First Upload for you Happy Listen Fun Joy

I finally recorded a practice session and it was, for the most part, horrendous. But I captured a snippet of The Entertainer that wasn't half bad, if a little heavy on the pedal. Here is an upload of the first section as played by me. I spared you the ear-torturing second section, as I haven't quite got it up to speed yet--but will soon. Not to mention third and fourth section, on which I am, yes indeed, working with laser-like diligence. So here is my very first audio upload, and despite a little overcaution and some hesitation here and there I thought it was coming along quite nicely for a chap who a year ago was practicing scales.

I'm Going to the Opera

I decided it was time to take care of the second item on my "To Do" list (the first being the very reason this blog emerged from the quantum fog of imponderables: my decision to study music). I made arrangements to make a Spirit Quest to New York with my son to the Metropolitan Opera. To be more specific, we're going to the November 19th 2011 showing of Phillip Glass's opera Satyagraha, a lovely work honoring Mahatma Gandhi. I'll embed a music file you can listen to as I relate my tale.




My involvement with this work goes back almost thirty years. I first heard parts of it on NPR, and I knew I had to have it. The opera premiered in 1980, the year my son was born, and it seems to me I heard it around that time, but I could be mistaken. It was, after all, a while ago. Perhaps the broadcast I heard was the 1984 performance by the New York City Opera Orchestra and Chorus, which was released as a boxed record set. At that time there was a record store which carried Classical music and they had ordered albums for me in the past. I recall the manager's name was Andy, and once he had obtained for me the complete Khachaturian Gayne Ballet from Russia. You could not at that time purchase the complete Gayne anywhere but Russia because of Soviet proscriptions concerning the exportation of native music. I recall the boxed set of Gayne, which I still have, cost the outrageous sum of $30 (1980 dollars at that).

So Andy, known to me and my friend Donahue as The Insomniac for reasons too lengthy to go into here--but mainly because he had eyes like a lemur which never blinked and who spoke at a data rate rivaling DSL--obtained for me the boxed Satyagraha. I made a condensed jam tape of highlights on cassette tape for my car and it accompanied me in my journeys.

At that time I worked at the State Mental Hospital (I ain't making this up) while I was in school, and I worked with a chap named Mark who was fascinated by my unusual musical taste. I had introduced him to Frank Zappa, who Mark probably liked as much for the racy lyrics as the blistering guitar solos. So I brought my new acquisition to work with me to play on the turntable in our breakroom. Esther, who was a very funny redneck lady who weighed in at around 400 pounds, was horrified by the sounds issuing forth. "Jesus Lord Mary and Joseph," she declared, "That sounds like Communism." She delivered this verdict in a honeyed Southern drawl nuanced with smoker's rasp and conditioned with obesity-induced apnea. She goggled at me like I had lost my mind for listening to such cacophony, a look to which I had grown inured since age twelve and my initial infatuation with Wagner, as related on Page One of this self-indulgent spew.

Knoxville in the early 1980's was not ready for the music of a visionary like Phillip Glass. I suppose there was a cultural cadre of fops huddled together away from the drunken mobs of UT Football fans stumbling around like moonshine-fueled hyenas, listening to John Adams and Phillip Glass and possibly even John Cage and Henryk Gorecki, stroking their beards, nodding sagely, and muttering, "Hrmm....Indeed...." at perfectly appropriate intervals. If such an Underground Cabal existed, I had not as yet discovered the key to admission.

Anyway, I found the music beautiful, and my wife of that era found it maddening. Literally. She said it drove her insane. Satyagraha is a composition without brass of any kind, performed entirely by strings and woodwinds, with Glass's trademark repetitive compositional style; and this seems to irritate some people. My son grew up listening to Zappa, Wagner, Glass, Gregorian chants, my weirdo friends and I discussing philosophy and theology, me levitating off the ground and pulling my eye from my skull; not your normal East Tennessee upbringing. Eventually I overheard him listening to the very music he heard as a toddler. I had corrupted him. Sometimes I think in this society where "music" is Lady Ga-Ga, and grunts and profanity accompanied by electronic noise, it may not be doing your kids a favor instilling a love of good music. I know most of my life I have been partnered with lovers and spouses who didn't share my love of theater and music, and this isn't something I would bequeath my descendents. I envy people who can go to concerts and sit hand-in-hand with someone who shares their interest in the Great Masters. When I go to the Opera, I sit alone, or rather it's just me and the composer. But it's enough. Probably the only times in my life I'm truly happy is when performing before an audience who truly gets it, and when I'm listening or watching opera.

So New York is on my itinerary. I have bought the tickets, two seats behind the conductor, and booked the flight. So devious is my plan is that I bought tickets for the performance which will be broadcast in HD in theaters, so I can watch MYSELF watching the opera when it goes into encore presentation two weeks later. And the most beautiful part of this master plan is that when Satyagraha comes out on DVD my great moment will be captured forever. My son and I, in New York, looking out at the world, closing a cycle that began thirty years ago--or in my case, forty years ago with a two-dollar purchase of Das Rheingold purchased from a discount book store--saying, "Suck it Knoxville." And the Fops in their secret underground cabal will stroke their chins, nod and say, "Hmm.....INDEED."

Foppery

I wrote before about my development as a Fop, from early childhood to full-blown adult Fopdom. I was thinking about my childhood (always a dangerous activity) and I recalled an incident from around 1970, when I was in the fifth grade. My family was at the fair and I, being closest to the ground, saw a small coin purse. You know, one of those cloth bags that snap shut at the top. I soon discovered this bag held around $30 hard cash. Since there was no identification along with the money, and no way to find who dropped it, the boodle was mine.

You would think a ten year old kid with $30 1970 dollars would buy toys and other such idle fripperies. But not I--I wanted to go clothes shopping.

At the time there was a store called Atlantic Mills, where my mom loved to shop. So off we went, my new-found wealth in hand, to buy clothes. My mom made suggestions, but the final decision was mine. I bought shirts with loud, colorful patterns and a pair of red Converses. I have a copy of my school picture for the fifth grade and I'm staring down the camera with a firm gaze of cool contempt. I don't think anyone knew I was trying to look like the dignified, proud lords rendered by Howard Pyle in The Legend of King Arthur and His Knights. I'm bedecked in one of my acquisitions; a purple and white checkered shirt.

After coming to school for two solid weeks resplendent in a different new shirt each day, my fifth-grade teacher asked "Did you spend ALL that money on clothes?" Her tone of surprise communicated to me for the first time perhaps my actions weren't typical of a ten-year old kid. As for my classmates, they couldn't care less if I had upgraded my appearance; I was still weird and--believe it or not--only one of TWO chubby kids. Now times have changed. If you look at a typical Elementary School assembly, fat kids are in the majority.

My peers thought I was weird for a number of admittedly valid reasons. For one thing, I read books such as Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, tales of knighthood and chivalry, and other literature from a bygone era and a distant culture, and I imitated the speech of those noble characters. Furthermore, I had absolutely no interest in sports and this alone proved I was some fantastical, alien creature.

I still love buying clothes. In my day-to-day life I tend to dress casually, but my professional wardrobe is resplendent. I once pent $200 on a belt. I don't think my dad ever spent more than $2 for a belt, and he wore the same one for twenty years as far as I could tell. I can explain where this tendency for dandiness came from. Certainly not my environment. Past life? Who can say? All I can say is "Greetings and Felicitations, everyone."

Spreading Out

Today I'm puttering around the house thinking about how I would like to explore other musical instruments. I gave in to my constant yearning for a Theremin and finally bought one, which is amusing me greatly, and I've also always been fascinated with an Indian (that's East Indian, not Red Indian) keyboard instrument called a Harmonium. Here to the left is a picture of this cool device and a video that will knock your socks off:



Honestly I probably won't buy a Harmonium any time soon, though I may start hinting broadly about Christmas gifts in a wistful intonation. A good Harmonium can cost from $800- $1200, although cheaper models can be had for around $300. But the key word is cheaper. I would rather spend the extra money and have something decent, which won't explode the third time I try to play it. If I had possessed an iota of confidence my piano studies were anything other than a passing phase, I would have bought a really good piano, like the one I have now, rather than progressing in stages to better and better keyboards. As it turned out I've clung to music studies like a barnacle to a walrus, so everything worked out according to my mad vision.

While the Harmonium will have to remain in the realm of gleeful potential for the time being, on the other hand, another instrument which I recall fiddling with in my callow youth was an Ocarina. This is a more affordable and compact instrument with which I could play and not have it take up 3/4th of my living space. A company called Mountain Ocarina crafts several swell little models, so I picked up the C & G package for under $50.

With a surge of self-awareness which impressed even me, I realized what I'm doing is making up for my childhood. I'm doing things for myself my parents wouldn't or couldn't do: studying music in elementary school was something I wanted but my Mom was convinced it was another scam the schools cooked up to "get your money," so that was out. I used to invent instruments involving tin cans, rubber bands, twine, pipes, plastic detritus which probably killed large portions of my liver, various kitchen utensils and dangerous tools, you name it.

And one lesson which was woefully and prominently absent in my upbringing was self-discipline; or for that matter discipline of any variety. I saw my mom literally give up trying to hang a shelf from the wall. All you had to do was drive a couple of nails or screws, and attach the shelf, but mom would get mad and try to drive the screws in with a hammer, bend them over into twisted angles--and the shelf tilted so far forward anything place upon it eventually slid off--but mom shrugged and said it was good enough. Half-assing was a way of life with my family; if it wasn't easy it wasn't worth doing. Impulse control? Hah, say again?

I finally learned the hard way the family dynamic only delivered a frustrated, angry existence and if you wanted a better life with an iota of autonomy, you had to work for it. I buckled down in college after a while and became the first--and so far only--member of my family to earn not one but two college degrees. Why two? I guess I wanted to prove to myself the first time wasn't an accident.

The Eagle Has Landed, or; Frontal Lobotomy in the Key of E

My new piano, the Casio Celviano 240, is assembled and set up in the space the Casio Privia used to occupy. I've played with it--and on it--a bit but the effort of putting it together by myself sapped me a bit. The box weighed 137 pounds, and I had to help the UPS guy carry it off the truck and into my home. I am not exaggerating when I say the box was as large as a refrigerator, The UPS guy had a worried expression, bordering on panic, Like the expression a man get when he has to pass gas urgently, but isn't sure if it's actually gas or a bout of Montezuma's revenge. He seemed better when I offered to help him.

The CRATE sat on my floor for all of thirty minutes because while my old piano sat smugly against the wall, there was not an inch of room left to assemble this behemoth. Shortly, the chap who bought my Privia came over and handed me an impressive wad of cash, and left with my former love in his trunk. He's a serious musician, though, so the old keyboard is in good hands I think.

The directions say it requires two people to assemble the Celviano, but I accomplished it solo in less than an hour with my cat supervising. I plugged it in, turned it on, and for a moment was afraid to press a key--what if after all that, the keyboard didn't work? There are forces in this universe which seem to take a great glee in crushing the will to live clean out of my soul. However, it did work, and work beautifully.

One thing I immediately noticed was the keyboard of the piano is higher than my old one. I extended my bench to the highest level and it was still not to my familiar height. I did find, however, bringing the keyboard closer meant I could see it better. I can sit on a cushion if I need the height, but I think I'll try this way for a while.

The pictures on the internet do not do the Celviano justice. It is a lovely thing; the faux wood cabinet is rich and classy in appearance. The sound of the piano is terrific, especially through headphones or external speakers. The on-board speakers are pretty good, but do not quite have the clarity of what you hear through the headphones or a speaker system. However, they're still very good and produce a rich sound.

The "touch" of the keys, with their faux-ivory finish, is excellent. I think it will help bridge the gap between my home practice and the feel of my teacher's Steinway.

It also comes with a huge onboard music library the piano can play automatically, and --get this--a thick book of sheet music for the pieces in the library. How cool. I'm quite happy with it.

Gain and Loss

I must bid a sad farewell to my old friend Ford Kross, who passed away at age 73. He was one of a kind and will be missed.

In other news, I broke down and upgraded my piano. Here is my new one, which will arrive sometime within the next few days (unless UPS loses it--see my blog last year WHERE'S My PIANO?).

This is the Casio Celviano AP220. The keys are supposed to feel like those found on a grand piano, Have an ivory feel and are realistically weighted. Needless to say I'll post more once I tickle the ivories in person.

Middle Age Has Its High Points

I've been trying--and with some success--to organize my environment. The bottom line is I've been cleaning my office to prepare for some mass marketing and promotional blitzing. I've found some printed sheet music I forgot I had, and also found a raise in my spirits: I have dreaded the very sight of my office for months, but have lacked the oomph and vision to do anything about it. I'm feeling much better lately so girded my loins (and we all know how painful that can be) and tackled this Herculean task.

In order to free up time to sweeping up the dung accumulated over the past year or so in the Aegean Stable which I call my office, I've had to tear myself away from my piano for a little while. I find I use my piano as a panacea for whatever ails me. If I feel lonely, stressed or bored, there it is, and there's always something to work on. I love the very sight of it. Although sometimes my mind becomes too tired to absorb any more new keyboard lore, I can always tool around with the scales or other technical exercises to improve technique. I've begun doing the Hamon Number Two exercise again, and learning to play my scales in counterpoint,and other nifty tricks of piano wizardry. Sometimes I grow impatient with my slow progress, but I recall a year and a half ago I couldn't play anything nor read music at all, and now I can sort of play Joplin and other cool pieces, and each week shows incremental improvement. I can't really complain.

Yes I've wrung solace and comfort from the pianoforte, but I've also used that beast as a tool of procrastination. I've known for some time I've needed to clean of both my car and my office, in preparation to move to another level with my profession (which is performing Mind-reading and Hypnotism shows). But I haven't. I've practiced piano for hours instead.

Not that I regret the time put into the piano. I've turned some major corners in my life, mind and attitude by finally studying music, although I wish I had begun ten years ago--or twenty. Plus, in my defense, I'm still recovering from the Great Respiratory Collapse of 2010, and my allergist says even though I'm making strong progress, it usually takes a complete season for the allergy inoculations to really kick in. So on days with high allergen count, I feel like someone slipped me a Mickey and I ache all over. A high mold spore count can make me so drowsy I can barely stay awake enough to do the things I have to do, much less anything requiring extra effort.

I have begun an aerobics program. Three to four days a week I go to the gym and do the treadmill, work with weights, and swim. With all this going on, cleaning out my office seemed a low-priority task. But it wasn't; nor is it. It needs to be done. So I finally decided on a systematized approach. Each day I've performed some major act of cleanliness. I've reorganized the closet and cleaned off my desk, and have thrown out two large bags of trash. Tomorrow I tackle my workbench. There are several large items which will go out to the storage unit, and this will free up some much-needed space. I think I may have put this off too long as I think a family of feral animals has nested in the southeast corner; I heard menacing growls as I tunneled my way through the debris toward that quadrant of the room. Nor is that the worst area. I intend to engage a team of Shirpas before tacking the northwest corner.

I've become quite interested in the Webber composition Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera. I found a more embellished version than the one on which I'm currently working and I think I'll learn it as soon as I learn this simpler, original version, which is meant to be played along with a singer. I don't intend to sing it as I don't wish to cause miscarriages in any expectant mothers of any species, animal or human, within earshot.

In Opera news there are no new Met HD broadcasts until October, but the Summer Encore Series begins tomorrow with Madama Butterfly. I'll go see it even though I have the performance on DVD because on that big screen, with surround sound, man it's nice.

That's all for now. If you don't hear from me in a few days send in a search party. I didn't like the sound of those growls.

Scott Joplin and I Reach a Compromise

I put Joplin on the back burner for about a month while I worked on Cristofori's Dream and some training exercises. I didn't consciously admit it, but I was beginning to think I had bitten off more than I could chew. Primarily, I think, because this ongoing bout with respiratory problems has taken so much of my ooomph from me. I took January off from performing and have spent a lot of time resting, reading, practicing piano and doing not much of anything in particular but getting my allergy shots.

My teacher, however, had more faith in me than I had in myself. She nudged and nudged me to work on The Entertainer, which is a monster--the left-hand part is all over the place, and the right-hand part consists of octaves combined with an added third note--so I took it out while I continued to forge ahead with Cristofori. The hiatus allowed me to approach this daunting masterpiece with a fresh eye. I saw approaches to "connect" the parts of it together I hadn't noticed before, and it flowed better than it ever had. After a couple day's practice, I played the first phrase almost jauntily, and moved to the second phrase, which is actually much easier than the first. Soon I had it down, and the third phrase is just a reiteration of the opening phrase. The ending of the first verse is pretty easy--at least compared to what went before, so it was a matter of a couple of days to get it down.

So now I can play the entire first verse of THE ENTERTAINER; not very well, and with a lot of clunkiness, but I can play it, and now I believe I can actually learn it and learn to play it well enough with a lot of practice.

In other words, I had a breakthrough, a moment of realization where the walls collapsed and I broke through the other side. I know from experience if I beat my head against the wall it happens sooner or later. I was afraid with Joplin it might be much later, like two years from now. I think my skill levels increased while I was working away on Cristofori and some other exercises and my brain applied these skills to good old Joplin. Good thing too as I had reached a point where I was pretty much spinning my wheels; I had lost momentum.

Moving along in Alfred Year Two

I plugged along with the Cuban love song Guatanamara and have moved to the Theme from the Overture to the Opera Raymond by Ambroise Thomas. I haven't seen Raymond, but have seen his other opera Hamlet (yes adapted from the drama by Shakespeare by the same name) and loved it. It has terrific music and wonderfully dramatic scenes.

The Raymond theme is in A Minor, a key for which I have great fondness due to its melancholy tone. You could play Happy Birthday in A Minor and it would sound like a dirge. My preliminary tinklings sound dark and moody, befitting a transition into Autumn, when I'm sure my seasonal mood swing will kick in and my postings will take on a sombre and Gothic flavor.

This Year Two book has a lot of theory exercises in it and not as many pieces of music. Perhaps it's assumed you teach will roll up his or her sleeves and assign you extra work. Or, maybe, the pieces are longer and more difficult. However, the joke's on Alfred: the independent studies I'm doing on my own--Joplin and others--are much more difficult even than the pieces in the Year Two book. So far.

However, I'm sure Alfred has some surprises for me. He's a tricky old fellow.

I'm working on my scales diligently, and have pretty well learned C, D, G, and A Major. I've begun playing them in opposition; that is to say, left and right hands in different directions. These are the scales we've covered so far. If we continue to follow the Circle of Fifths (insert dramatic music here) the next scale will be E Major. Then B Major, which as I recall consists of mostly black keys. After that, F Major and that's it for the Major League. I get to start all over with the Minors, and the Flat-Majors, etc. You see, the study of the piano is infinite.

In other news I've added pedal to The Entertainer and polished it some more. It's starting to come together more and more. I may be ready to play it for someone in a couple more months. I took the beginning phrase from the original (advanced) version and tacked it onto the intemediate version I'm playing now. I also interjected segments from the original version, which is every bit as complicated as some piece by Chopin, into my intermediate transscription. My teacher pronounced this project very "ambitious." My idea is that over time, I'll transplant the original Joplin fingering into my simpler intermediate version until one day my Frankenstein version will be supplanted by the beautiful original in all its glory.

The "Conscience of the King" scene from Thomas' Hamlet:

More on Alfred and Bach

I've worked through two more Alfred pieces, a somber piece in A-Minor called Jericho and and one called Strangers, also in A-Minor. A-Minor is a a cool key in which to play, it has a somber, melancholy sound.

I'm also studiously memorizing the last half of the Minuet in G by Bach. I pretty much have the first half committed to memory, both right and left hand parts, and am working on dynamics now. Dynamics are things like staccato and legato. Staccato is when you hit the keys sharply to produce rat-ta-tat-ta-tat sounds, while legato is smoothly-connected, flowing notes, like a stringed instrument might play. There are also variations, such as accents, which means you play the indicated note or chord strongly, but not quite staccato. Also, the notation P means piano, which means play it softly, while f means forte--loudly. An ff is fortissimo--very loudly. Wagner used a lot of those. See, isn't this stuff cool?

My teacher strongly suggests I memorize each hand's part of the music before combining them, and sometimes I listen to her. I find with the Bach piece, this is essential. Now memorizing a melody is fairly easy--we all know how it sounds. But Bach composed in the Baroque style utilizing what is sometimes called a "figured bass," that is, an archaic style called Basso Continuo, so the bassline itself plays out its own melody of sorts. It's not just a series of chords and notes but a type of notation which is a whole 'nother story. Bach's basslines are full of little melodies, counterpoints and all kinds of things which you have to play for yourself to really catch. So imagine trying to play two melodies at the same time, one with each hand. It's really like that, I think. But terrific. There's no better way to get into a piece of music than to live with it in this manner. You delve into the mind and intentions of the composer.

You Senile Old Fool

I performed a show in Terre Haute last week, one of many the past month. For those of you who may be unaware of the cyclic nature of this wacky business, this is post-prom season, and as Show-business is often feast or famine, in the idiosyncratic slang of my Southern forebears, we get while the gettin's good.

The post-prom or "lock-in" was an ingenious idea someone came up with to literally save student lives. You see, it is traditional for students to hit the town after graduation ceremonies and party hearty. Unfortunately, many do not survive this experience. When I went to school in the 1970's we lost quite a few students to after-graduation accidents. Of those who do survive the celebration, a large percentage, their inhibitions and libidos unlocked by liquor, found themselves asking that timeless question, "What do you mean you're WHAT? How did that happen?"

So the concept of the post prom lock in is simple: You secure a venue, provide entertainment and activities for the kids, and lock them up all night. At 6 AM, you release them, presumably too exhausted to commit mayhem upon themselves or others. It seems to work.

The lovely benefit is that the organizers need student-friendly entertainment--me. This is one of my busiest times of year. Since they hold these events late at night, I usually perform at 2 AM, 4AM all kinds of ungodly hours, which means if I plan it well, I can do two or three shows a night. Over the course of 20 years, I've learned to plan it very well.

The problem is these days I'm fifty years old. So late hours, long drives, and weeks of repeated shows takes a toll. Which brings us back to tne Terre Haute show, as I was leaving for this show, i grabbed one of my two pairs of dress shoes. Wife and I keep our shoes in an amalgamated pile by the door. I have two pairs: one Armani, for performances, and one Geoffrey Beene, for lesser formal occasions. I grabbed the Armanis. I thought.

I arrived at the venue, unloaded, set up the show, and got dressed into my suit. I don't drive to a show in my suit as this causes wrinkles in both the suit and me, plus it's uncomfortable. This is when I noticed I had grabbed one each of the Armani and the Beene. The right shoe was Armani, but the left shoe was Beene. At least both shoes were black, and I had one for each foot (rather than say, two left feet) but the styles of the shoes were completely different --one pointy toed and the other round--and if you looked, you would notice.

What was a chap to do? I went on with the show--a two hour show--and hoped nobody noticed. The show went well and nobody said anything. But when details like this slips your mind, it's definitely time for a vacation.

Of course one thing about getting older I find very nice; you really don't care what other people think of you. A least not as much. I remember when I was younger thinking that old people must have no sense of self-awareness. They would dress oddly, say whatever popped into their minds, and had terrible taste in music, movies and literature. Now I know that if you live long enough, you witness horrors, and you eventually arrive at a point where you don't think the opinion of anyone younger matters, so you do whatever the hell you want to do; whatever it takes to overwrite the horror stories that go on in your head. If it's watching stupid movies, or making silly jokes, or collecting matchbook covers, or traveling around the country looking at the world's largest gumballs, so be it--the laughter of inexperienced youngsters fall on your rapidly-deteriorating ears. And the reason old folks laugh to themselves so much is because we know all you young smart alecs who are laughing at us will be hobbling around in our funny-looking shoes one day, wondering what the heck THOSE youngsters are laughing at. Go ahead and shake your cane at them and yell--you've earned it.

Tackling a Tough One

I thought I would pull this rambling narrative back on track and discuss my latest project. I'm doing very well with my lessons and absorbing the information rapidly. We've moved into deep territory in music theory and have so far put behind us Brahms' Lullaby and a Vienna Waltz or two. I don't play these perfectly, but understand I spend about a week on two to three pieces, absorb the lessons, and move on. I also play with pieces on my own which are usually a bit ahead of what we're studying. I am hungry for knowledge. I sometimes study at night until I fall asleep while still looking at sheet music. I've spent my entire life adoring music as an outsider, now I'm getting a taste of what it is to be on the inside.

I've attached the first sheet of my current "independent" project. I can actually play this entire first page--slowly, admittedly, and hands separately at this point--but this is a piece most people play after a year or so of practice. or so I'm told. Sometimes more. So I don't feel bad that it's taking me a little while to absorb it. I've just about begun my third month of practice. well, to be precise, I began taking lessons on January 18th. April 18th will be three months. It seems longer than that. Anyway, here it is:


This piece is in what is called "Split time" which means it's played twice as fast as indicated. In other words, 1/4 notes are really 1/8th notes, and 1/8th notes are played as 16/th notes. I thought this was cool.

Teacher advises me to work on things like rhythm and dynamics. These skills aren't in our lessons yet; not until Alfred Volume Two. Well the note and time signatures define rhythm but it isn't emphasized all that much. At this stage of the game the authors are happy if you can read the notes, play them for the correct length and remember the melodies. I've bought a metronome to aid my rhythm and timing.

I guess I need a challenge, something really hard to work on. The lessons in my book are good, they teach the information very well, but they don't stretch me. Since the age of 12 or so I wrestled with some of the most difficult sleight of hand in the literature of magic. I deliberately found the most difficult stuff, because I figured if I learned the difficult stuff, very few other magicians would be doing it. As it turned out, I was correct. I love struggling with difficult problems. There is a unbeatable sense of satisfaction when you finally crack it, when your brain gives in and surrenders to your will, and when all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

The difference is that I'm not as young as I used to be. After I cram my brain for an hour or two, I get sleepy. I find my afternoon nap indispensable after a tough day of mindwork. It turns out there's sound reasons for this. The brain has no stored energy of its own. It relies entirely on sugar--glucose--to function. So when you work your brain intensely, it burns through fuel rapidly. When you're learning new skills, you need a period of sleep to assimilate it, just as weightlifters need a period of rest to build new muscle after a strenuous workout. This is why long periods of practice are less productive than several periods of shorter duration.

This piece I'm working on is three pages long, I think it will take me at least a month to learn it all, maybe another month to play it well. I didn't include the title of the piece because I didn't want to step on copyright. But if you want to know what it is, it's easy to find out: just learn it and play it. You'll recognize it right off.

Moving out of Kindergarten

Up to now we've been working amongst the ivory expanse of the white keys only. Recently, we've moved to the black keys, the Sharps and Flats. Chords incorporating Sharps and Flats are very interesting as sometimes you must straddle those black keys, and I wonder how people with blunt, sausage-shaped fingers manage that. As a Fop, I have long tapered fingers, so it isn't a problem for me, but I've seen Bluesmen with fingers that look like those balloons from which clowns twist rubber animals. I wonder how they wedge those hamhocks in that half-inch space. They must have worked out their own methods.

I feel as if I've reached a crossroads. To me, this represents the first real step from kindergarten into actual piano playing. It's the difference, to me, between thinking about learning the piano, and being serious about learning to play the piano.

That's all I have to write about. I was looking at songs in some of the songbooks I bought and I thought "I could play some of these."

Happy Valentine's Day. I've spent some very nice time with Lady Wife and it's been a good day.

Boogiein'

After right at a month of formal music instruction I decided to attempt to learn the bass-line to one of my target pieces, a smoking-hot number called Bumble Boogie. Believe it or not, if you've never heard this, it's Rimsky-Korsakov's (he of the cool name) Flight of the Bumble Bee set against a boogie-Woogie backbeat. I found this clip of Liberace playing it, killing two birds with one stone, as he fits both the theme of this blog and makes a nice callback to my running obsession with Great Fops in History:



As you can see, it is a very cool piece of music, and somehow Liberace also somehow managed to conjure up a string quartet from thin air while his hands never leaves our sight.

So I worked out the bass line, as I said, but I play it very slowly. In fact, it sounds like a slow waltz more than a boogie-woogie. But I was very pleased I could interpret the music in the first place, much less convert it into finger-to-key movements. Speed will come with time. This is just something I intend to work on now and then anyway as my lessons progress. It's far more advanced than my current skill level. Do I imagine I'll be able to play it someday? Sure. I'm shooting for a year from now.

Harsh Taskmasters

As I attempt to shoehorn as much knowledge as I can into my calcified middle-aged brain in order to make up for decades of lost time, I've called upon a variety of learning aids. I read, and discarded, Piano for Dummies as an amusing but ultimately frivolous work. Oh there is some very good information, if you can set aside the author's attempts at humor, and the exercises are at least a half-step above the usual "Little Brown Jug" and "She'll be Comin' Around the Mountain" usually found in beginner's books, but you can tell it was written for people who probably don't intend to stick with the keyboard very tenaciously.

However, I found a suite of programs called KeyPiano (award-winning programs, no less) for $40 which promises to train you in speed sight-reading. It consists of a number of modules which train you to recognize notes, chords, intervals; to train your pitch, and all sorts of other skills. It races you against a clock to improve your time. It works. I've improved both my note-recognition and interval-recognition. It's also as addictive as a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or video game.

It is a no-nonsense tutor. When you get a correct answer, the word RIGHT! appears in bright, friendly green letters. But get an incorrect answer,and hoo-boy. The word WRONG! flashes in angry red. When I bought this program and sent my money through PayPal, the receipt was in German. Aha. The Germans always took their music training seriously. Ask Beethoven and Mozart. Those guys got their ears boxed if they gave wrong answers or missed a note. I guess I'm lucky a leather-gloved hand doesn't come out of my CD drive and give me one upside the head.

You have 150 seconds to beat a score of 300. On the first level, you earn 5 points for every note you identify. So you have to identify 60 notes in 150 seconds, which give you about 2.5 seconds to identify the note and hit the correct key on the simulated keyboard. The selection set includes both the treble and bass clefs as well as six notes above and below each clef. The notes appear at random on either clef. The same rules apply with the intervals drill.

I haven't tried the other modules of the program yet because I'm still getting my feet wet, but so far these two training tools have been a real help.

Memories

Beginning students of music are provided (by some teachers) with handy mnemonic aids to help them navigate the Grand Staff. Since the order of notes on the bars of the Treble Clef from the bottom to the top is EGBDF, the classic--if sexist--phrase to aid in remembrance is "Every Good Boy Does Fine." For the Bass Clef, in which the order from bottom to top is GBDFA, the phrase is "Good Boys Do Fine Always." We're left in the dark concerning the fate of Bad Boys, or speculations concerning the perambulations of Bad Girls, whose escapades always intrigued me more anyway.

By the way, the mnemonic for the spaces on the Treble clef is "FACE" (pretty self-explanatory) and for the bass clef it's "All Cows Eat Grass." There. Now you're a musician.

But Alfred, my mentor, from whose course my teacher is grooming me, apparently doesn't place much stock in mnemonics. There isn't a single memory aid to be found in his entire training manual. I think I've discovered why. These handy tricks are nifty when you first start out, but when you sit at the keyboard, looking at the printed music, there's just too much to do. You're trying to match the note to the key, count from the bottom line of the Clef as you recite your mantra about how Good Boys are doing, wondering if they're all right, have warm socks, why they never write home, if they fell under the evil influence of Bad Girls, and all this combined mental activity--especially if you're middle-aged and your poor brain isn't as soft and moist as a twelve-year-old's--your mind WILL go into vapor lock.

In classical training methods--and as friend Alfred seems to prefer-- you build up your recognition note by note. Which really seems to burn them in. So I think the "Good Boys" system may be counterproductive to quick and intuitive sight-reading. I think the classical training methods may have a great deal of merit to them. However, these mnemonics are handy tools if you find yourself lost amid the terra incognito of the Grand Staff and need a quick reference point as long as you don't come to rely on them. They slow you down. Ideally, you should see a note and immediately know what it is and your fingers should play it even before your brain says, for example, "C" or "B-Flat." Just as when you read words you don't spell out each individual letter, unless you're my cousin Lumpy from East Tennessee, and the less said about him the better.

When you move from the comfort zone of the neatly-delineated five bars and four spaces into the stratosphere and underground areas, these mnemonics need augmentation anyway, so they're merely starting points. Many helpful authors have added additional memory aids, which in my experience only serve to confuse the issue. There are PATTERNS, though, and patterns are a different story altogether. Once you learn to spot the patterns and everything begins to fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle, lights begin firing and the learning curve accelerates.

This is how it is with mathematics, too. At first it's gobbledegook, a few pieces fall into place, then the whole thing comes together, and before you know it you're calculating the area of a nebula. But there are no real shortcuts to deep and enduring understanding of a thing. Understanding takes time, and unfortunately we live in a society that's fast forgetting how to slow down and listen. We want everything now.

Fortunately the nice thing about studying music is that you're rewarded with instant gratification. You get to make noise. If you get it right, it sounds sweet. If not, you try again.