Saturday 26th July 2008

I had quite a good day yesterday. I'm now running through the three pieces slowly but fairly fluently. Last night I made an attempt at working through the simple arrangement of Vivaldi's Autumn from the Four Seasons. I was playing through slowly without metronome. This piece is a little more challenging as it involves reading and playing more chordal material than the other three pieces. I managed to work through the whole piece a few times in one sitting though which is a sure sign of progress - last Tuesday it took me all evening to work through the first few bars of Duncombe's Gavot, a much easier piece.

Today

I started my early morning practice by working through exercises 1 - 5 in the ABRSM sight reading book. I was pleasantly surprised by my ability here!

I ran through all the scales I have covered so far. If I stumbled I would play that particular scale over and over. I repeated this process with the arpeggios.

Gavot is now coming along nicely and I am gradually working up the metronome. Today I managed 60 bpm then 62, 66, 69, 72

Song of Erin is up to speed now but I'm trying to improve my dynamic control and also trying to nail the left hand note durations.

Trudging is also much better than yesterday and sounds reasonably fluent at 50 bpm

Long term I need to stop looking down at my hands so much and work on challenging sections of each piece in isolation rather than just running the pieces through.

Friday 25th July

I seem to have settled into a nice little practice routine while I am off work for the Summer. I have been getting up fairly early and doing about an hour and a half of practice before breakfast - this is where most of the "real work" is getting done. I'll then come back to the keyboard several times through the day and do another few (shorter) blocks of practice.

Last night I couldn't sleep so I got up and spent about an hour from midnight starting onto my third piece - Aprad Balazs' "Trudging."

I found this piece a little trickier to get to grips with because it has lots of double-stops (not sure if that is correct terminology in piano-land) in the right hand and also has a number of accidentals and changes left hand position a few times. I just about got through the thing last night.

This morning I got started with the Balazs piece and worked it up to a modest crotchet = 50
I ran through the Dunhill's A Song of Erin, working up from crotchet = 60 to full speed (120)
I ran through the Duncombe Gavot going from crotchet = 30 up to crotchet = 60

I'm really pleased with my progress so far but I am definately starting to memorise the pieces rather than reading them. For this reason I think it will be worthwhile to learn all of the Grade One pieces rather than just the three needed for an exam. The more new pieces I work through the more reading I will have to do. I am tempted to get a copy of the Grade Two book but I don't want to rush things too much. Although I have come a long way in four days I have been going very slowly and deliberately. I really need to get myself a lesson booked too to make sure I'm not spending hours practising incorrect techniques and suchlike.

I'm in need of a break so I'm going to hit the tennis courts with my friend Andy - check out his blog at http://jazz-research.blogspot.com/

Thursday 24th July

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday working on the Duncombe Gavot. It is getting better but it takes a while to get back into it each time I start playing.

For a bit of variety I also started working through Thomas Dunhill's "A Song of Erin" which seemed a little easier (at first glance anyway.)

This morning I was up early again and hit the keyboard with a mug of tea and my p-jays on.

Scales - About 30 minutes:

D major - lots of repetitions. Despite knowing the notes I still find the correct fingerings a bit of a challenge. I eventually managed to play the RH version and the two LH versions eight times each at crotchet = 60

I ran through C and G majors doing 4 reps of each version.

Arpeggios:

C, G and F majors RH and LH versions at crotchet =46

Duncombe Gavot

When I first tried to play this (at a very slow crotchet = 40) I failed miserably!
I decided to slow things down even more so I set the metronome to quaver = 60.
This really worked well. I can play the piece in its entirity with most fingerings and notes correct. Occasional errors here and there but dotted around - I don't always stumble at the same points. I hope I will be able to work this up to speed gradually.

A Song of Erin

I started playing this at half speed - crotchet = 60
I like playing this piece. I find it quite restful and although the notes look easy there is quite a bit of subtlety involoved. I have to pay attention to note lengths, my natural instinct is to hold some of the left hand notes down for too long. Fingering is also an issue though to a lesser extent than in the Gavot. I'm also keen to make the most of the dynamics. I actually worked this piece up to crotchet = 100 so I'm pretty pleased.

General Stuff

I'm really pleased I have started down the piano path. I felt really relaxed yesterday after a few hours practice - a feeling that I seldom get after drum practice. With drumming I have been practising so much and for so long that there is a greater sense of "work" about it. With piano I am much happier to play really slowly and allow things to happen at their own pace. I seem to breathe more deeply too. I felt really relaxed yesterday for the first time in a long time (but thats another very long and involved story.) I went for a three hour walk along the beach in the afternoon, stopping for an Ice cream and (a couple of hours later) a pint of Deuchars in the sun :) ...Happy Days.

Day Two

Woke up early and decided to get some work done first thing.

Ran through the C Major scales (Right and Left hand versions)
I played each one eight times at crotchet = 60
I then did the same with G major.
C and G Major arpeggios eight times. Dotted crotchet = 46

In future practice sessions I may start with a new scale/arpeggio before running through the ones I have already covered.

I spent about an hour getting stuck into the Duncombe Gavotte and feel like I'm actually getting somewhere now. I can just about get through the piece at crotchet = 40... It is meant to be at 100!

I need to try and get into the habit of looking at the music and reading it rather than memorising the thing and staring at my hands.

As an experiment I tried playing the piece with the two hands seperately. I was surprised to discover that I can do this up to the marked tempo whilst reading. I find it trickier to get the correct fingerings when using both hands together - even at ultra slow speed.

In a moment of rest I discovered that the NP 30 has a halfway decent Fender Rhodes type sound - even the ugly sound when you really lay into it. Spent about two minutes pretending to be Chick Corea and then got back to work.

First practice session

Along with the keyboard I bought three books:

ABRSM Grade 1 Piano Pieces
ABRSM Grade 1 Piano Scales & Broken Chords
ABRSM Grade 1 Piano Specimen Sight Reading Tests

Having set up my keyboard and played with sounds for a few seconds I started to start at the very beginning - C Major scale over two octaves, hands seperately. Right hand was fine and already up to speed (a moderate 60bpm) My left hand... I need to work on! I need to internalise the fingering and develop more control. At the moment there is too much variation in dynamic level when moving from one note to the next.

Having warmed up I started working on the first few bars of William Duncombe's Gavot. Reading the notes is fine, playing the notes is almost fine but I really need to focus on maintaining "correct" fingering so I don't tie myself in knots or worse still run out of fingers in the middle of a phrase. Hopefully this will work itself out.

I've done fifteen minutes and had a little rest - I'm heading back to it now!

In the beginning...

Today I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a Yamaha NP-3o "Portable Grand" Digital Keyboard. As a child I was always fascinated with music. The following years saw me move from home-made instruments through to cheap keyboards, guitars, guitar lessons, drum lessons, music lessons, music exams, drum exams, orchestras, bands, music college, more bands, more exams, gigs... many many gigs, drum teaching, yet more bands and then... I turned thirty.
Having become increasingly interested in harmony and composition/arranging I decided I really needed to address my (alarmingly poor) piano/keyboard skills. After a bit of procrastination I finally handed over my bank card and left the shop with my new toy.