I need to clone myself to learn everything I want to learn...

 

Sooo the miscellaneous hobbies...   It's been an insane few months so figured I'd give a quick update...

Piano.  Poor piano was the sacrifice hobby.  But I still follow all the things on socials and am still sad I didn't get good enough to just play cause it's fun once in a while.  Some day.  I decided back in May when I wanted to really drive Spanish that I wouldn't be able to do both *and* fitness and made the intentional decision to put a hold on learning that until after the Spanish exam.   

Which...  Was *supposed* to be November.   But then I overcommitted to commuting to work for a while (2-3h one way is *not* sustainable) and work itself got incredibly busy and and and eventually I decided that stressing myself out to meet an arbitrary deadline was not a good life choice.  I *really* struggled with delaying that one - especially AFTER having stopped piano.  But it was absolutely the right thing to do.  I'm still targeting the B2 exam, but likely spring (schedule isn't posted yet -- I'll have to go to Ottawa to take it anywhere "near" here).  I'm on a pretty ambitious schedule that fits with my life as it is these days and should still get me there about the right time ;).  I have one teacher who thinks I'd pass with no problem, but the one who's a certified examiner is not so sure so I think I'll wait.

That being said - StoryLearning started their first "advanced" class (theoretically B2/C1 level) so I'm on week 3 of that (10 week program).  It's definitely a stretch for me, but I'm pulling it off and learning a lot just need, as per always, more time ;)

And then we have fitness - the handstand practice got me stronger than I've ever been.  I am both shocked and thrilled by that.  Except - then I hurt myself (completely unrelated to handstands) and took pretty much a solid month to recover.  I just started back this week and am *appalled* by how much strength I've lost in that time, BUT - I have high hopes I'll get it back comparatively quickly.  Today was day 2 or 3 back at handstand practice and for the first time ever I was able to adjust my balance when I started to lose it (the program I'm doing calls it "heel pulls" and has exercises to teach it, but even when I've tried, I've never felt it).   Anyways - was a complete accident and dramatically ungraceful 😂.  BUT I really got it?!?!   As in I could replicate it the next two times I tried.  And then my back screamed at me and I figured I should stop.  Tomorrow me will pay for sure.  But it's amazing how the tiniest things are so revitalising. 

Gratuitous handstand pic cause I Did A Thing!

And speaking of tomorrow - that's dance night :). Which has started again and is *significantly* more advanced this time around and I am absolutely loving it!  And completely hopeless at it, but I can evolve my skills while brushing my teeth, so sometimes it helps to be *really* beginner -- there's nowhere to go but up!

It's amazing how many things you can do when you don't have kids ;-P

So I'm really enjoying my dance classes.  Enough that I've been relying strongly on YouTube University to learn things that haven't been in class (yet).  A few challenges to this - one, I have to find videos for single dancers since C is not nearly as entertained by this new adventure as I am.  And two - some lessons greatly overestimate my definition of "beginner".  But I am finding some snippets of super usefulness.  

And when I find those snippets, I need to slow it down to like 50% to be able to actually figure out what's going on more often than not lol.   And as I was doing that, I started to see some similarities to my piano adventures.

Playing piano with two hands doing different things - learn one hand, then the other, then put it together.  When you put it together it'll all fall apart.  Slow it RIDICULOUSLY down, figure it out one note a time, and then speed it back up again.  Don't even bother introducing a foot pedal ;-P

Dancing - learn feet, then the arms, then put it together.  When you put it together it'll all fall apart.  Slow it RIDICULOUSLY down, figure it out one beat at a time, then speed it back up again.  Don't even consider introducing hips or body movement ;-P

Bonus round - it sometimes falls apart again when you put it to actual music.

The half-hour "beginner" Bachata video I've been working my way through, I've been working on for two days and am not quite all the way through lol.  Legs alone, all good.   Arms alone - slightly more of a challenge, but got there.  Put them together?  lol.  Right.  We'll get there.  Some day ;-P

But is it ever fun.  I feel absolutely ridiculous at times, but those odd moments where I actually get something right are just so exciting.  Also, after lesson 2 (before I even fell down the YouTube rabbit hole)

With the painoing - working my way through Playground sessions.  Their intermediate level songs are lower in difficulty than Flowkey's which is slightly disappointing as I don't feel I've accomplished anything when I get learn one, but their lessons are way harder.   I am learning a lot more though so that counts.  Nola likes to help play which doesn't do good things for my accuracy scores at all ;)

Enola's musical interpretation in red ;)

Rounding out the hobbies, cause why not, clicked on a random targeted ad for a course in Latin American myths and legends -- that's taught in Spanish.  Since there's no writing or presenting required, I thought it might be an interesting challenge.   Topic I generally enjoy, and, well, I've taken ALL the literature classes in English, so I should get the general concepts ;).   Signed up and *then* realised there's two classes a week?!?!   Lol I definitely do not read Spanish fast enough for that.   So we'll see how it goes.   Also not sure I have sufficient vocabulary or can listen fast enough for the classes, but worst case I can watch the recording slightly slower.   And if I really need to cheat, with closed captioning on ;).   Always good to take on impossible challenges right? ;).  That one starts end of Feb and I'm really hoping they'll share some of the reading material in advance.  May the odds be ever in my favour.  Wish me luck!

Targeted advertising for the win

Next step in the piano journey

So since starting piano lessons I've actually been playing way LESS than before.  This is... Not exactly the desired result :(  The issue isn't lessons themselves, so much as fit between the teacher and myself.  In this case, I think the biggest challenge for me is the lack of plan.  He asks me what I want to do each week and we do that.  Like, great for flexibility but...  I don't know what I should do?  I'm a real beginner, I don't know what I don't know.  I raised that point, but nothing really changed.  And we have yet to do anything to completion.   We did one scale once - never any follow up.   We've done a ton of songs either in the book or that I brought music in, and he'll give me the 101 on parts of them but never actually get to the point of being able to play them.  In the entire time I've been taking lessons, I haven't learned a single piece well enough to play it through (seriously - my YouTube has died a sad death).   I even tried bringing a lesson book and he just kind of flipped through it and picked some random songs, we'd work through the fingering and any interesting timing etc, but again - just enough to get the concept, never enough to play it well.  So suffice to say, when lessons end at end of Jan, I won't be continuing them.

Nola walks across my keyboard occasionally,
but it's less dramatic with a digital piano ;)

At some point, I will prob start a search for another teacher.  But...  Options are not great where I live these days (ironically there are a ton where I used to live...  you know, when I didn't have a piano ;-P)

So things I know:

- I still really enjoy playing and would like to improve

- I am completely stalled in improving my skills without help

- I absolutely need a program and/or direction of some sort

- Depending on what definition is used, I'm either "high beginner" or "low intermediate" lol - whatever that means  

- I am, historically, very good at following structured programs and self-learning 

So...  I once again consulted my friend Google.   It's been a year - what might have changed?   The app I've been using (Flowkey) still ranks as basically the top for what I need, but I was super frustrated with their lessons which had a wicked combination of: no plan or structure to them AND depending on the course, if you couldn't play a particular piece well enough you couldn't progress, which would be okay except their course software doesn't let you slow songs down in short sections to learn like their song software does.   So I was REALLY struggling and super-frustrated with the lessons.

However, there are a couple this time around that I didn't try before.  Of those, after more research than is reasonable to do for such a thing, I narrowed it down to PianoNote (live instructors) and Playground Sessions (another app).   PS I originally dismissed last year because their whole selling feature was big names attached to it, except that the names mean very little to me and I don't need superstars, I need people who can teach.  However, the reviews this year suggested they've thoroughly revamped their classes and their software and so it was back in the running.  PN...  Idk, it has fabulous reviews, but I was really turned off by their website.  I couldn't tell whether it came with an app, how you access their live teachers, etc etc.  Too much advertising w too little info for me.

And then I found out that PS has BootCamp and a dashboard of stats.  Lol sold.  Anybody who's actually met me has probably realised boot camps are pretty much my thing.   Go super hard on something for a condensed period of time and see what happens?  I'm in!   (remember P90X3 days???)  And I love my data.  Even if it has no practical purpose whatsoever.   So the dashboard was an extra win.

So I now have both Flowkey (from last year) and Playground Sessions.  And I can say song selection and song-learning software is definitely better in Flowkey (although PS still has tons of songs I want to learn, so no lack).  However, the lessons are WAY better in PS.   Three levels: Rookie, Intermediate, and Advanced.   I'm doing Intermediate, and it's legitimately the right level for me -- I'm learning something new in almost every class and the lessons are challenging but achievable.  Win.  They absolutely build on one another in a structured manner and use a combination of video lessons and practical application which is great.  Also, the issue I ran into with FK about not being able to learn a section fast enough to survive a lesson is a non issue here -- you can slow down the track to whatever speed you can play and still get "full credit" for it.   Although I'm determined enough that I keep at it till I can get 100% at full speed -- at least with this app I have a chance to get there.   It also tracks every note red or green (as does FK) but also shows what I actually played if it's not green.  Was I too early?  Too late?  Wrong note?   Now I know...  Super helpful.   It's also much pickier about timing that FK, which while brutal at first, has been super helpful to my learning.   And it has background tracks which make it feel like you're playing something interesting even when you're doing very basic whole note cords ;).  So yeah, the app for learning random songs - not nearly as good as FK's, but the instructional portion?  WAY better.  Which is awesome.

Maybe between the two of them my piano skills will continue to improve this year :).  Wish me luck!

1 year of pianoing

So it's a year today since my piano has had a stand and so been a "real" thing :).  On the 11th I got the app to start teaching me things 😂 so not *quite* there yet, but I have time now so thought I'd check in.

I just reread my first ever piano blog post, when I wasn't even sure I'd make it to 30 days, so pleased to say (given the start-up costs) that I'm still enjoying the adventure.   In Sept I started "real" lessons which I am not particularly enjoying and will likely stop at the end of the term.  Suspect it's just that the instructor is not a great fit for me, but there's not a ton of choice out here and I've actually been playing *less*, and significantly so, since starting the lessons.  So that part's not great.  Although he definitely HAS helped me with some pretty critical basics I missed in my self-teaching lol, so I'm half tempted to redo some of the technique programs I worked through before (or try the next step up, which I tried once and failed horribly) while applying what I've learned here and see if it works any better.

My ability to read bass clef is still non-existent.  Like "A is for Apple" level.  I think my goal for next year should be to significantly improve that.  It's a shame flashcard apps are SO phenomenally boring.  You'd think they'd have more gamified versions by now!   I learned treble clef so young I don't remember learning it - it, fortunately, came back reasonably quickly.

Plus side, my ability for my hands to work independently and their understanding of what keys are where has definitely improved significantly (I mean, it would've been hard not to when starting from zero).  So deeming that a win.  That's another course I did right at the beginning that I stopped, more cause SQUIRREL than any real issue, but I'd like to go back and see how I do on the harder aspects of that one.

I still can't play anything from ear, and to be fair, I've put zero effort into developing those skills - despite all the reading saying I should ;)  I can, at least, usually tell if I play the wrong note now.  This is legitimately improvement.  I'm pretty tone deaf.

I'm at the point now where everything I want to play is just slightly beyond my level.  Which is super frustrating because it takes FOREVER to learn to play it not-well.  Song I'm learning now doesn't even look remotely complicated, yet the first 12 bars have taken me 3 or 4 hours to get to being able to play at 50%.  This doesn't bode well for a song that has 5 pages of notes ;-P.  Also, for the first time, I cheated and wrote in the bass chords for the sake of my sanity.   BUT I love that there is obvious, tangible, success metrics pretty much every day.  Yesterday I could only play those bars at 40bpm, and today I can do it at 60.   We won't discuss that the target is 115 ;-P.   Part of me thinks that switching apps so I get a whole new realm of "me-level" songs might be an excellent idea, and part of me doesn't want to lose the songs on the app that I've got.  hmmmm I feel like that's a Future Lauren problem.  Like next week, but still future.

I also can only seem to play at *most* 2 songs at a time.   Everything else I've learned falls right out my brain.  And because my music-reading skills are sub-par, it's that much more painful to get it back.  It does come back reasonably quickly, but still painful.  I can't wait for the day that I can just sit down and PLAY.

Going back through the year's blog posts and came across this from early in: 

It turns out not all songs have all the levels - in fact most don't - but it seems that both my first two have all four.  SO, I've decided that in order to not be totally demoralised by this, I'm going to use it to track my progress.   At some point around the 30 day mark I will record the beginner version of each...   Then go away and learn a bunch of other things and some day when I'm ready for the intermediate version, I'll have a comparison...  Rinse and repeat ;). This is my new plan.

AND - I can tell you with ONE song, I can play beginner, intermediate, and advanced.   With *most* I can do the Intermediate version (that's what I start w now).  But the jump from Int to Adv is significant and generally well beyond my abilities.   The one I can do all three is Game of Thrones:  Playlist: Day 1, Beginner,  Intermediate, and Advanced.   Lessons helped improve the advanced significantly since this recording, but still has a ways to go before I'll be actually happy with it.

Anyways - enough babbling for tonight.   Lessons have definitely improved my understanding and basics, but have hugely detracted my interest in actually playing, so you know, not ideal ;).  But otherwise still a hobby I'm very much enjoying.

A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new

So the last song I worked on in my pianoing was my first "advanced" lol which I realise is nowhere near advanced by normal standards, but that's what the app calls it so why not.  It took me 6 weeks to learn 20 bars, and 90% of the left hand I'd learned in the intermediate version of the same song.  Multiple hours to get through single bars.  A, super painful.  B, sheer stubbornness got me through it.  C, I am fully aware even the "successful" version is atrocious, but technically I got through it hitting all the right notes ;).   There were two different pieces of notation I had to google what they meant.  And after all that, I realised I was definitely at the point where I needed help.  (Clip here for the brave or curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZcUNacZ1Pk)

Accurate.  Except that I love my husband enough to wear headphones.

After the assessment and my free admission that I can't effectively read bass clef yet, and my theory is minimal, we're starting with the "level 2" book.  lol level 2 is super basic from both a playing and theory standpoint, but it that means it gives a chance to catch up on any/all basics that I missed.   Top of that list: how I hold my hands.   He corrected it in the first lesson, but I didn't really get it.   In the second lesson the light started flickering a little more and while it will undoubtably take me forever to fix, ("shorten your reins" anyone?), at least conceptually I get it.

My teacher is an older gentleman w a reasonably strong accent - my guess would be Eastern European or German? Idk - I’m really bad w accents lol. The ESL factor makes explanations a little iffy and I’m definitely an overgrown toddler in needing to understand “why” ;).  My favourite was being told:  “You must rest!” Hmmmm I feel like I might’ve heard that before ;). In this case, when I'm sight reading music I have a tendency to just ignore any form of rests ;-P

Re the whole hand position thing - I have to acknowledge that once the light started flickering, both the YouTube teachers whose videos I've been learning from have mentioned the same, but sometimes you need someone in person to actually show you how what you're doing isn't what you *think* you're doing...  (I swear the advent of cell-phone video cameras made teaching riding *so* much easier when I could show people that what they *felt* they were doing and what they were actually doing might not be exactly the same ;). AND, importantly, how to fix it.

So today I revisited my nightmare song with new learning in place.  One bar.  About an hour.  Slowed down to about 25%.  But I got it ;). And after I got it, I could speed it back up.  And eventually - was significant improvement over what I'd had before.  In an hour.  So I'm deeming that one a win and am actually fairly excited about it :)

This week's wtf (I mean, "learning") moment in piano

So those of you who hang out here on a regular basis will know that Spanishing has been going reasonably well of late. Alas, the same cannot be said of the piano. 

I am still very much enjoying it, but it’s being held back by two very strong forces:

• It’s an indoor toy and it’s one of the few lovely months of the year, so I want to be outside 
• I’m a beginner and beginner music is boring ;) 

So to combat the first, I need to be learning something interesting enough to be inside during summer. Tricky given the second ;). So I looked at the pieces that I really passionately want to learn to play, none of which are level appropriate, and picked the one which seemed most feasible.

It actually didn’t end up being either of the ones I would’ve expected but okay. Still all good. My feasibility scale was based on:

• Is the tempo slow enough that I have a chance of ever playing it at speed? 
• How much of it can I already play from having learned an easier version that was smart enough to use similar patterns to the real thing? 
• How much musical theory is there that I have never seen before? 
• Are there any parts I looked at and went wtf, how is that even possible? 

So the song I picked, I can play prob 75% going in. Win. To put in perspective, of that other 25%, I spent an hour tonight learning 2 bars. An hour. 2 bars. Hands SEPARATE. And it was a HUGE win at the end that I could do the “hard” hand *almost* correctly at 50% speed. And it fell completely apart when trying to add any of the other bars or the other hand in.

Musical notation there are two sections that I have no idea what they mean. I’m reasonably certain FB will provide an answer. One I figured out by context - I know the song and you can watch a person play it on the app so I figured it out, even though I don’t actually get it (aka if I didn’t know how it was supposed to go, there’s no way I’d know to make it happen). The second one I have no idea but have deemed it mildly irrelevant atm ;)

This is way better than the half a dozen in the other songs I wanted ;-P

Then there’s capability. Almost all of it, I’m confident I could get to. Except - there’s one part with THREE four-note cords in a row. Plus side, I can at least reach all the notes. Down side, neither my sheet reading nor my playing capabilities are at the point where I can hit that many keys simultaneously with any sort of accuracy or rhythm.

So yeah. In over my head? For sure. Harming anyone? Nope. And we all know I do better with the almost impossible challenge, so this is the approach for now.

If things go well, I will likely attempt to find a teacher (not so easy out here) when the weather turns. I *may* even have figured out this one song by then lol. Wish me luck!

Continuing the trend of brilliance or disaster. And, umm, a little light on the brilliance ;)

So it’s amazing how I lose the ability to play as soon as the camera is on. Even though I *know*, logically, that I can record as many takes as I like, AND that my sole audience is my dad, I still slide backwards significantly from what even the last effort was. Super frustrating and makes me glad I never have any inclination toward being on stage! 

The one significant advantage of the video though, is for the songs where I’ve gotten past the “just able to play the right keys” stage, it really helps me to hear it and then I can see what I need to do differently. It helps me pick out which areas aren’t smooth, or where dynamics need to change. I’m loving that that’s now a component of it. It’s only the last couple songs where ‘just get the right notes’ hasn’t been the WHOLE objective.

Also, my tendency in riding to go for brilliance or disaster definitely carries over to piano ;). The happy safe middle won’t do. At least in piano, it’s unlikely that I’ll end up covered in mud as a result ;). So for example, my current challenge is learning to play hands at different volumes. Otherwise even the nicest sounds sound horrible. But I can’t be happy with just slightly different. Oh no. So instead I have cases where one hand is SO soft that sometimes I don’t actually get any sound, while the other sounds like somebody let a toddler loose with a hammer.

Still having fun with it though, so deeming that a win :) I wasn’t sure I’d keep going once the weather was nice enough to go outside, but I still seem to be making time for it.

I HAVE dropped off on the theory portion though. Lol I know I really need to get back into that or I’ll regret it eventually, but atm I’m enjoying songs, and when I get stuck, I go learn the theory I need specific to that moment to get unstuck. It’s pretty much what I’m doing with Spanish too so hey, why not? ;).

I also don’t love that if I don’t play them regularly, I lose them and have to start over again. It comes back fast, but definitely can’t just sit down and play.

I’ve been writing what I’ve been learning from each song in YouTube - going to paste it here in order just for posterity’s sake:

Day 1: Game of Thrones / Sound of Silence:
At this point I had vague memories of how to read treble clef, zero knowledge of bass clef, and only vague ideas of where the keys were.

Month 1: Game of Thrones / Sound of Silence (beginner):
Very rough, but better than Day 1

Month 2: Cannon in D (beginner)
One of my favourite classics, but missing my favourite part :(. Apparently it's not beginner-friendly.

Month 2: Piano Man (beginner)
The end of this one destroyed me!

Month 2: Harry Potter (beginner)
Simple and pretty - this was the first time I got to play with the higher notes, and the first time both hands were in treble clef.

Month 2: Demons (beginner)
Had fun with this one - it was the first one with chords in both hands simultaneously ;)

Month 2: Cannon in D (intermediate)
My first Intermediate!!! Woohoo! lol I LOVED this one, but only cause it's one of my favourite songs and I was *so* disappointed by the beginner version.

Month 2: Havana (beginner)
LOVED learning this one. ALL the black keys and interesting combinations.

Month 2: 7 Years (beginner)
I love the change in rhythm half way through - 2nd half is way more fun :)

Month 3: Let it Be (beginner)
Recorded early just so it could be at exactly 3 months

Month 3: River Flows In You (Intermediate)
This song is super pretty, and I only got through it for the first time ever yesterday, so still a LONG way to go before it should be on here, but staying true to recording the learning journey.

Month 3: In the Hall of the Mountain King (intermediate)
This one gets both faster and louder as you go, which I really enjoyed. I'm not sure the volume comes through in my iffy recording but it was definitely there in my little room!

Month 4: Game of Thrones (intermediate)
Started learning this one after a week's vacation. Don't know if it was brutal because of that, or because it's harder but yeah, it was painful. The parts that I *thought* should've been easy, were hard. On the plus side, super proud of the comparison to the other versions of this song I've done so far!

Month 4: I’m Yours (intermediate)
This one was about learning to play slowly, learning chords (and how to still hear the melody!), and my first ever effort with a pedal.

Month 5: Despacito (intermediate)
This one introduced more complicated chords, triples, notes on a syncopated beat, a new key, and more pedal practice.

Month 5: Pirates of the Caribbean (Easy Piano)
First time with "real" sheet music. Challenges learning not to stall when I need to switch pages, and on the 2nd portion of a repeats going to the right end bar. I am grateful to be learning in a time when tech allows for switching pages digitally via a Bluetooth foot pedal and not needing to actually lift my hands off the keyboard to do so ;)

Month 5: Für Elise (Intermediate)
I read a (plausibly fictional) story that this was composed for a beginner student Beethoven loved. Something she could play that would still sound pretty. He proposed to her but was turned down. So he added a part that she would find very challenging 😂. There is no accurate source I could find that vouches for that; most just propose the three potential Elises. But it still amused me.
This version, suffice to say, does not have the complicated parts. More advanced versions in the same app do.  For me the learnings here were: 

- playing different volumes with each hand (still ridiculously hard for me!)
- having hands overlap without getting tangled

Month 6: Moonlight Sonata (Intermediate) 

This one was a challenge, and I admit I recorded before I probably should 😂 There's a fair bit of polish still required. BUT. I got through it :) New learnings for this one were octaves, so many octaves, and rhythm changes. Also learning to read really low notes in both clefs.

Month 6: Bohemian Rhapsody (intermediate)
SO many challenges, and so much room for improvement still. Next challenge - hands playing with different volumes! lol ah well.  Challenges to learning this song:
- changing key signatures
- changing clefs randomly
- very little repeating sections so way more to learn in a comparatively sized piece

Month 7: Sound of Silence (intermediate)
This one was all about hand independence: partially is each hand doing the right thing at the right time, but primarily getting the left hand to volume down and the right hand to be louder so that the melody can be heard clearly. Also smoothing the notes out while doing that. Lol apparently when too much is going on at once, I can only play super-staccato ;-P

Completely random anniversaries

 So many things going on this week.

It's my one-year anniversary at work.   Other than GRS, it's the only role that I can recall having that I haven't been looking for "what's next" by the one-year mark.  So that's awesome.  More of a challenge than I'd expected, but that's also exactly what's made it interesting :).   Great combo of awesome people, interesting work with enough leeway to make a difference, strong leadership, and flexibility to work remotely.  Solid win.

Then more recently, it's the five-month anniversary of my piano learning adventures.  I am also still really enjoying this one.  I keep expecting the novelty to wear off, but so far so good :).  I will admit I've become very lax about the lesson book and the "technique mastery" portions of things and am very much focusing on learning songs.  I do at least try to strategically pick songs that build skills on each other.   The songs I'm learning are still super-short but noticeably longer than the ones I started with.   The five-month video is here.  Be kind - I'm still a beginner!

That makes it about my four-month anniversary of you-tube 😂.  They switched their settings/rules at one point that super annoyed me because I would've structured differently if I'd known and there's nothing I can do about it now, but sobeit.  Definitely not the end of the world.   I have finally - I think - figured out the "right" sound setup.   Video could definitely still use some help, but it at least works.  Since I can count on one hand the number of people who view it, and I figure half of those are related to me, I'm not going to stress too much about the videography yet ;-P.  Maybe that can be the year-2 challenge.

And not an anniversary, but switching hobbies - I recently purchased a new pattern that was quick fun and easy.  I was super excited about an easy win.  Except that in the pattern it suggested a different type of fabric because of multiple half-stitches.   Now, tbh, I don't mind half stitches.  But I did think it'd be interesting to try a new fabric.  And how hard could it be right?

About that.  *sigh*. It is significantly harder.  What was my 'quick and easy' is the opposite of that now.  BUT - I get to learn something new, and it's a very pretty fabric (Lugana?  Idk - it's mostly cotton ;).   I do think once I learn it, working on this kind of fabric will likely LOOK way better.   I also have a GIANT project to start that I still haven't even started cause I'm slightly overwhelmed by it.  There will be no recording of that one 😂. But some day, a few years from now, there might be a completion post.

So this is two evening's worth of work.
With usual fabric, all the letters would be done by now ;)

Production 101

Right so, if you've been following the story, you'll know that my latest hobby (of 4.5 months now!) is learning to play piano.   In hopes that there will someday be an "after" for comparison, I've been recording videos.  Never having recorded anything in my life, this in itself has been an adventure.   

So it started with just the iPhone.  And that was okay, but the sound was really dodgy - it actually manages to make my playing sound worse?!?!  I mean, it's pretty bad to begin with, comeon...  Just not fair.

So then I figured okay, maybe I need a better microphone.  I have a good microphone thanks to 2020 and the work from home evolution, so usb to lightning converter and away we go.   Yeah no.  Not so much.  The phone just completely ignored the mic and went on about its business.  Fail.

Bought an external bluetooth mic that would wirelessly pair with the phone.  Worked great - once.   Then it would never pair again.  Returned that one and got a wired one.  This one is pretty good and makes a significant difference in sound quality.  Win.  You can see that one in Friday's GoT video (linked below).

Except...  The room my piano currently in has road noise.  And almost always the dogs are with me - Sasha pants.  Loudly.  And Tucker snores.  Loudly.  And occasional video-game commentary can also be heard in the background.  The new mic picks up all of it.

Okay but... it's a digital piano?  Like the app I'm learning from "hears" what I play from a midi-lightning cable.  This isn't hard.  I should just be able to plug that into my phone and get sound from there.

hahahahaha No.

Cute idea, but no, it most definitely does not work.  The regular speaker still recorded, but since the audio was now gone all it recorded was the sound of silent keys clicking.  And Sasha panting.  Perfect.  

I am not even kidding.  I saved this just cause it made me laugh.

And yes the screen is black; this was an audio-only test.

Dr Google told me that it would work if I used the GarageBand app -- well A, no - still failed, and B - GarageBand doesn't have video.   And I am most definitely not dedicated enough to record both separately and spend time merging.  I'm doing well to remember to upload them and that takes all of about 30 seconds.

So the keyboard has bluetooth; my phone has bluetooth; surely, that's a reasonable solution?   See hahaha above.

I did find one YouTube video that looked promising until they put in a headphone jack.  Like how old is this video????  Could we have some time relevance please?

Okay so then I decided if you used to be able to go through the headphone jack, why not?  I got a headphone splitter, sent one signal to my actual headphones so I could hear what I was playing and the other to the iPhone via a connector cable.  This one earned me silence.  It wasn't picking up what it was hearing, but it also wasn't picking up piano sounds.

Continue my Google/YouTube adventure and eventually discovered that to go from piano to phone, you need an in-between conversion step.  Well awesome.  This time, instead of just ordering more stuff to return to Amazon, I went to the local music store.  Well not the actually local music store because they have retiree hours and are basically never open when I want them to be, but the slightly farther away music store.

So first of all - it was packed?!?!  And staffed accordingly which makes me suspect it's often packed?  In my entire 4.5mth music career, I've yet to see more than one other customer in a music store, so definitely surprised at this.

Suffice to say I didn't bother with the DIY version, and asked for help from the first sales person I found.  Taking from lessons learned at work, I didn't tell them what I was there to buy, I told them what the problem was I was trying to solve.   And I say them, because this created quite the adventure.  By the end I'd say 3.5 sales people were involved.  lol the .5 was because one of them asked this particular person if he had any experience with X and he just said no and laughed.   But essentially between them, they had a solution they were certain would work until one of them recalled *which* keyboard I'd told them I had; being far from the most expensive on the market, it lacks any output other than a headphone jack.   And they were most definitely not convinced their solution would work that way.   Clearly entertained by the challenge, one of them realised they had the same keyboard in stock (Google says it's hard to find these days, so hence the surprise) -- pulled out the gear, set it all up, and ran a test case.   They were not able to test connecting it to a phone (something to do with having to register the product) but they were able to connect it to an amp, and were very convinced that if it worked with the amp, it would work with my phone.  It was also entirely refundable.

So off I went on my own merry way (withOUT buying any of the many many many appealing books of beginner-friendly sheet music might I add), detoured by the last store to return the many cables from my previous attempt, and gave it a go.

It took a little bit to set it up - a couple things didn't work quite the way the pdf manual suggested it would, but - it WORKED!  The only thing I can't figure out is if the volume is too loud, it sounds staticy.  Not sure what that's about, but I can accept it till the day I'm bored enough to do more googling.

So now I can record without extra background sounds and without my husband having to listen to my efforts ;).  A win all around really.

As for *what* I'm recording...  On Friday I did Game of Thrones - the Intermediate version (this is with the mic - for comparison purposes later).   This one is interesting because it was the very first song I tried to play, so it's fun to see the progression.  Also, the advanced version builds directly off the Intermediate (more so than most) so I'll continue practicing it so my fingers remember when it's time to level up.   This is important because this one took me a SOLID two weeks to learn of practicing daily.  Admittedly this was two weeks after a 1-week vacation where my brain apparently forgot everything it tried to learn previously, but still.  It was a one bar at a time adventure, and the parts that should've been (in my mind) easiest, took the longest.  Super frustrating for something that sounds super-simple in the end.   BUT.  I did it.

However, today is Saturday (or at least it was when I started writing this blog post ;).  So I needed a new song.  One of the next on my list was the Flowkey version of I'm Yours.   This was super-short and, I expected it to be super simple (I hoped!  I'm getting *slightly* better at analysing that by looking at the music ;) -- I chose it for a couple reasons: one, I really wanted a quick win after the pain that was GoT;  two, it's the first one I've done to really use chords and I figured it'd be good to practice that on something slow first.  Then added bonus, it was a chance to play with the sustain pedal, which I've only used a *tiny* bit in the textbook work.  I am not good at the pedal.  lol ten fingers is enough to coordinate without adding in a foot!   But it was short, simple, and slow enough that I was able to learn it quickly so I had something to test recording on.

Side note - I also learned I don't love slow.  I think it might actually be harder to make slow sound good than fast.  Fast may be harder to do technically, but it sounds way cooler with no effort ;)

So I just listened to Fri and Sat recordings back to back.  GoT was a way more interesting song, but recording quality is SO much better with the new setup; now I just need to learn how to play!

Where's the line between ambitious goals and ridiculous ones?

Continuing the piano games - they're being a bit interrupted in March for a variety of reasons, but I'm hoping I can at least get one more song in.   The last couple weeks have been "In the Hall of the Mountain King" - which, btw, is an awesome name.  And if you'd asked me I would've said I'd never heard of it; likewise, when I heard it - I'd definitely heard it before but had no idea what it was called (so have you, I'm certain!).   But when I play it, I feel like I'm in a fantasy film somewhere - likely involving sprightly trolls.   In my world, those two words can coexist.  Someday, I'll write the story.  You know - in all the free time identified at the end of this post.   (For the curious - here's yesterday's attempt: https://youtu.be/omokc4bl0ew; for those of you who actually know how to play, please be kind!)

So what amused me about this one is that it speeds up as it goes, which is both super fun and super frustrating.  I ended up teaching it to myself backward so I'd get the most practice with the end/fast bits and the least with the beginning slow bits.  lol idk?  Worked for me.   Also, I decided it definitely should start quiet and then get louder (even though my lovely iPhone recording didn't really capture that).  Which lead me to look up the *actual* sheet music which verified that is exactly what's supposed to happen *sigh*.  My little app has definitely failed me there.  Zero dynamic markers ever.   But the last couple songs I've just started making stuff up cause it amuses me to do so, and also cause I'm *really* bad at controlling volume so I figure it's good practice :).   

The other thing that my app doesn't have is pedal cues.  Which tbh, atm is probably best since I struggle with two hands -- two hands and a foot is definitely too much for my little brain.  I only know this cause the workbook I'm going through DOES teach such things lol.  And I get that it's best I learn it as I go, so I'm slightly frustrated it's not included at the beginner level, but also going along w it for now.

I've started buying some "real" (aka not on the app) sheet music as well.  I've got both a beginner and an intermediate version of Pirates of the Caribbean (remember my 10 year plan is the expert level one ;).  The beginner one I'll have this month if I get my life under control.  Int I haven't started yet.   The biggest challenge there is flipping pages!  lol BUT technology win.  I've ordered a foot pedal that will do that for me thanks to the magic of bluetooth.  So yeah, I can't work a pedal to make cool piano sounds, but I'm reasonably certain I can stomp on one when I need a page to turn ;). I also found an app that will turn half pages, so if you're strategic in your page flipping, you never have wait for the next note to appear.

I've started working my way through the intermediate Flowkey songs.  Even some that I never did the beginner version for.   Honestly, I would absolutely still consider these still beginner.  They're longer than the actual beginner ones and have like maybe one bar that's more complex, but still comparatively super-simple.  My tentative plan is, I spent the first three + months doing the beginner songs, I'll spend the next four on intermediate, then the rest of the year on advanced.   I don't think the progression is too fast since, as I mentioned, intermediate is really just longer beginner.   But I DO wonder if I'll be able to knock out all the songs I want to.  Which is most of the ones I've already done as well as a couple new ones that are only available in Intermediate.   And, of course, I now have actual sheet music I'd like to learn to (Beauty and the Beast is also in that list - please tell me Disney is beginner friendly?!?!).   The one thing that gets me about the sheet music is lots of it doesn't bother to included a speed?!?!  Like I follow instructions really well and have a metronome on my phone - please give me a number!  This slow/fast business just isn't working for me ;). And wtf does "brightly" mean?!?!  Sheesh.  

Okay so I just went and looked up what would be next up by this theory:

• Ten of the songs I've learned so far have Intermediate versions.  10!  Some of them are really just long beginner versions, but some of them are ridiculous.  At least one I have no idea how to even read the music, much less play it.
• There are four or five new FK songs that I'd like to add to my list.
• I need to not lose the ones I've already learned (made that mistake!  Oops!)
• I have a handful of sheet music songs I'd like to learn that are about that level
• I'm working my way through the next "12 week" technique course (welcome to arpeggios and broken chords) which I'm enjoying but realistically going to need to do twice since I had to modify significantly to be able to do the exercises.   Also it takes me 2-3 times as long every day as the beginner version did, which means less time for songs.
• Finish level 1 workbook (this is super helpful but oh so boring)
• I'd like to get to the point in "technique" where I can do some of the interesting YouTube exercises instead of just up the scale/down the scale.   Alas, I am a ways from that yet.
• My bass-clef reading is improving but still has lots of room for improvement.
• My technique course came with a music theory course.  Which I'm sure is excellent but omg I'd rather do so many other things (including work!) So not sure how much of that will happen.  But I feel like I should learn at least some basics.  So we shall see.

Right - so that might not be the most reasonable list for four months ;)  By year end maybe.  So far I've done exactly three intermediate songs.  I still work full time and then some, stab stuff regularly, am learning Spanish, and try to workout on an almost daily basis.  So it's fully plausible there are not actually enough hours to accomplish all that.  But hey - if it takes a few extra months, that's okay :).  I'd really like to get at least one or two "advanced" in within the first year.  But we shall see.  Oh yeah - and maybe write about some sprightly trolls ;-P

And, you know, family and friends and all those kinds of people ;)

As soon as I master cloning, I'm set!

PS - I googled "sprightly trolls" -- those are definitely not the trolls I meant.  So disappointed.  Google has failed me.

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:

The babiest of baby steps.

The piano adventures continue.   Today I learned all about arpeggios.  YouTube instructors fly through these at super speed. But then my buddy (read complete stranger) Zach actually broke down what it was and I thought oh yeah - I can do that. It can’t be that different from scales. Well. Let me tell you. I can’t, in fact, do that; at least not faster than the average snail. And it CAN be more challenging than scales lol. But maybe someday I’ll be able to. So I've added it to the list of things to practice and away I go.

It was an interesting experience though to see what a big gap there is in YouTube "beginner" lessons.  Most of them do okay with complete beginner -- aka my Day 1, which introduces where to find - and what IS - "middle C".  They mostly all cover that, and even the other keys.   An astonishing number forget about teaching what the black keys are all about.  And even those that do 101 level well, then suddenly skip to "how to speed up your arpeggios" -- which was what I hit.  Ummm wtf?!?!   Like I don't even know what that is?  Why should I be concerned about speeding it up, if it doesn't even exist?

Another one which got me was "how to make scales more interesting" -- great!  It's been not quite three months and I'm already bored out of my mind with scales.  Let's do this!  Yeah.  Hard no.  Despite being tagged for beginners, it was SO far beyond my capabilities I'm not even sure what he was doing, much less am I capable of replicating it.  Maybe at the six month or one year mark I'll revisit that one.  Sheesh.

Progress-wise -- for the most part I can learn a Flowkey beginner song pretty solidly within a week.  But Intermediate is still a BIG jump for me.  I have one that I'm determined to learn, so will prob butcher my way through it with brute force, but in general it's tedious, frustrating, and sad -- so I'm sticking with beginners for the moment.  They're still challenging enough.  But it makes me hesitate to go to "real" sheet music cause I feel like it's ALL going to be more advanced than that.   Ah well.  Some day ;)

This came across my FB today; felt it applied to pianoing ;)

dd

Things that may one-day be easy

 So fun things I'm learning are significant piano challenges to beginner me:

• my fingers are getting better at playing notes independently, but they absolutely CANNOT play volume independently.   And even together, my options are loud or quiet - there is no middle ground.  
• They also struggle with independent rhythm.  I can skip beats or add beats (eg one hand can hold a note while the other plays a bunch), or they can play different notes at the same time.   But they cannot break the basic rhythm.  I think I need a picture to explain this one.  Okay - so the green bars all line up.  Even the one that's got the extra speedy-bit, still works in my brain.  But for some reason the red bars?!?!  Just not okay.  Like I can't even tap the rhythm out, much less play it.  To be fair, this rarely happens in the level-appropriate beginner music, but still.  I'm aware it's a problem.

Unreasonable brain-breaking music
Music from Flowkey - Game of Thrones - Advanced

• Pinky fingers are weaker - they need a like a strength building program, while the ring fingers are followers and have the biggest challenge working independently.   I've been a touch typist since I was a kid, so that last part actually surprises me a bit, but I guess to be fair, it's rare I type multiple keys at the same time ;).  Ring fingers definitely prefer to bring a friend along for moral support.
• And the pedal?!?!  Yeah not an option ;-P. lol coordinating two hands is hard enough, throwing in a foot, esp a foot that's supposed to be just a fraction of a second behind the hands...  Not happening ;).  I'm practicing it super slow in some of my "technique" homework and when it appears in my lesson book, but it's painful and I don't even pretend to try it in real songs.
• I'm getting better at reading sheet music but am a long way from literate - as a result, for better or worse, I find I'm quasi-memorizing songs as I go and using the music more as a reminder for roughly where to go next and then just letting my figures remember it from there.  I feel like that's cheating and definitely not helpful if I don't look at something for a couple days (or if I get lost mid-piece), but it's my interim solution until I get better at instinctually knowing what note the symbol is talking about.  Treble clef I can mostly read unless it gets way above the staff, but bass?!?!  Yeah still no.  At least there's a couple notes that are becoming more known to me, but mostly fuzzy.   It's the musical equivalent of having to sound out a word to read it.

So that's today's list.  Looking forward to when that stuff is easy and I have a whole new list instead ;)

YouTube Adventures

If it's not your first time clicking through this blog (if it IS - how did you find me?!?!) you might be aware that I've started learning piano and am quite enjoying the adventure.   To try to improve my chances, I've been applying techniques that I've learned in other hobbies, such as - from Spanish - 10 mins a day is better than 70 minutes once a week (for the curious - this has to do with how the brain learns and sleep is a key component!); or - and I swear there's a point to this - from exercising: progress photos (videos) are important.  When you're starting from nothing and have a long way to go, progress can be so slow as to feel non-existent; but if you can compare "then to now" you can, hopefully, see that what you're doing is impacting change.   This is the theory anyways - with working out I tend to get a lot of "before" photos and not too many after ;-P.  

So for piano, I decided I would track the journey and record progress videos.   Mostly just for me, *maybe* for friends and family who either feel obligated to or genuinely want to be supportive ;).  And because if I ever *actually* get good, it'll make for a good laugh and a memory.   I flipped a couple to my dad, but other than that, they were safely in my iCloud.

But THEN, I tried to change my cloud, and throughly f'd something up and thought I'd lost them all.  Now conceptually we can look at this two ways:  I've been playing less than three months, how much could I have lost?   In the grand scheme of things, videos filmed now still count as 'just starting' for sure.   Or alternately, they're all gone so now I'll never be able to compare and it's all just horrible.   lol okay definitely exaggerating that one - I don't tend toward that dramatic naturally - but was mildly disappointed.

However, being the tech goddess that I am (please read that with the appropriate amount of sarcasm), I managed to relocate and rescue my files.  Win!  Okay, so maybe instead I should put them on YouTube.   Then said curious / supportive friends/family can actually see what I'm up to if they're so inclined.   But, well, it's not something I want poor unsuspecting people to stumble on.

So I do some research -- YouTube will let you set things as Private (only those on the "list" can view), Unlisted (anybody with the link can view), or Public (the whole world is watching).   Okay well private seems a bit high maintenance - I don't want to have to babysit a link or force people to have YouTube accounts to assuage mild curiosity.  Public is just a horrible idea.  So that leaves Unlisted which actually seems somewhat ideal.  

Away I go happily building my YouTube site.  I had a GRS site once upon a time, but didn't want to touch that (just as well as I can't imagine I remember the login credentials and likely no longer have the email); however, when I searched I realised somewhere along the way I had a personal site too.  It has exactly four videos on it -- three of which are of Sasha ;) -- and all from 2015.   Alright, that one can definitely be repurposed, although for my own amusement, I'd leave the vids up.   But things have changed since 2015, so I merrily went about building a watermark and a banner and checking all the security settings, and pretty soon I had an account.

Pretty happy with this for a "I need one now" level banner

But somewhere in my uploading, I discovered you can't set the site to Unlisted; you have to set each individual video.  Which means I would have to share links to every video.   Which, quite frankly, I just don't want to do ;).  I'm not trying to build a social media following here -- I just want a place where if someone cares enough to go look they can.  Not somewhere they have to bookmark links to individual songs in my learning journey.   Sheesh.   So yeah - super disappointed.

Which meant...  I took a deep breath and set to public.   And honestly, was thinking my Sasha vids from 2015 had had like 40 hits and likely 15 of them were me ;).  So not as though anybody's going to see them.  I sent the link to my parents (and only my parents), because, well, no matter how hard your kids get you have to pretend to be excited about their new hobbies 😂.  It's a rule.  I'm sure of it.  It's part of why I don't have kids ;-P.  

Well it seems like things have changed a little in the last 7 years?!?!  Who knew?  🤷‍♀️  My Day 1 C Scale (translate as horribly played and excruciatingly boring all in one) had more than 500 views?!?!   Like wtf?

I'm not even exaggerating (and no, it's not linked, you don't want to see it)

And then on top of that, I have comments from random strangers?!?!  Now on my blog, I generally love any comments of the non-spam variety (although I usually see them in FB).  They're generally the highlight of my day (I know, it's sad - in the 2020s, I'll take what I can get).  But I'm not emotionally ready for comments on my piano playing, esp knowing that the only people I sent the link to probably hadn't seen it yet...   But I was betting on spam, so I cautiously clicked through and:

That top one, I can't even...

So yeah - deleted the first one, deemed the second harmless.   Am definitely going to have to look into comment filtering options if it stays public, but we'll see.   

I also know from running the blog, that tagging / finding things after the fact is a royal pita, so am setting that up from the beginning with playlists for anything that I have more than one recording of so that I can do easy comparisons as I go ;).  If you curious enough to click through, Cannon is the only one with more than one level's worth.  Cause, well, I'm still a beginner ;).  Not quite month 3 remember.

I know that in the world of YouTubers those numbers are minuscule, but when I was expecting to be able to count views on one hand with fingers left over, it definitely amused (bemused?) me ;).  Anyways - so that's my random unexpected Saturday night.   I hope yours was at least that entertaining.

And, of course, the obligatory link: https://www.youtube.com/c/LaurenCudeHorsfall/videos 

Because reasonable goals are boring

Those of you who know me in real life, or who've been around this blog for a while, might know that it's not unusual for me to decide I'm going to do something completely random and commit pretty fully to it.  Realistically if I were single, I'd prob be living somewhere they speak Spanish by now :).  However, since that's not an option (and - well - covid), I need an equivalent here.   For the moment, piano is filling that gap.

The Simply Piano app (which is not one I use) has an ad (which I see ALL THE TIME now - thanks algorithms); this ad (which I couldn't figure out how to share), shows an adult learning and being consistently shown up by his kids, and later his wife, who are enjoying the "cool game".   And honestly, while the app I've chosen isn't at all gamified, I do think that's what keeps me going.   I'm *so close* so I'll try "one more time" and an hour later, when I get it, it's that lovely dopamine boost ;).  Instant gratification for the win!

Anyways - I get SO excited and proud of myself when I get a section I've been struggling with.  And when you're a brand new beginner, there are a LOT of things to struggle with that are not actually hard, so lightbulb moments happen all the time ;-P.  I'm on the piano equivalent of Duolingo.

With that in mind, one of the YouTube people I'm learning from posted something about a version of Pirates of the Caribbean they were working on that they were finding super challenging.   So of course, I had to go see what it was.  And then promptly decided it'd be an *awesome* thing to be able to play ;)

I mean, seems plausible?

Right so, for perspective, right now I'm really struggling with the "fast part" of a simplified Cannon in D.  If you know the song at all, you'll know it's the opposite of fast.  So comparatively, this is - well - moving where they speak Spanish seems significantly more plausible even with restrictions of Covid and husband with a location-based job ;)

So I'm filing it under the "by the time I'm 50" goal.  Now, this has all kinds of challenges with it:

• I'm not emotionally ready to accept 50 is target on the horizon?!?!  Like that's very not okay.
• Most of the people who can play it well have been playing many more years than I have left between now and that completely arbitrary date.
• The ONLY things I've stuck with that number of years in my life have been writing and riding.   I'm still not convinced this will make the cut - I get that pit in my stomach feeling writing this.
• The original artist and composer (in the vid) is one of the best in the world, AND was a child prodigy.  So, you know, a totally reasonable standard for comparison.
• I looked up the sheet music (of course I did).  But I'm not even sure if the linked music is the whole thing cause it looks like there's 3 movements?!?!  I'm a little confused by that but okay.  Youtube suggests you need all 3.   Yikes.   Not just ONE impossible effort, but three.  Awesome.  The first page of each is available for preview.  Atm, I don't even slightly understand the very first note of the first movement.   So - yeah, ostentatious goal?  Slightly ;).   Maybe I should buy it now in hopes that it doesn't disappear by the time I'm good enough to play it?   (edited - looks like the original version was just the 3rd one - that's the one I saw first, so it's the *real* target.  He extended it a couple yrs ago to be all three - which is the video here, but Movement 3 is the one for me :).

I'm sorry, wtf?!?!  I have SO many questions here.
Ironically, the only thing I *do* understand is the bass clef lol ;-P

So yeah, may the odds be ever in my favour ;)

My DIY approach to learning piano

So still super-enjoying my pianoing (side note - autocorrect *really* doesn't like it when you make up words ;).  I'm at 2.5 months now.  I have average to low sense of rhythm and short stubby fingers.  lol not exactly set up for success, but enjoying it.  I'm currently averaging about an hour a day, six days a week, and it usually feels like about 10 minutes.  This post is all about the approach I'm taking to learning - so if that's not of interest (fair game!) there's a whole internet waiting for you :) 

Still lacking an actual teacher, but have two YouTube people I'm paying a lot of attention to - does that count?   lol and both have videos about risks/things to watch out for if you're learning without a teacher.  Both call out, repeatedly about technique and using the right fingers.   One of the things I *really* like about the app I'm using is that it shows fingers playing every note -- so you can see which figures you should use at any time.   While most (if not all) the apps will show the keys on the keyboard, this is the only one I know of that shows somebody playing.   I've started paying a lot of attention to it and it's definitely making a noticeable difference.   Also *ridiculously* hard to change for something I've been doing less than 3 days, so I see why it's identified as Really Important to get right.

If you take too long (like pausing to take a pic),
the orange instructions show up :)

The other thing the app really helps with is speed/rhythm.   I have sheet music for several songs I'd like to learn, but they're not the focus yet because trying to align to a metronome is an extra challenge I don't need yet.   In the app, it can play in "wait" mode - where it doesn't move till you hit the right note, or at 50%, 75%, or 100% - if you're hitting the notes when they say to, your rhythm is correct.   Super win.   Today was the first time I learned a scale that didn't have a lesson for it in the course -- I was surprised at how much extra effort it took; even though I did the exact same exercises as in the ap.  Definitely made me appreciate it.

Anyways - for the curious, here's what I'm using to learn for now:

YouTube Teachers:

• Zach Evans -- I *really* enjoy his videos, which is slightly surprising since they contain over the top enthusiasm and positivity which are not usually my thing ;).  They also have a bit of a used-car salesman feel to them, so again not usually my thing.   But somehow they work for me.  I also love that he includes training around current adult learning principles.   And I have to give a lot of credit in that he (or his social media people) actually took the time to answer an email I sent with random beginner questions, so that counts for a lot.
• Jazer Lee -- much calmer and more organized approach 😂.  Not that that's hard to do.   I use these videos less for how to play and more for what to practice and why.  Lots of stuff on what songs are good for beginners and what technical skills those songs teach.

Apps:

• Flowkey -- This is my primary learning.  Lots of songs I'm interested in, most offered at a variety of levels - but mostly overstated.  Beginner (this is me!), Intermediate (to put in perspective, this is *almost* me and will be within a couple months I expect; I'm learning one song at this level now), Advanced (to me "advanced" would be anyone who took a couple years of lessons as a kid after a week of review), and Pro (which I suspect, is anyone who actually *wanted* to take lessons as a kid and put some actual effort into them ;).     lol I could be way off, we'll see when I get to those other levels.  But that's my guess.   

It also has lessons and some basic music theory; I find the lessons frustrating once you get into them because they don't have the same features as the song practice and I'm not good enough to learn the songs quickly enough to pass the levels.   They need a practice mode.   Otherwise though, they're decent.

There are LOTS of other similar apps, but most of them are more gamified (think music hero), so you're not learning to read music, just hitting the falling dots on the screen.  Since someday I'd like to be able to play music NOT in the app, that didn't appeal to me.   Although I did wish this one had more stats and a few other options (like to stop playing if I mess up too much - which I found one app that does, but I didn't like any of the music choices, so that was a loss)

• Piano Notes -- This is just to learn to read music.  Has a few different modes, but is essentially flashcards.   I haven't used this recently and really should since I'm a long way from fluent, esp in bass clef.

• Piano Sight Reading -- I mean, as the name suggests, this is to improve sight reading.  But for one who isn't music literate to begin with, it's great for teaching the basics of reading music, understanding patterns and nuances, etc.  It uses UK terms though, which I don't know at all, so that's mildly frustrating but I figure will be helpful overall.  It's more of a testing than a teaching tool but I'm learning through the test questions ;)

Books:

• Accelerated Piano Adventures -- there are a ton of these, I'm working through the Theory, Technique, and Lesson books.   I'm about 3/4 of the way through the first level.   I don't love these, but I figure they're prob useful so I try to do about a unit / week.  These guys have a reasonable online community as well.

So that's about it.  If the world ever opens up again, I'll plausibly look into actual lessons, but that's not something I want to do virtually and I'm having fun on my own so all good :) 

Pianos are difficult to break into because they have a lot of keys.

Change comes through challenge but omg was painoing ever frustrating tonight.

So month 2 complete!   😂 -- it has certainly held my attention longer than Arial Silks did, although arguably not as good at combating the physical exercise requirement.   I am still enjoying it -- every time I start something new it's a new challenge -- this combination in this order seems mostly easy with some impossible thrown in for good luck, and the first time I get it is the same thrill and addiction as passing a hire level in Beat Saber (or whatever your video game of choice is ;)   Can I do it faster/easier/better?

While that is very much appealing, I'd also like to get to the point some day where "consistently repeatable" is an option ;).  lol I'm very much brilliance or disaster phase.  Which, lets be honest, is pretty much my approach to life so not convinced that's going to change.  😂.  My dressage coach used to strongly advice, time after time, that when I go in the ring I aim for average, since consistently average would get me better scores overall.   Whereas my tests could range from 2-9 in the same test (that actually happened, albeit only once ;) -- but what normally happened is I'd be right on the edge of awesome and blow it cause I pushed for that little bit more.   So I kinda feel the only way there's going to be consistency is to get good enough that at least some of it is easy *g*. And then be willing to do the easy stuff ;) 

Suffice to say that is not yet *sigh*.   That's where the frustration of tonight came in -- it was month two 'record for posterity' day - and while the first of the songs went well (although Tucker snoring is the backdrop for the first), two that have, at least lately, been fairly reliable (aka one or two takes at most) needed multiple tries to get acceptable.  Was pretty disappointed at that.

Now, the intelligent thing would've been to take that and call it, but brilliance or disaster - remember?  I decided that I'd record "just one more" -- which is in the category of I can usually get but is not solid yet and I'm still generally pretty excited when I pull off the "hard part" (Piano Man - of course!  😂.  Pretty sure it's a must do for any learner) -- yeah it took many more times than I wanted to admit.  Like as though I'd never gotten it before.  Super painful.  And worse - since it was for recording, that meant no headset, so my husband had to suffer through it too.

Yup, just like that.

So yeah, I'm still very much a beginner.   On the technical side I'm working through the "Piano Adventures" series of books - partially cause the name appealed to me and partially cause a friend who's also an adult beginner recommended them.  The theory interests me, the playing super-simple (yet sometimes disturbingly hard-to-me) beginner pieces I find both boring and frustrating -- it's not the best combination.  But I figure I'm probably learning something from it, so I'm targeting a chapter a week.  Between that and the scales / finger practice I figure I've got the homework part down.

I finished the 20 Day online course I was taking and while it didn't teach me what I'd expected, it did significantly increase my confidence and coordination, and I had fun with it.   I'm still working on some of the skills taught in the last couple lessons.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying learning my beginner songs in the Flowkey app.  I took a quick look at the intermediate ones one day when I was feeling all cocky and quickly took my place back in the beginner world 😂.  lol similarly saw something cool on YouTube and looked it up - couldn't even manage the first measure.  Oops.  But some day.  The only thing I don't like is there isn't a huge selection.  Somebody needs to create an app that can do that with any sheet music.  Plausible that they have and I just haven't found it yet.  I do have one that can read it and stop/slow down/repeat -- but it still shows as sheets, so you still have to switch pages -- That's not reasonable ;-P.  And it also doesn't analyze if you're playing the correct notes, which is a feature I appreciate.

So yeah, the games continue.  We shall see :)