get around it anymore. Which also means I've been playing more than ever, shaping the familiar tunes from more than 10 years ago until they sound like they're supposed to again. But I've also been a bit stuck, with no new pieces to play. I can try and dedicate myself to those pieces from my original books that I didn't really like to begin with, but I'm afraid my motivation will drop below zero when I start to struggle with stuff I don't even think sounds nice.
Cue Walt Disney. Or to be more precise: The New Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs. For piano, of course. A fellow piano player lend this to me over Christmas, because nothing gives you the proper Christmassy feel like a long-remembered Disney song, and as soon as I'd played a couple of songs I decided I had to hold on to this book for as long as I could. Because when you know what something has to sound like, when you're familiar with the melody and the timings and the lyrics, it's so much easier to play.
I started off just playing the melody, which is right-hand only, and only 1 note at a time. This is pretty easy, and you do recognise the song, but doesn't really give you the feeling you're actually playing the piano. It's like the Christmas songs I used to play on my recorder (that's 'blokfluit' for you Dutchies); officially it's 'music', but it feels like it's neither here nor there. So I put myself to playing the whole right-hand part, which contains those single notes from the melody line, but adds extra notes. This started to sound a lot better, but some notes were really dissonant, and felt wrong. So I tried to add the left-hand part, which is always the difficult bit, and by playing really slowly I've managed to get two songs (Part Of Your World from The Little Mermaid and A Whole New World from Aladdin) to pretty decent quality. These are both films I watched to death when I was a kid, so I know every little thing about them (albeit in Dutch; the English lyrics are so much better, and more logical, than the translated Dutch version), so I know when I'm playing things right. Which makes it so much easier to get to grips with a new song, but also; it makes playing fun again. Which is what it's supposed to be.
With these two songs under my belt, I'm looking for the next contender to start practising: probably something from The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame (all 'Disney Renaissance' films, which qualifies me as a proper nineties kid). These are a bit more difficult (I'm really amazed at the depth of these songs; Disney does take children seriously, in the musical sense at least), and will probably be a bit of a challenge, but as they bring back the fun in playing the piano, I really can't wait.
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Sunday, 22 February 2015
Piano update
So a while back I posted about my piano revival; after 10 years of not playing, mainly due to lack of an actual piano, I decided to buy a digital piano and start to play again. My idea was to play as often as possible, but at least either a) 3 hours a week or b) 10 minutes after dinner every day. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen.
With our living room stuffed full of books as it is, the piano is hidden away in a room upstairs, a room that generally does not have the heating on. So if I want to play for more than 5 minutes and/or without freezing hands, I have to turn the heating on at least half an hour in advance. This kind of planning is not something my rare impromptu moments of playing are very well adapted to. Added to that, the piano is living up to its cheap nature; some of the keys make this awful 'woink' sound when you release them, so playing without headphones on is no fun, and playing with headphones one is also no fun because you want to hear the sound reverberate in the air. Also, it really does take a lot of energy, and an hour of playing still leaves me quite drained, both physically and mentally. But all that are just excuses for not playing as much as I actually could, or want to.
Because I still really love to play. I've been working through my old books chronologically, and am now in a position that I can actually play some of the more difficult and longer pieces in one go on the first retry. Some of my old favourites are completely back up to scratch and I use those as a reward when I get stuck in one of the more difficult ones. However, because I play so irregularly, my fingers still really really hurt when I try to do the more difficult things that involve lots of fast or repetitious moves. So after an hour, I do have to call it quits, even though I may just be warming up into something difficult. And then it may be more than a week before I find (or rather: make) time to play again.
I measure my progress against my ability to play Comptine d'un Autre Ete, which was the reason I originally started playing again. I would have thought I would be halfway decent on that song by now, given that I try to play it every time. But there is no way I will be playing it in its entirety for the next half year or so; today I finally managed to play the first eight bars correctly, without mistakes, and in the slowest speed ever.
The thing may be that on some of the older songs, my fingers still somehow 'remember' the moves, especially the difficult ones because I practised them so often. And with this new song, I have to learn all these tricks all over again, its not a question of repeating what I already could do once. So my progress is nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped, and that can be a bit hard, but I'm still hanging in there. Working towards this goal is a good thing, even though it is taking me really long and it is sometimes hard to stay motivated.
But I've promised myself that when I can actually play it, and still like playing, I may reward myself with a better (digital) piano. And maybe even lessons. Which I shouldn't have quit in the first place, but that decision is 10 years in the past, so best to focus on what I can still salvage today!
With our living room stuffed full of books as it is, the piano is hidden away in a room upstairs, a room that generally does not have the heating on. So if I want to play for more than 5 minutes and/or without freezing hands, I have to turn the heating on at least half an hour in advance. This kind of planning is not something my rare impromptu moments of playing are very well adapted to. Added to that, the piano is living up to its cheap nature; some of the keys make this awful 'woink' sound when you release them, so playing without headphones on is no fun, and playing with headphones one is also no fun because you want to hear the sound reverberate in the air. Also, it really does take a lot of energy, and an hour of playing still leaves me quite drained, both physically and mentally. But all that are just excuses for not playing as much as I actually could, or want to.
Because I still really love to play. I've been working through my old books chronologically, and am now in a position that I can actually play some of the more difficult and longer pieces in one go on the first retry. Some of my old favourites are completely back up to scratch and I use those as a reward when I get stuck in one of the more difficult ones. However, because I play so irregularly, my fingers still really really hurt when I try to do the more difficult things that involve lots of fast or repetitious moves. So after an hour, I do have to call it quits, even though I may just be warming up into something difficult. And then it may be more than a week before I find (or rather: make) time to play again.
I measure my progress against my ability to play Comptine d'un Autre Ete, which was the reason I originally started playing again. I would have thought I would be halfway decent on that song by now, given that I try to play it every time. But there is no way I will be playing it in its entirety for the next half year or so; today I finally managed to play the first eight bars correctly, without mistakes, and in the slowest speed ever.
The thing may be that on some of the older songs, my fingers still somehow 'remember' the moves, especially the difficult ones because I practised them so often. And with this new song, I have to learn all these tricks all over again, its not a question of repeating what I already could do once. So my progress is nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped, and that can be a bit hard, but I'm still hanging in there. Working towards this goal is a good thing, even though it is taking me really long and it is sometimes hard to stay motivated.
But I've promised myself that when I can actually play it, and still like playing, I may reward myself with a better (digital) piano. And maybe even lessons. Which I shouldn't have quit in the first place, but that decision is 10 years in the past, so best to focus on what I can still salvage today!
Friday, 29 August 2014
Piano revival
I've been meaning to start playing the piano again (I've had lessons for four years and played a while after that, but it stopped as soon as I went to university) for more than a year now, ever since we moved into this big(ger) house. Somehow, I never really got round to it, until a couple of months ago I heard someone play the Amelie song Comptine d'un Autre Ete in public, and I decided I really wanted to play that song. Which meant getting a piano, and learning to play again.
I went for a digital piano*, as you can plug in headphones and play all hours of the day without disturbing other people with your awful hammering. Also, it never goes out of tune, which is nice. After a short online investigation into the really beautiful but very expensive big brands, I eventually bought a Casio CDP-100, because apparently it's the cheapest piano that still has a reasonably okay sound and touch sensitivity. I bought one second-hand via the Internet, and it has been sitting in one of our upstairs rooms for a week now, because I didn't have my sheet music and after 10 years cannot play any song from scratch apart from 'Twinkle twinkle little star' and that gets boring after a while.
But last Wednesday my parents came to visit and brought with them a towering stack of piano books; who knew I had so many? Easy songs and classical songs and jazzy songs and very recent pop music songs all combined into my history of piano lessons. I used to love all the country tunes and melodic musical wanderings before I turned to more recent and less classical stuff. Looking back, I think this was the sign that I wasn't really interested in the whole piano thing anymore, but right now I can't wait to get back into all those classic classical pieces.
So today was the first time I tried some of the old songs again. And it went surprisingly well! I could play each and every song of my first 'real' music book without problem, and even in the proper time. Now these are songs where you don't really have to move your hands about, and all the notes have the correct finger position above them, but still, it surprised me. Then I tried some more difficult things, a menuet by Mozart that I'd played at a recital, and that one went quite okay too, a bit slower and hesitant, but still pretty nice. With some of the moves, it was like my fingers still remembered the things they used to do, and just went along in a stream of memory movements.
After a while, my arms and especially my fingers became pretty tired (strangely enough the thumbs seem to go first, probably because you don't really move them when you're typing, which is the only similar movement they've been getting for 10 years), so I decided to call it a day. But still, a whole hour of reviving old songs and playing pretty decently, I'm positively surprised at how well I am actually still playing. And as they say, practise makes perfect, and I have a whole weekend of practising ahead of me!
* I've been getting some questions as to why I call it a 'digital piano' and not a 'keyboard': because the two are completely different things. A digital piano is basically a piano that produces sound digitally, meaning you can stick in some headphones and not bother anyone with your music. But it does have 88 keys, which are pressure sensitive and weighed, so it takes the same effort and effect as playing a real piano. Keyboards have fewer keys, which usually aren't pressure sensitive and take very little effort to press down. It's a bit like the difference between a type writer and a computer key board. And as I plan to buy a real piano sometime in the future, I felt it was better to buy a proper (and more expensive) digital piano than they keyboard substitute.
I went for a digital piano*, as you can plug in headphones and play all hours of the day without disturbing other people with your awful hammering. Also, it never goes out of tune, which is nice. After a short online investigation into the really beautiful but very expensive big brands, I eventually bought a Casio CDP-100, because apparently it's the cheapest piano that still has a reasonably okay sound and touch sensitivity. I bought one second-hand via the Internet, and it has been sitting in one of our upstairs rooms for a week now, because I didn't have my sheet music and after 10 years cannot play any song from scratch apart from 'Twinkle twinkle little star' and that gets boring after a while.
But last Wednesday my parents came to visit and brought with them a towering stack of piano books; who knew I had so many? Easy songs and classical songs and jazzy songs and very recent pop music songs all combined into my history of piano lessons. I used to love all the country tunes and melodic musical wanderings before I turned to more recent and less classical stuff. Looking back, I think this was the sign that I wasn't really interested in the whole piano thing anymore, but right now I can't wait to get back into all those classic classical pieces.
So today was the first time I tried some of the old songs again. And it went surprisingly well! I could play each and every song of my first 'real' music book without problem, and even in the proper time. Now these are songs where you don't really have to move your hands about, and all the notes have the correct finger position above them, but still, it surprised me. Then I tried some more difficult things, a menuet by Mozart that I'd played at a recital, and that one went quite okay too, a bit slower and hesitant, but still pretty nice. With some of the moves, it was like my fingers still remembered the things they used to do, and just went along in a stream of memory movements.
After a while, my arms and especially my fingers became pretty tired (strangely enough the thumbs seem to go first, probably because you don't really move them when you're typing, which is the only similar movement they've been getting for 10 years), so I decided to call it a day. But still, a whole hour of reviving old songs and playing pretty decently, I'm positively surprised at how well I am actually still playing. And as they say, practise makes perfect, and I have a whole weekend of practising ahead of me!
* I've been getting some questions as to why I call it a 'digital piano' and not a 'keyboard': because the two are completely different things. A digital piano is basically a piano that produces sound digitally, meaning you can stick in some headphones and not bother anyone with your music. But it does have 88 keys, which are pressure sensitive and weighed, so it takes the same effort and effect as playing a real piano. Keyboards have fewer keys, which usually aren't pressure sensitive and take very little effort to press down. It's a bit like the difference between a type writer and a computer key board. And as I plan to buy a real piano sometime in the future, I felt it was better to buy a proper (and more expensive) digital piano than they keyboard substitute.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)