So I heard this song on a YouTube video of songs beginner players should be able to play, and one, for "year 3" I really liked (side note -- I can't be a beginner for 3 years?!?! That's so disheartening) - anyways I wrote down the title with “really pretty” under my 'things to learn' category. So of course instead of giving it a reasonable time, I went and found it in my app and it has beginner, int, and advanced versions…. Sweet!
Song is River Flows In You - spoiler alert: it doesn't sound like that when I play it
Well beginner was too boring so I decided to start with intermediate. Right. Have I mentioned I am very much still a beginner player? So I learned like the first 4 bars painfully. And then realized it got harder from there. Learned a bit more, while also playing other songs… Kinda paused it for a week or two while I finished learning more beginner appropriate songs. Then I had a break from my "technique" class (one week off between beginner and advanced versions. Don't worry - the "advanced" class has a dumbed down version for us beginners). So I decided I’d give it a week with all the focus on this and see if it was feasible.
Yeah - it's like the day I decided to start measuring how long it actually takes me to do a moderately complex stabbing? I'm at almost 60h on that thing now. I was happier not knowing ;)
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| I'm determined this will get finished this year ;-P |
But so far we've got:
- Day 1: Review the little bit I'd already learned
- Introduce the hard parts
- Individual hands through the whole thing on wait mode (wait mode means it doesn't move till you hit the right key)
- Day 2: Focus on hard spots
- 2nd half at 50%
- Failed attempt at full thing at 50%
- RH only at 75%
- Day 3: hard parts only, 50% (the novelty wore off and this was starting to get frustrating here)
- Day 4: all @ 50%: good
- 2nd half @ 75% (was struggling with this)
- Day Off
- Day 5: whole thing @ 75%: iffy but got through it (Seemingly proving the day off is good for brain to practice)
- 100% individual hands
- Day 6: 100% easy early bars: good
- 100% middle section: decent
- 100% hard section: really iffy
- Whole thing @ 75%: good
- Day 7: 100%, whole thing, SO CLOSE!
Right so today, being Day 7, I played it through all the way. Note correct but fairly horrible. Lol when things get fast or I feel frantic I pound all the keys at full force. This is not a pound the keys kinda song lol. So yeah - refinement needed. But it's fun and I was super proud of myself. And while I'm quite certain for long grown-up pieces a week is nothing, but for me with 'easy' pieces that are almost all less than 30 bars, a week is an excessively long time ;-P
Side note - when I’m super focused in riding, I hold my breath. This is usually bad, esp on XC where courses last much longer than my ability to not breath. Today I discovered it turns out I do this in piano too ;). I guess this is the first song that’s been challenging enough but definitely have caught myself a few times at the end with a big exhale lol
The other thing that's moderately amusing (at least to me) which also aligns to riding is that I talk to myself (good thing I play in front of a mirror), I talk to the dogs (who listen enthusiastically), and I talk to the app (which doesn't listen at all). Sometimes it's friendly and positive, sometimes it's snarky and sarcastic, but generally it amuses me. I can't imagine what the dogs think is going on -- I sit there staring at a wall clicking buttons (cause I pretty well always have headphones on) and occasionally talking to them. lol normal is boring.Anyways - scales and arpeggios and octaves and hands together exercises and other such things go back in the schedule on Sun, so I have tomorrow to keep playing with this one and then we’ll see. Lol prob a week of remembering all the ones I’ve already learned would be good. Cause I can def only play one at a time right now. I tried playing one I *know* I can play well and failed horribly lol. So yeah - sole focus potentially not so good for a brand-new beginner. But all good.
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