Week 6:

This week I have working on the Forest Gump Theme song. It is getting a little better, but I still have quite a while to go before it sounds good. The song is about three pages of music, the first and last parts being what I would call the main melody. So far I have been practicing the first page of music. The first thing I noticed was that I was having a hard time playing the treble clef (my right hand) and the bass clef ( my left hand) at the same time. I can play them separately pretty well. However, when I try to play them together it is much harder because the rhythms are completely different.

Before I even started playing this song I new just by looking at the page that I might have had this problem since I have never been good at keeping the time of a song. Likewise, trying to keep two rhythms at once is twice as worse.  Even when I sing songs with clapping parts that are off beat I have a hard time clapping at the right time. For example: when I sing “ We Will Rock You” I have a tendency to start clapping the rhythm of the song instead of the rhythm in between the melody. I decided to try to tackle it anyways because why not?-I like challenges. It just turns out this might be a much bigger challenge than I thought it would be. I talked to the music teacher and he told me to try to play the two melodies together very slowly then gradually make it faster. Well, I am definitely taking it pretty slow so we'll see how long it takes me to speed up to the regular tempo. Anyways, that basically sums up what I have been working on this week!

Well I have to admit, this week I didn't practice as much as I usually do. I had a few days where I did not even sit down at the piano. I could use the excuse the that I was busy ( which I was), but then again I could have found more time if I really wanted to . . .

Anyways, these last two weeks I have been looking at three new songs. I got the first song -Chopin's Op.34 No. 2- down pretty well. I have been having some trouble with the other two though. They are both written in a minor key and are supposed to be really fast. I am not having any problems playing the right notes, but I just can't seem to play them as fast as I want to. That probably has to do with the fact that I have not practiced them enough. So these songs will be one thing I will continue to work on. I put Op.34 No.2 below:



I have been getting really tired of playing out of the lesson book. The songs in there are just fine, but I would like to have a song that will take longer to learn. At first I wanted to learn how to play a song called La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin, or in English: The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, by Claude Debussy. It is one of my favorite piano pieces. It is a slow song, and when listening to it I though it sounded fairly simple to play. I supposed would take a few weeks to learn. However, when I saw the sheet music, I found that it was way to hard for me to play. Like WAY to hard.

 Here is a link to the song; it is very pretty sounding (also, I found this guy's facial expressions to be really funny). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGSZPRk6aXA

I looked up some easy songs to play online. Most of the suggestions just seemed a bit boring to me. I never heard the majority of them before; most were Franz Liszt and Beethoven songs that never became famous. Instead I decided that I was going to try to learn how to play the Forest Gump Theme song. Here is a link to how it sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GFgwJiWaJE 

It will be a challenge for me since it is quite long (3 pages) and I will have to keep a steady tempo, which I have never been very good at.  It may take along time, but if I can pull it off I will be really happy.

Week 4:

This week of piano, I am continuing to learn some new music and just become an overall better player. I learned some new pentascales, some new techniques, and as I go through the book each song is getting a bit more advanced and therefore more interesting.

So far, I learned the D, A, E, C, G, and F major pentascales. Pentascales are basically a set of notes: each one of them is named after the first note of the scale.  For more in depth information on that you can refer to my last blog. With each scale I learn, I also learn a song that is in that key (another name for playing in a certain scale). This week I learned the major D, A, and E pentascales. For each scale, there is one note that is sharp, so I have to hit the black key for that note. For example: In a D major scale every F is sharp. Soon I will hopefully be playing some songs in minor keys. It is hard to explain what the difference between a minor and a major scale is so I will just let you hear the difference. It is pretty apparent. Here is the difference between d major and d minor:

Also, I have had a bit of a revelation, or rather I'm starting to understand what my brother- who's played the piano for five years- said. He told me that "Its not so much about playing the notes that correspond with those on the page, but reading the spaces in between them". When he said this to me I basically dismissed it as a stupid idea (After all why should I listen to him about how to play the piano?) Now that I am starting to get the hang of it though, I realize that I am actually doing this. I first find what the starting notes are, then I just look between the lines to see how many spaces there are. Then I use my finger that is that many spaces away. Like if I  had used my thumb and the next note was three spaces away, I would use my ring finger. 

I've also been practicing switching into different keys while I am playing. It is different from what I am used to because I have to move my whole hand into a different position. This is the song that I have been working on that focuses on switching between keys; it is called Royal Procession:

Well, that's about all I have to say. I had a pretty good week, learned a lot and I am happy with how far I have come so far!