My river is more of a slow creek atm

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 ;)

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.

*edited to add*: here's my attempt the day after originally writing this post: