Still Learning Piano

I am still practicing piano and taking weekly lessons. I am progressing with my playing skill, but I'm not satisfied at the rate of that progress. My goals are still pretty much the same: (1) to able to play melodies from memory as I have heard them and (2) seamlessly read and play music from the printed page. I think the main thing holding me back is that I don't put in enough time practicing, pure and simple. But I'm still plugging along, nevertheless.

One thing that I'm having a little fun with regarding music is the study of keys and chords. The chromatic scale consists of 12 notes, so a decimal system of modeling simply doesn't work. Neither does the traditional, convoluted "A through G" system of notation, with its flats and sharps. To me, it makes more sense to start with a "base 12" system and go from there. And that's not really such a difficult thing to do: we all are pretty comfortable with base 12, seeing that our clocks are based on it! As a matter of fact, to aid me in understand various chords, I am imagining them as combinations of numbers on a clock face, and then remember them by their shapes. Works for me, at least.

For the individual notes, I have assigned each a number:

0/12: C
1: C sharp/ D flat
2: D
3: D sharp/ E flat
4: E
5: F
6: F sharp/ G flat
7: G
8: G sharp/ A flat
9: A
10: A sharp/B flat
11: B

I realize that I still must deal with musical notation in the form that it is written, but it sometimes helps me to understand things better using this alternative system.

My Piano Update: 9/6

Unfortunately, I've let other things get in the way of simply taking a few minutes each day to practice my piano. There have been lessons missed due to holidays and injury (I cut one of my fingers badly a few days ago, though it's now nicely healed). Like so many things in life, it's all down to getting oneself into the habit of just doing it. So all of those great, ambitious ideas I laid out last time about devoting time to music theory and playing from memory came to naught. But that's why I am doing these updates: I can't keep writing disappointing articles like this. I know what my goals are about piano. But it may be necessary to set some more "public accountability" goals to rivet my attention to practicing properly. And by that I mean doing public performances. After all, last February's recital did make me practice more. Anyway, it's something to look into if I can't get my act together in front of the keyboard.

My Piano Update: 7/26

As I sit here pondering on the level of progress I’ve made with my piano studies, I naturally have some positive and negative insights. On the positive side, I find that I am, at least gradually, becoming more comfortable playing while reading the printed music. In doing so, I am beginning to look ahead on the page while I play to see how to reposition my fingering for upcoming notes. I also seem to have better concentration and results when performing during my weekly class time with my piano teacher. But there are also many areas that I need to work on to meet my own standards as to where I want to be with piano. For one, I want to master playing (while reading the music) in ANY key, not just with C, G, F, D, and A (major keys, along with their corresponding minors) as I do so far. Also, I am simply not putting in anything close to the hands-on practice time I need in order to come to regard the keyboard as “second nature”. Third, I have done very little in the area of “playing from memory”, where I could tap into the vast treasure of musical memories I have and adapt them to piano. I want to adopt a policy of learning pieces by heart so that, when presented with future opportunities to play for others, I’ll have a repertoire to draw upon. And, as piano teacher Dan Starr has suggested on his blog, I need to learn to feel more comfortable looking down at the keyboard as little as possible during my playing. Finally, I need to practice playing faster and more boldly if I ever want to be able to play at a level that people want to listen to.

I’ve seen, by laying out more of a structured schedule for my running a week ago and then publishing it, that I actually adhered to it faithfully. So I’m going to do the same with piano practice and see what happens. Except that my piano study is a seven-day per week process! On Mondays, the day of my piano class, I will devote my homework to studying theory and deepening my knowledge of musical notation, keys, and chords. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays I will devote to practicing and memorizing my class assignments. And on Wednesdays and Fridays I will “struggle” to painstakingly generate melodies on the keyboard from my mental song archives. Should be challenging and fun!