Random music updates

1) I got an A on my first test last week, although I missed a few points on the transcription (where you listen and then write down the notes that are being played.) I can do this really easily, if you give me a piano that I can play on to match it to. Calling up notes out of my head? Not so much. To be fair, the teacher gave us the starting note. I feel sorry for the drummers in my class.

2) My piano teacher is great, even though the final verdict is that I must relearn my scales. Started work on some new Debussy, The Sunken Cathedral. I’ve played around with the piece before years ago, but never formally learned it (does that make sense?). It is fantastically beautiful.

3) I had to sight sing in front of class today (everyone did). Good times. Like I said, I feel sorry for the drummers.

4) I decided to play for one of the children’s choirs at my church (we go to a huge church, it has at least 5 different choirs for kids alone). Last night was the first rehearsal, and while they advertised that “all abilities welcome!” in their recruiting, I was very glad that I had done choral accompaniment before. It was much more intense than I expected for a children’s choir (the director asked me to play through some of their songs, nevermind that I was sightreading and this was definitely not “Jesus Loves Me”). I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed because of all the new music thrown at me, but it will get better, I’m sure.

And that’s about it. I’m beat. Is it Friday yet?

Just when you think

your kid isn’t paying attention…

Today, the dutchkid sat down at the piano, with “music” she had written herself. She had already illegally scribbled on some sheet music of mine, so I figured that was what inspired the composing. But then as I was listening to her random song from the kitchen, I heard the telltale beep of the metronome! Monkey see, monkey do. In my family, music was a big part of growing up. Someone was always playing something. I used to worry that the dutchkid wouldn’t have that exposure to music. It may not be the variety of music I heard as a kid, but guess I can cross that worry off my list!

In other music news, I met my piano teacher yesterday for my first lesson. It went pretty well. I managed to play my prelude and fugue for her without any major memory lapses even though I was nervous as all get out. She was very encouraging and I think we’ll get along great…although she’s contemplating making me relearn all my scale fingerings (groan) because my old teacher had me learn them with his own system. The curse of switching teachers, I guess. Now I’m glad I’ve been neglecting them all summer.

bawk bawk bawk

As of today, I only have two piano lessons left with my current teacher. It’s really starting to freak me out.

I have been playing pretty well. I’m still doing remedial work on my scales but that’s just grunt work really. I have the Prelude and Fugue memorized (finally!) and of course Clair de lune. The school I’m thinking about auditioning for only requires two contrasting selections of my choice… so really I could do it. My teacher’s philosophy is that I should continue to work on memorizing my Haydn sonata and the Chopin etude and then give them the option of what they would like to hear. He thought that their requirements sounded very easy, that normally for the university here you must play something from each time period and they’re quite specific (ie you must play a Prelude and Fugue by Bach).

I honestly feel sort of torn. I mean, I love music and I want to study it, but I don’t want it to come at too much of an expense in terms of time with my young daughter. (I want to have my cake and eat it too). I’m wondering if I wait until say, December, if my pieces will have deteriorated without a teacher. I’m thinking of auditioning and then going on to be a very part time student, if they allow that. In the meantime, I’m getting ready to move and now there seems to be conflicting info on when exactly dh will be deploying. The military definitely throws a monkey wrench into planning things like this… I don’t even know if we’ll be there long enough for me to finish a degree.

I’m wondering if I am about to bite off more than I can chew. Mostly though, I’m feeling chicken-like and indecisive. It’s a whole lot easier for me to just let life get busy and not think about it for awhile rather than staying focused and really going through with it. Blah.

The Lost Weekend

It was a very rainy, lazy weekend around here. My dh was in class again this past weekend (yet another thing I will not miss when we leave here) so the dutchkid and I were left to our own devices. I think we were in our pajamas for the majority of the weekend. We didn’t even go to church yesterday, and for no good reason other than mama laziness.

I should have spent more time at the piano. I am in somewhat of a slump in that regard. The thrill of my new pieces is gone, and we are down to the nuts and bolts of memorization again. The Bach prelude is done with the fugue in progress. And now I’m working on scales, I never really did learn the harmonic minor ones, which my teacher has set about to remedy. Even worse, I will likely have to play them at an audition… that makes me feel like chickening out right there.

This morning was spent finishing up a sewing project (more on that later) and going to the commissary. Wherein my child saw fit to spill coffee beans all over the aisle, have a gigantic meltdown and then the deli lady scolded me for taking my child to the commissary when she needs a nap. What they say is true, the threes are definitely harder than the twos.

It’s a Monday, what can I say?

Oh, it’s deceptive alright.

I’m working on some new pieces. I now have a Haydn sonata (concentrating on the first movement) and a Nouvelle Etude by Chopin. Mind you, I still don’t have the other pieces mastered, I think my teacher’s theory is that if he introduces me to the concepts within this new music I can then continue on my own until I find a new teacher when we move. Either that or he’s trying to see how much music he can bury me under before I crack. (It might be because he is pushing for me to get in contact with whichever school of music I choose and see about scheduling an audition this summer… which is not going to happen. I don’t feel ready yet).

What I’m learning is not about being able to play the notes, it’s about interpretation, voicing and my new nemesis: deceptive legato. I first ran into it a little bit with the Beethoven variations. To try to put in a nutshell, it is using fingering in such a way that the melody line is connected (ie legato), without using the pedal. That’s easy, when you only have to play a single note melody with one hand, but doing that within your hand while playing 3 other notes doing unrelated things? Maddening. It feels like you’re playing with your hands stuck in cement.

At this point I am completely unappreciative of the genius of composers who wrote music like that. Even if Chopin was still a teenager when he composed many of the etudes. I will only begrudgingly give him that it is pretty. What on earth does he have against the pedal for heaven’s sake? My teacher says that using too much pedal in this situation is like using a sledgehammer where a light tap would do.

He obviously doesn’t know me at all. I am a sledgehammer kind of girl.  Sigh.  If only I had 5 hours a day to practice.

Note to self for future reference:

Clair de Lune (memorized, fine tuning)
Bach Prelude and Fugue (playable, memorization of Prelude started)
Haydn Sonata (started 1/29: 1st mvmt playable, 2nd in progress, 3rd sight read)
Nouvelle Etude (ARGH started 2/12)
Beethoven variations (all playable, working mainly on 6th – finger pedaling)
Consolation (playable, on the backburner)
Raindrop Prelude (playable, on the backburner)

Glorious hope.

Yesterday, I sat down at the piano and played Clair de Lune from start to finish without music. As I was looking back through old posts to figure out how long it has taken me, I was amazed to find it has only been a little over 2 months. That may not seem like a great victory to a professional musician, but I felt on top of the world. I have never been able to memorize like this before. It wouldn’t have even taken me that long if it weren’t for the holidays (we spent several weeks traveling and I was too busy to seriously practice). What a difference a great teacher can make. I still have much work to do to perfect it… I have some voicing issues to work out, but I never thought I would be this far.

The Bach and Beethoven variations are coming along nicely, although I have not begun to memorize either piece yet. I find myself daring to dream that maybe, just maybe, I might be ready to audition in the next year.

Tuna Girl wrote recently about her “Mondo Beyondo” list… a list of things you would like to accomplish that are so outrageous you can barely bring yourself to write them down. Auditioning would probably be at the top of my list.

But there are lots of unknowns. I don’t know where Uncle Sam is moving us yet. I don’t know if there will be a nearby college with a music program, much less if I could make it through the audition process. I don’t know if we can afford it. I don’t know if this is the right choice for my family at this moment in time… the dutchkid is several years away from being in school full time.

There are a lot of ifs ands and buts. But I have hope.

2.5 pages

I have memorized 2.5 pages of Clair de Lune, which only leaves me 3.5 to go. That sounds daunting now that I read it and it has taken me nearly a month. But the 2.5 I have done is the difficult middle part, so I’m hoping the rest will be cake (ha). As cake as memorizing with permanent mommy brain can be, I swear to you that having the dutchkid has eaten up copious braincells.

The memorization is definitely working for me, however. I can see flashes where my playing is better than it ever has been before. It’s encouraging, and definitely motivating. Which is good because my teacher’s method is time consuming and pretty much the antithesis of how I normally operate at the piano.

Breaking the music into small sections (often just a phrase, or a line of music), I then have to look at the chord structure or melody line and find a way to remember its specifics. Sort of like the good old ROYGBIV for the sequence of colors. This is difficult for me because I have a good ear and good tactile memory so in the past I have cheated my way through. It’s even harder because he insists that you work in a backwards sequence. So for example within my difficult section I start at the last 4-5 measures, play those, then go the section previous to it and play those measures, etc.

It’s a pain in the butt, but by golly it works. He likes to remind me that tactile memory and your ear can fail you when you are under stress, on a different piano, in front of people. I know he’s right because that’s why my performances in the past have been so dismal. Even WITH music.

I just hope my brain has enough space left to memorize everything.  He gave me some new Beethoven variations that I know will probably be next (he claims I need to be more well rounded).  This whole process has given me an entirely new respect for concert musicians.  I would be old and decrepit by the time I had something like a concerto memorized.

Fugue state

My piano lesson today went well, and I have decided I really like the Bach Prelude and Fugue I’m playing (B flat major, WTC I). The Fugue scared me at first, but now I sort of like it. It’s like being able to sing all the parts within a choir simultaneously. For a former choral geek like myself, that is an amazing realization. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me with the inventions? I especially like it since my teacher has convinced me that I really do need to memorize the Debussy. It makes playing Bach with music quite appealing.

My teacher and I also got into a very in depth discussion on the process of memorization, and I was very very late in picking the dutchkid up from preschool. Which besides making me feel like a bad mama, is also expensive since they charge you $1 for every minute you are late (ouch).

Bach on track

(Forgive me for that horrible pun. It’s a sickness. I can’t help myself)

Today marks about a month now that I’ve been taking lessons. While I wish I could write that I have had complete relief from my tendinitis and have a magical cure, alas that isn’t the case. What is encouraging is that this past week has been as pain free as I have been since this journey began.

I have continued to work on all of the pieces I mentioned before, plus now my teacher has added a Bach Prelude and Fugue to my plate. It has been very difficult to keep from plunging in and practicing every second I have a chance, but I still have to be quite careful about how I play. I have played the piano for so much of my life, it’s hard not to just sit down play as I always have without thinking. But because the pain is lessening to the point where I am pain free most days (and it seems to move around, from hands to wrists to arms) I think I am on the right track as far as changes.

The change that made the biggest difference? The smallest and easiest one: changing the height of my bench (or in my case, switching from using my bench to a chair). I also started reading What Every Pianist Needs To Know About The Body which has some interesting ways to think about the alignment and balance of your body. Much of it my teacher has suggested already, but at this point I figure it can’t hurt to add something else to my tendinitis prevention tools. It was also strangely encouraging to read that famous pianists like Rachmaninoff and Schnabel suffered as well (not that I can play anywhere near that level).

So I will keep on keeping on. Maybe my dream hasn’t died quite yet. My teacher gave me the Bach because it would make a good audition piece.

Worrisome

I woke up yesterday morning with some strange numbness in my fingers, and although they weren’t swollen it felt like they were.  As the day went on it advanced to discomfort, and by the evening I could tell that it was probably a tendinitis issue.

I could’ve cried.  And when it hadn’t magically disappeared this morning, I did.   The only thing that has changed in my life recently is the piano lessons.  I have so been looking forward to this.  I’ve never had trouble playing before, and so I’m thinking that it is the combination of the time I spend on the laptop and suddenly upping my hours of practice (from maybe an hour a week to an hour a day).  I had my second lesson today and it was so discouraging to not only have barely scratched the surface of the pieces, but then have to tell my teacher that something is going on mechanically.

He was very reassuring and I think that we did identify some of my problem areas, technique wise.  I know I haven’t done any permanent damage, but I dread the upcoming work of trying to change how I play.  And from now on I will always worry about injury rearing it’s ugly head.   In my making-mountains-out-of-molehills mind, I saw my dream of seriously studying music circling the drain.  If I can’t handle the amount of playing I’m doing now, how on earth can I take on music classes full time?

We don’t have lessons next week, so I’m taking a few days to not play at all and try to recover a bit.  That’s hard too because I love the pieces I’m working on.  I realized that I forgot to say what they were, so in case you’re curious (Tressa!) here they are:

Clair de Lune (Debussy) I’ve worked on this piece before, but never had it truly in performable shape.

Consolation No. 3 (Liszt) So very pretty, although the accidentals as well as some rhythm stuff make me nuts

Raindrop Prelude D flat Major Op. 28 No. 15 (Chopin) I think this one is currently my front runner for favorite.  I love Chopin.