Name that tune

Nothing much of note. House of the Rising Sun isn't being nice and recording easily. In the meantime, I did get this little snippit recorded for a future endeavor. I'm bringing in a ringer to sing which ought to be a fun experiment.

New Developments

So I bought my son myself a Fender Stratocaster. I've been casually interested in guitar, but not as much as piano. However, when my son showed some interest as well, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I'm likely going to get him a Fender Mini for his birthday. Ah, who am I kidding? I know I will :) I should definitely be looking for a cheap amp on Craigslist though.

When I told my piano teacher, he said, "That's funny. I just picked guitar up again 2 weeks ago." He's been helping his daughter make a CD. She's playing piano and doing vocals. He's doing the recording, percussion, and guitar. He had me listen to it and it's pretty good, though, I'm a sucker for Nightwish/Evanescence/Within Temptation style stuff, so I don't know that I'm a good reviewer.

I was planning on taking a piano break this summer and taking guitar lessons instead. Larry said I could just bring my guitar by any time and he'd start my instruction that way. He's not an expert, but he knows enough, and has been teaching long enough that I'll get something out of it. Since I'm very comfortable with him as a teacher, and he's been very generous with his time, it seems a good plan.

In other news, when he was showing me what he could do with his new Les Paul Epiphone, he had a drum machine doing a backing track. That was impressive so I've been did a little experimenting and research and am going to try the same. I ran through some guitar chord changes with a backbeat and it definitely makes playing more interesting. I'm going to have to see how complicated it is to go with a full track for an entire song. It would probably work well with House of the Rising Sun, but I'd like to get a recording in the next couple weeks which doesn't leave me with a whole lot of time for learning the software.

*slams on brakes* 10 years! TEN YEARS! Ten years.

No. Only 6 months. I can't believe I've slacked off that long. Someone should have kicked me. Sadly in all that time I really haven't mastered any songs. I've been working on Hallelujah, and assorted other minor stuff. Christmas songs and the like.

What has really caught my interest at the moment is The House of the Rising Sun. And what I really need is a crowd like this one.

This version by Mona Lisa is pretty good, and Tori Amos' version is haunting.

This is the most unique and moving one I found: Odetta.

Still a lot of cleaning up to do on my version, but it's coming along.

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.

Good weekend of practice

I got good time in all weekend. If I can do a few more of those I'll have recordings very shortly. The first half of Corpse Bride went exceeding well, and really, it's more like the first 2/3rds.

I do have one problem though. I probably need to get 3 pieces going. I had too many and cut it back to two for recording purposes. One hard piece and one "easy" one. But since it's taking multiple weeks, I don't really have anything to do at practice with Larry. We went over a couple deals last week, but then settled into some chord work. I should go ahead and work on something he's given me too, and just do a new one that isn't performance quality each week. There's a large difference between good enough to progress and performance quality. The last 10% of a song takes nearly 10 times as long than the first 90%.

Here's the plan

I need to start writing more even if there is no progress as it will give me more practice motivation. I'm getting in front of the piano more lately and making some nice progress.

In the next couple weeks I ought to have a piece or two ready, but you know how life has a habit of interfering.

One of the better things I've done lately is some left hand improvisation. I've been playing In Dreams from Fellowship of the Ring. The music I have has left hand as single half notes on nearly the whole song. I started it that way. Which had me playing C,B,A,G. Larry quickly changed me to playing full chords, and it requires inversions. I put it down for a while but came back to it as I needed an easier piece. This time Larry suggested broken chords and coupled with Sudnow's dislike of thirds in left hand chords, I pulled the melody line up an octave and have been playing left hand with root, 5, root (up an octave).

I'll try to record this as an instruction piece, but it may be more trouble than it's worth.

Corpse Bride is much much better. I had a few folks over last weekend and played it for them. It had quite a few mistakes, but was obvious I could clean it up with maybe 4 hours of work or so.

Still Alive

Yes, the blog is still alive. There is little progress to report though.

On the positive side, I've made a lot of progress on Corpse Bride, but not so much on most of the others. Likely, I'm just trying to play too many hard things at once. I should back off trying to do five at once and just do one hard and one easy.

It's been more difficult getting piano time too. I'm just going to have to suck it up and get it done.

Update

Sorry for the lack of updates, but there isn't really that much going on.

I don't remember if I've mentioned it, and I'm too lazy to go back through all 10 posts or however many there are to see, so I'll just repeat myself. One of the changes I made to my practice style has been to build a binder of my music. In the front goes pieces that I have mastered, next are things I'm working on, and finally songs that I'll get to in the near future.

At the beginning of the month, I go through all the pieces that I have mastered just to refresh my memory on how to play them first try whenever I feel the need. That normally takes me two or three days.

Then I go through working on current songs until something calls me away. That can be frustration, family, or previous engagements.

Corpse Bride is currently in progress. It's getting close, but I bet it's another month before it's ready. Moonlight Sonata is about the same state, so I should have them both done by June.

The current piece I'm spending my time with is the very common and overplayed Pachebel's Canon in D. Despite it's overuse, I love the song, and it was the first goal song I had. I can still play the Alfred's version, though I can't remember if it's in book one or two.

This one is a Dan Coates version that my instructor still uses when he does weddings.

All that as it is, when I think of Pachebel's Canon, I always think of this:

With a Little Help From My Friend

I don't know how many times I tried this and it got increasingly frustrating. There was no reason why I couldn't get a good recording. But over and over again it wasn't working.

Late last week I found out that my father-in-law wanted to take the kids. Perfect. Plans are ready to go. Kids are off to The Children's Museum, and I'm pumped. Lots of time to concentrate, no ambient noise, and it should be done in a couple takes. Not so fast, my friends.

Instead Sunday afternoon rolls around and the kids get back home. Jacob runs off to play with his friend Kevin, and Shannon's running around the house like a demon. I'll go ahead and entertain her with some piano, and hit the recorder just in case I get lucky. One take. The Rose. Win. I just needed my inspiration back.



And since I hadn't mentioned before, this was a special song for me. It was one of the first ones I learned that was real music, and not just a page out of Alfred's. I spent many a lunch at the music store where they let me practice because I wanted to perform it as a gift to my wife. It was our dance song at our wedding. Ironically, I'm the sentimental one when it comes to stuff like that, but she appreciated this one.

SSDD

That song I promised last week? Call me a slacker. Or busy. Or a terrible piano player.

I'm not sure what to make of it myself. I got close to a good recording yesterday, but there was enough sketchyness that I'd like to improve it.

The good news is that Moonlight Sonata is sounding very nice, though it's definitely still rough on pages 3 and 4. There's a section where it does some chord runs, (see, if I was a good piano player I'd just rattle off the notes), 3 up, 1 down, and I'm working on playing them like the triplets they are rather than eighth notes. All in all though, it's one of the few things I'm generally happy with right now as I can see clear progress.

In absence of anything substantive, here's a bunny with a pancake on his head.

What's the step just before progress?

I'm pretty confident I can get a recording of The Rose tonight. I played it fairly well at practice yesterday and then again last night. However, I was too busy with prior obligations to attempt a recording. Nothing special is on tonight's agenda so I fully expect to have new music for you tomorrow.

Practice was so so. I currently have the same five pieces I was working on last week and he only had minor advice for them. There wasn't much point in doing the same thing this week, so he gave me a jazz piece to look at the chords on. It looks pretty difficult to me, but the left hand chords should do me some good.

I regressed on Corpse Bride last time I attempted it. Moonlight sounded good. I haven't worked on Misty for a while now. I'm not sure what you'll hear after The Rose.

Gimmie my patterns!

The title means nothing. It's just some good karma. I'm totally going to win this contest.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of updates, but there really hasn't been anything to say. Class was canceled last week, so I'll be making it up this week. I've attempted a few recordings but none of them were solid. Several pieces are close to finished and are worth putting the recorder on when I practice them. I could get lucky and get through it.

One of my changes to my practice plan is to have a notebook of pieces that I've enjoyed and want to keep current on. At the beginning of each month I go back and play each of them until I can get through it. Hopefully that will keep it so I can play them at a moments notice. Watermark is the only one giving me trouble, but last night it was a significantly better than on the 1st.

Part of the slow progress is the breadth of the pieces I'm practicing. I'm actively working on The Rose, Corpse Bride, Moonlight Sonata, and Misty. The good part is that I should finish them all soon and can get regular recordings up. The downside is it takes longer to complete them. However, I have heard that in many learning techniques, there's only so much progress you can make in a day before you have to sleep and let your short term memory process the skills necessary and put it in long term memory. Anecdotal, of course, but often pieces get a lot better when I come back to it a day later.

I do want to put a quick plug in for a fantastic piece of music I heard this weekend. I found a Dutch band called Within Temptation on Pandora while on the Lacuna Coil channel. After picking up a few of their albums, I noticed that the CD/DVD combo of Black Symphony has 38 reviews, and 28 are 5 star and 4 more are 4 star. It's absolutely that good. Listen to some of the clips either on Amazon or on the WT site I listed above. If you appreciate it in the least, get Black Symphony. The live performance backed by an orchestra is an absolutely incredible musical work.

Chugging along

The songs I'm cleaning up are all more complex than what I've posted previously, and I really haven't been working on any of the easier stuff. I was going to attempt to record The Rose last night, but I don't think I would have gotten a quality take and we've had a bug going around the house so I figured rest was a better idea than frustration.

Instead I downloaded some Sarah Vaughan and listened to her and Billie Holliday.

The idea was that I wanted to hear Misty over and over again so I could get a good listen to a professional rendition, but I love hearing old recordings like those. Theres just a feel that you can't get from modern studio music.

So all in all it was a good evening spent. I should get to record something tonight.

Here's a way to make your teacher nervous

Go in and tell him about this wonderful new method of learning. It will make him even more nervous during a recession.

So, I came across The Sudnow Method of learning piano, and I must say that I'm quite impressed. I'm picking it up quickly and it's helping me with theory as well. I'm sure it made Larry nervous, but after working through some of the details and how I plan on using it, I think his mood improved. I know to a certain degree, he likes to employ a lot of the methods him self.

Warning: Technical detail to follow
Warning 2: I've had hardly any formal theory training, so most of this is interpretation and if you feel I'm wrong, I probably am.

Most (all?) modern pop/country/folk/non-classical (fwiw, classical isn't stuff written pre 1930. It's in movies all the time. See: Elfman, Williams, Zimmer) is written in a chord progression played by an instrument(s) and a melody line that is sung or during parts of the song soloed by an instrument. Different forms of music generally have different chord progressions. Floating around recently has been the 'all pop music sounds alike' youtube clip which features the ever popular I, V, vi, IV. So you take those chords, couple it with a rhythm, add a melody line and bam. Instant hit.

So, in it's basic form the Sudnow method is a jazz piano chord progression where you play two notes in teh left hand, root and either 5th, 7th, or octive. On the right hand you add a melody note on the top with the 3rd, and assorted other notes of the chord depending on certain rules.

What I like about it is that I'm learning to play left hand accompaniment without reading. I'm not playing an F, A, C and a Bb, I'm playing an Fm7. It's helping with other pieces such as Corpse Bride as well. It's not nearly as hard to read one staff and a chord as it is to read two staffs.

So, Misty isn't too far down the road to performance, and I think ya'll will like the sound.