10 Day Check In

Okay so on my piano adventure, I'm 10 days into the 20 day program and 1 week into the 20 week program which I started a few days in.  So far I've gained a new appreciation for parents who manage to convince/force their offspring to do scales and other such things on a painfully regular basis; and am forever grateful mine were not so inclined.  At least as an adult, I'm doing it because I can see theoretical benefits ;).  But it's the opposite of fun.  Alas, it is also a cornerstone of the 20 week "technical skills" program.   I don't doubt it'll force some solid basics into my little brain (and fingers!) but yeah - it's what I do before I get to the fun part.   

Every day.

It IS moderately satisfying when I manage to up my speed record though.  Which compared to people who actually play, I'm sure is still painfully slow, but compared to a week ago is pretty damn impressive.  It's easy to raise the bar when you start with it buried under ground ;)

Conversely, the 20 day program I'm doing is supposed to get you to play pop songs -- but what it's really doing is teaching the background chords.  So for me, starting from zero, this is also super useful.  But also disappointing as I cannot sing and have no interest in learning, so I'm counting on being able to play the melody on piano as well.  It does also have some good rhythm exercises which is helping my coordination.  And, well, only 20 days.   If or when I ever develop some sort of ear, this'll likely be far more useful.

But what I'm really enjoying is thoroughly butchering actual songs.  It's like my own personal challenge - make it all the way through with one hand or the other -- that I'm getting there (although bass cleft is still pretty brutal, at least treble is coming back).  But both hands together 😂   That's a challenge that's either amusing or frustrating so I try to make sure it stays in the amusing category.  Totally addictive though: "just one more time" is as much a thing with my piano as it ever was with riding -- with equally predictable results ;). 

I've gotten to being able to play the Game of Thrones theme at least most of the time accurately at full speed.   It started with the mode that doesn't let it move until you get the right notes, then took a LONG time to get it at 50% speed; like more hours than I wanted to admit.  But after that I got 75% the next day, and 100% the day after so that was promising.  I'm moving onto Sound of Silence for my second effort.  Currently at the 'butcher my way through one note at a time' phase.  We'll see next week ;)