I Love My New Toy

This recording is good enough for government work. I will probably go back and clean it up, but I really wanted to show off my new recording device. It's a Zoom H4. As I understand there is a new version, but this one works great for me. It's a huge upgrade over my previous quality.

So here's Moonlight Sonata:

No joy

Worked a 12 hour day, so by the time I got home I was pretty tired and stressed. I did practice for 30 minutes though on both Bach and Beethoven.

Moonlight is four pages. I get through page one almost every time. The bottom of page two is where mistakes creep in. I'm probably going to have to practice each page repeatedly for a while, but that's very frustrating as it's not a particular spot that gives problems.

Perhaps tonight

Moonlight Sonata is coming along. I can play each portion, but the problem is getting it accurate all the way through.

I'm getting the piano tuned this week. I'm glad that my wife handles that and I don't have to be home. It consists of the tuner hitting one key over and over. Wash rinse repeat 88 times.

I haven't decided on my next song yet. All the previous contenders still apply and I'd add Bash's Well Tempered Clavier Prelude 1. Though I certainly won't be playing it that fast.

Doing the impossible

The first few times I heard Moonlight Sonata I thought it was impossible for a single piano player to do. There were just too many notes. Well, that's not the case, and I'm very close to having a good copy to upload.

I actually performed it at a recital a couple years ago, and by performed I mean crashed and burned.

Vacation's Over

Well it's about time I put all these lessons to work. Once I really sat down and put some effort into recording it only took about 3 hours to get done. You can hear a small hesitation towards the end, but it's not terrible and I actually brought a note in an eighth too early, but unless you have the music you'd not know where.

Let's hope the next one doesn't take as long as this did.

Corpse Bride, written by Danny Elfman, arranged by Dan Coates, and played by me.

Goal for the weekend

If I can get Corpse Bride recorded it will be a successful weekend. Last night was a very promising practice session, so wish me luck.

More Cowbell?

Lesson was today and it went pretty well. Corpse bride page one was nearly flawless. the bridge and the end not so much. It was ok, I just had to go slow. In Dreams went very well, and he assisted me on the two parts I was trying to figure out how to spice up.

So, I told him that I wanted to work on one hard piece (Corpse Bride), one easy piece for improving (In Dreams), and one curriculum piece so we have something to work on week to week.

He thought that was a fine idea and suggested Styx and Blue Oyster Cult. So, I have two long pieces to work through that are both awesome. Come Sail Away and the Christopher Walken popularized Don't Fear the Reaper.