Down with mazurkas and waltzes

I think that any composer that makes your uncoordinated left hand leap across the keyboard from a open octave position to a scrunched together chord position should be punished. I'm accompanying Michael for his Grade 3 violin exam. Two of the pieces are fine; one is a mazurka. Grrr. Next time I am asked to accompany I will first ask "is he playing a mazurka?" and then answer accordingly! Oh well, I suppose it is good practice for me.

Always waiting for the "click"

It always amazes me that you can stumble and stumble and stumble, practice after practice, and then all of a sudden things click into place. I guess my mind finally reaches a point at which it can concentrate on 2 lines of music, 2 sets of fingering notation, hand coordination and even dynamics all at one time. My Bach Prelude was nearly flawless this evening (slow, but flawless) after weeks of grrrrrr. Very satisfying indeed. Now to speed it up...

Christmas music time is here

Those who work in retail may cringe at today's topic (trust me, I've been there) but I am so happy to be playing Christmas music again. Brian puts a ban on anything Christmas until December, so for my own peace of mind I just play it when he isn't home. I had such a headache when I started piano practice today but by the time I got through Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Joy to the World and O Come all ye Faithful, my headache had just about disappeared. I don't like most of the Christmas pop songs, like Santa Baby and Blue Christmas etc., but I love the carols. On Christmas Eve we usually get together at Sally's; Clare and I trade off on piano duty while we all sing carols. I'm already looking forward to it! I'm also learning 2 pieces from Charlie Brown Christmas. It's all good!

Online journal

There is a journal for piano teachers called Keyboard Companion and some of its articles are freely available online. I discovered it last month and the articles are very interesting. The current editorial is about motivation and piano practice. The editor, Pete Jutras, says "ultimately, I loved the sound of some pieces so much that I would work for hours, weeks, and even months to teach my fingers how to recreate these sounds." He talks about giving students exercises that will let them experience the sound of a piece even when it is too difficult to learn all at once. This article resonated with me because I think it sums up the reason I play too quickly when I've just started a piece; many things just don't sound right at a slower tempo (except Bach, which always sounds good)! Also, it explains why I hated practicing scales; I am not one of those people who enjoys the sound of a scale, although I didn't mind the contrary motion scale exercise.

New music bliss

I have "finished" one Nocturne so Peter got me started on another one, in C#minor. I am very happy with it; I could play it all day long. It seems to suit November somehow. It is quite a contrast to the piece I'm learning in the Connections book which is a jazz waltz! With the accompanying band, I feel like I should be on a cruise ship! I also find myself singing it on the way to work, walking upstairs, while cooking supper... at least it is cheery, so perhaps it improves my mood!

Ensemble work (and shopping!)

Yesterday I went shopping with Helen and Sally so that Sally could buy herself a full-size violin. It was fun listening to her play different instruments within her price range and helping her to pick the one that sounded best. I think she bought a beautiful violin (and bow and case... sorry about your bank account Sally!). We then went to Music Plus and they picked up some new music. After that we came back to my house and played together. Helen and I had our first shaky run-through of the Pink Panther (we're really good at the opening page!) and Sally and I played through Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. We also did some sight reading of Ashoran Farewell (violin and piano) and of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus (saxophone and piano). Sally also picked up a collection of classical pieces for violin and piano but she will have to let me know which ones she likes because they are beyond my sight reading ability. The collection has a version of the Chopin that I've just memorized, but in a different key! A very fun day.

Weekend practice

I find it difficult to practice on the weekend but I made myself sit down at the piano after watching Skate Canada and I actually had a really good practice. Perhaps I was inspired by those hard-working skaters. Peter listened to my Chopin again on Friday (played from memory) and he said I need to be careful because my left hand isn't very accurate. I'm determined to fix the problem and so spent a lot of time just going over the left hand part. The part is generally a base note and then 2 chords (usually 2 patterns per bar) and Peter says I falter on the 2nd chord quite often. He suggested playing it through using the right hand for the second chord. This forces you to actually read the notes rather than relying on physical memory of where your hand is positioned. I played it through once that way and then just left hand alone. I think it is sounding better. I'm not very good at repetition, I get bored very quickly, but sometimes it needs to be done!

Tangled up

Some days my fingers just don't work. I wonder if it is better to keep on practicing even though it sounds awful and sloppy or if on days like that you should just stop before you make things worse! Today I decided to stop; I guess it just isn't a Schubert day. I did manage to practice some other pieces before my fingers became too stubborn. Maybe a bad practice today will mean a good lesson tomorrow (because good practices sometimes have resulted in terrible playing at my lessons!).

Who is your favourite composer?

In general if asked "who is your favourite composer" I would answer: Beethoven or Chopin. Then I start playing a Bach prelude and I think that Bach just trumps them all. Nothing makes me happier than playing some Bach. There's just something about it. Those harmonies and constant movement. Of course, the tricky fingering makes me curse. The beauty of Bach though is you can play it at an excruciatingly slow tempo and it is still musical!

Playing along and blocking things out!

I've been playing along with the downloaded files that come with the Connections series. The practice tempo is still a bit fast for me, so I have to scramble, but it is a lot of fun. The blues piece is especially fun with the band music in the background. Playing along really keeps you on your toes because you don't have time to stop and figure out your notes; you need to keep the rhythm and just keep going. I wish this type of thing had been available the first time 'round!
I'm also trying to learn Tiny Dancer by Elton John. The trouble there is I actually have to block some of the music out of my head. When you've been listening to a song for years, you can hear all of the band parts in your head and I just want to concentrate on the piano part so that I don't go crazy. Even with the music in front of me I have trouble because I want to play everything that I'm hearing in my head. As long as I get that signature rhythm/melody then I'll be alright. Just takes some practice!
To counter all of this "modern" music I thought I would also start learning a Bach prelude. I'll check with Peter tomorrow to see if it is feasible or will simply be frustrating!

Catching up

I've decided that the trouble with blogging is I don't compose at the computer. I blog in my head while drying my hair, brushing my teeth, walking to work... times when you can't even jot down your blog for later posting. Oh well, will try to remember what I was thinking about while washing my hair.
Although I find myself somewhat rhythmically challenged at the piano, I finally have Pink Panther success (minus a few wrong notes from time to time). I should have played a stage band instrument in high school. We'll see what happens when I put my part together with Helen's saxophone part. I like accompanying, but I haven't done it in a very long time!
Rhythm is one of the things that I am working on this year. Frederick Harris Music has published a set of graded piano books called "Connections for piano." They are composed by Christopher Norton and although they have all of the technical requirements of the classical pieces, they are written as swing, bossa nova, blues, etc. You can also buy an activity book which points out interesting things about each piece and a recording so that you can play along with a band. Last week I learned "Fantasy Bossa" and this week it is "Nefertiti Blues."
Sally has purchased some more violin/piano music and I've started on Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring (I'm noticing that sometimes I put titles in quotes and sometimes not. Hmmmm). It isn't very difficult but the arrangement is different than the one in my Christmas book so I have to pay attention. She also bought some Vivaldi but that may be beyond both of us at the moment!
The other thing that I want to work on this year is speed. I never really played fast pieces when I was younger, just slow and moderate. I don't know if this was intentional on Joan's part or just happened by chance. Anyway, if I ever want to be able to play the Beethoven sonata, I must increase my ability to play quickly! I'm learning an Impromptu by Schubert and we'll see how it goes.
An update on memorization: I have finally memorized my Nocturne and can play it quite comfortably. Now I have to work on making it sound like a Nocturne rather than a waltz. I think I'm concentrating too much on those left hand chords so that I play them correctly and losing myself in that oom-pa-pa rhythm.
Finally, I've discovered that the key to piano lesson success is making sure that you have at least 15 minutes to unwind between work and piano lessons. Leaving work at 3:45 to drive across town on a Friday to a 4:00 lesson is very bad for concentration!

Start of a new year

It's too bad that my new year of piano lessons coincided with Brian's new job (and change in sleep schedule) because I have had no sleep this week. Last night I woke up at 11:30, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00... you get the idea! Very hard to concentrate on little black notes. Oh well, at least we ran out of lesson time before testing my memory on the Chopin piece! We did a lot of work on the Pink Panther and I see the light at the end of the rhythmic tunnel. I think my goals for this year should be to play pieces with tricky rhythms and to play pieces with weird chords so that I get used to the sounds and don't keep second-guessing my sight reading.

Memory problems

I decided to memorize the Chopin nocturne because I think it will help the left hand to play the correct chords and also I can concentrate on expression etc. if I'm not trying to read the music. Unfortunately, memorizing a piece is a lot harder now that it was when I was a kid! This is partly because I am trying to memorize this one properly, i.e. actually paying attention to what notes I am playing rather than relying on muscle memory. I think I relied a lot on muscle memory and hand position rather than thinking about the actual notes when I was a kid and this tripped me up under pressure. As my finger hit an F#, for example, my mind would say "I didn't know I was playing an F# there, is that right?" and all would start to unravel. I couldn't look at my music directly before a performance because I would start questioning the notes and it would throw me off. So now I'm trying to think about not only how my hand looks and feels on the keyboard as I play, but what the actual chord is that I'm playing. Seems obvious, but is new to me!

Those who can't play... read

I wrote this the other night when I was having trouble sleeping and I'm just getting around to posting it.

Here I sit with my warm milk (trying to fend off Milly) and writing a blog out on paper, using pencil (which I hate) and feeling very low tech. I have 2 piano-related library books on my dresser (thanks WLU!):

• Notes from the pianist's bench / Boris Berman
• Practicing perfection : memory and piano performance / Roger Chaffin, Gabriela Imreh, Mary Crawford

They're out on term loan, so hopefully the poor undergrad who may be pining for them will realize that they can simply do a recall and I'll be notified to return them.

The first one is a book about technique, practice, interpretation, performance etc. from a concert pianist and teacher. I find it interesting and useful in small doses because it is a bit dry. It's a good thing that I have this one until September because it may take awhile to absorb all of the information. The second one is a much easier read. It interests me because the authors are a combination of pianists and psychologists. It follows a concert pianist (Imreh) as she learns and memorizes a difficult piece for public performance. I have an interest in how people learn, including memorization, so I'm enjoying this book. The cognitive psychologist (Chaffin) is studying memory with the performer (Imreh) and then the social psychologist (Crawford) is helping the other 2 understand each other!

Reading is really meant to supplement/inform the playing, so what I really need to do now is get back to the piano! Perhaps I should get started on that Pink Panther piece for Helen. Clare is going to use her years in stage band to help me with the rhythm/timing.

Ok, warm milk is gone (including the drops on the bottom of the mug which have been cleaned out by Milly), so time to try and sleep once more.

A wee piano break

I'm taking a couple of weeks break from piano because my right thumb has been bothering me for the past month or so and I don't know if it is from doing octaves (darn Scott Joplin, and Chopin too for that matter) or another unknown reason. We shall see if the pain goes away; if not, off to the doctor's office to check it out. Do you know how often you use your thumb? Think of those tupperware lids where you have to press down in the centre to open/close; think of unscrewing a jar lid, using a chef's knife, holding a tooth brush... Such a useful digit. In the meantime, I will try to think of piano-y things to discuss that don't involve playing the piano.

Oui, c'est Montréal

We had a wonderful time in Montréal. I believe this is Maisonneuve, I love his hat. On Saturday we left the hotel at 10:30 a.m. and stopped shopping at 8:30 p.m. Incroyable! We managed to be at lunch during the one rain shower. We are already making plans for many return trips! We just need to find where the Montréalers are hiding their funky shoe stores. All we saw was Aldo, Aldo and more Aldo... Dinner and drinks at Newtown was fun; a great place for people watching on Rue Crescent (make sure you bring your credit card though...) We will all remember the extremely frazzled young man at Zara, I believe the only man working there, amongst a frenzy of women shopping for deals, who, at the sight of a stray pair of shoes on the floor, sighed deeply and said "Ahhh, mon Dieu!!!" as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. I think Cathy is still laughing.

Music for grumpiness

I am very grumpy today. Partly because my head hurts (and yes, I have taken many things for it but they do not work!), partly because I'm tired (blame my siblings for keeping me out late) and partly... just because. Who knows why. Anyway, I know what kind of music that I like to play when happy and what music is soothing when I'm sad and I think I could come up with music to play when I'm angry but I'm finding it difficult to play anything at all while grumpy. I think the very essence of grumpiness is that nothing pleases you. I played around with Over the rainbow and that distracted me for about 10 minutes. Then I checked bloglines to see if anyone had blogged (only Alex). Now I'm passing time waiting for Brian to finish working on a car because we are (over)due at Phyllis' for supper. Of course, being late also makes me grumpy. I suppose I could take my grumpy self into the kitchen and do the dishes...

Reflections on taking lessons

I just had my last lesson before Peter gets the summer off (very jealous), so I thought it a good time to reflect on why I take piano lessons (because I could buy an awful lot of clothes during my trip to Montreal next week for the price of one year of piano lessons...)

Initially I signed up for lessons simply to be motivated. I am quite happy to sit in front of the TV unless pushed, so I thought that reporting to someone each week would help me spend more time at the piano (I don't like to disappoint or inconvenience people by arriving at a meeting or lesson unprepared). While I have achieved this goal, I have discovered that piano lessons are important for many more reasons. I have discovered how much I don't know! Obviously there is a lot I have forgotten, but you always learn different things from different teachers. Here are the benefits that stand out for me so far:

• hand position, arm position, body position and learning that it isn't all about the fingers. Much of our body movement is unconscious, so it's great to have someone pointing out things we are doing that make playing more difficult
• posture (related to body position) and staying relaxed. Peter often points out that I've raised and hunched up my shoulders, this kind of tension can be restrictive and probably can cause injury and also affect the sound. Interestingly, whenever I've had personal trainers at the gym they also have had to remind me to keep my shoulders down
• having someone point out wrong notes. This may seem obvious, but just like we can read a paragraph and overlook spelling mistakes and missing words because our mind fills in what we expect to be there, I sometimes read notes as I expect them to be written rather than what the composer has actually written! For example, I sometimes resolve a chord that shouldn't be resolved yet or I play a bass note wrong because for the past 8 bars the composer has been doing tonic and dominant and then throws in the 3rd. This can be ok for some genres, but most times the composer's chosen note is actually better than mine!
• help with fingering. There are so many options for piano fingering and each player has to find what works best, but an experienced teacher can spot when it is the fingering that's screwing you up
• different ways of practicing. When I am having difficulties with a piece, Peter can show me many different way of playing parts of the same passage so that I learn how that passage works. Sometimes this can be as simple of playing all of the chords but omitting the in-between notes.
• repertoire. It is nice to be introduced to new pieces that I may not have stumbled across on my own (even if it means that I had to go buy & new Haydn book because of course the sonata was not in the one I had!)
• what went wrong... Peter can figure out why I'm struggling with a certain thing which prevents a lot beating my head against the wall
• knowledge of grade levels/difficulty. Although Peter will push me to try things out (and abandon them if necessary, i.e. nasty, difficult, Beethoven sonata...), he has a good idea of what my ability is and will tell me if he thinks a piece is beyond that ability at the moment and choose another piece that will help improve my playing so that I may be able to tackle the piece in the future

I will post other benefits as I think of them, but now I should do the dishes before Cathy phones. We are planning our Montreal trip for next weekend (yay!)

Sight reading improvement

As I child, I was taught to learn a piece by learning the right hand and the left hand separately until they were both pretty good and then work on putting the hands together. This has the advantage of making sure you really know the notes but the disadvantage of not really understanding how the piece fits together until late in the process. It also disadvantages your sight reading ability. Obviously I need to work on complicated pieces by doing some hands separate practice, but this time around I am doing hands together in the first week that I have a piece. As a result, I think my sight reading in improving because I have to keep track off all of the complexities while the piece is still unfamiliar. Last week I picked up a grade 9 piece, a George Shearing arrangement of Arlen's Over the rainbow. It is a jazz arrangement with lots of funny chords. In the past, I would never have been able to sight read this piece, even at a very slow speed. Now I can pick my way through it, slowly, with a good degree of accuracy and musicality. Woo hoo! It helps that it has a fairly straight rhythm, I'm still not very good at sight reading complex rhythms.

Playing with cats

One of my cats, Xander, can ignore me for hours and then as soon as I sit down to practice he is crying for attention. He often tries to sit on my lap. Most of the time this is impossible because he doesn't like to sneak under moving arms, but as soon as I am working on something hands separately (i.e. Joplin, more deceptively difficult stuff) then he appears and will not be budged (without injury to myself). Last night he curled up on my lap while I was practicing the right hand and then when I switched to the left and had shifted slightly, he decided that sitting up on my shoulder was the way to go. Oh well, I guess if I can play the bass line while holding a cat, I can play it at any time! It works better when he just sits behind me on the piano bench and rubs up against my back; I can ignore that!

Time to listen

I have been talking about several different pieces of music so far and I thought you might want to know how they sound. Amazon has many musical clips from their CDs, so I am sending you there. Just keep scrolling down until you get to the "listen to samples" section of the page.

For Chopin Nocturnes no. 1 and 2 click here

For Mendelssohn (track 7 Op.30: En Mi Bemol Majeur) click here (not the best recording but...)

For The entertainer; Maple leaf rag; Pineapple rag / Scott Joplin click here (old and scratchy but you'll get the idea)

From my garden

Helen wanted me to post a photo of the yellow roses in my garden, so before I forget... here it is! I take no responsibility for my garden, it is all Brian's doing.

Details, details... deceptively difficult

I started off calling the Chopin Nocturne op. 9 no. 2 my "easy Chopin" as compared to op. 9 no. 1. Indeed, it is rated as grade 8 by the RCM* whereas no. 1 is rated as grade 10. In terms of notes and rhythm etc. it is easier to play. However, I now believe it is not easier to play well. There are so many details which affect how nicely the piece sounds. For example, the left hand is a waltz-like pattern (although the piece is in 12/8 not 3/4) with bass note plus two chords in groups of 3. The tricky part is highlighting the bass note while making sure the next 2 chords are in the background. As the top chord inevitably has your thumb in it, this is harder than it sounds. The other problem I had was making sure my hand position changed with each chord, even if my fingers could stretch without that change, so that I maintained the centre of the chord and accordingly all notes sounded evenly. My next challenge was to not use the last chord as a launching off point to get my hand back down to the bass note which is quite a distance away, which I was doing quite unconsciously. Peter says I must lift my hand from that last chord and then move sideways, like one of those automation robots, rather than lift and move at the same time, otherwise the chord is too loud and interferes with the melody. Add to this the fact that the bass notes and accompanying chords change on every beat and you spend a lot of time concentrating on that left hand.
If you read this blog regularly, you will notice that problems with the left hand are frequent!

*RCM = Royal Conservatory of Music

"Very nice" says he, "Yay!" says me

I had my piano lesson this afternoon and managed to put off The Entertainer for another week. I'm struggling with it at the moment. It all looks so simple but my left hand just does not like that striding bass. I think I will have to memorize the piece so that I can watch my hands a bit more. Peter says that Scott Joplin used to practice those bass lines for hours. When there are large jumps I need to visualize where my hand is going to land and also put it into position while still in the air, especially when going from playing an octave to a chord (very different hand position). Joplin also has a way of setting up a fine pattern and then throwing an unsuspected chord at you. Tricksy composers.

I did play my Mendelssohn without interruption (triumph!) and received a "very nice!" from Peter (double triumph!). I don't know whether it is Peter's teaching style or whether he treats me differently because I'm an adult student, but the most I've gotten out of him in terms of compliments on my playing is "good job!" (for the Pineapple Rag) and "you're almost there!" (for the Nocturne, op. 9 no. 1). He's a great teacher but quite different from Joan! Very laid back! We're still getting used to each other. I'm not sure that he always gets my sense of humour...

Arrr matey... P is for Pirates not Pianos

We shall make a slight detour today in defense of pirates. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has been taking a bit of beating from the film critics, so I would like to ask them what does one look for in a pirate movie? Let's make a list:

• pirates
• swashbuckling
• desert islands
• treasure chests
• lots of piratey dialogue
• cheesy jokes
• skull & crossbones
• great piratey music
• ships
• cannons
• epic sea battles
• sword fights
• a parrot
• great big pirate hats & other paraphernalia
• rum
• convoluted plots
• Johnny Depp (oh wait, that's any movie...) (Ty Burr of the Boston Globe starts his review with "There are too many Johnny Depps in "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End "" Very strange criticism indeed...)

It has all of the above and then some, so, I fail to see the problem! I would argue that they just don't like the genre.

For those of you dying to know about piano practice, I suppose I can comment on that also. I do not understand the mind-body connection. You can play the same piece day in and day out and struggle with a certain passage every single time then leave it for one day and BANG, you've got it! Success! I even played it successfully more than once (which is the true test, must make sure it isn't a fluke). We will see if the success manifests itself at my lesson tomorrow. Anything can happen there; darn Kawai pianos.

Italian lessons anyone?

I don't have a problem with many of the words for dynamics (piano, fortissimo, cresc., dim., etc.) but I must admit that I have forgotton a lot of musical terms! Peter defines them for me at my lessons but trying to remember them during practice is a bit trickier than expected. Here are some terms from one of the Chopin nocturnes: smorz., legatiss., poco rallent. In two bars of music he gives: senza tempo, cresc., dim., rall. and smorz.! Fortunately I discovered on my bookcase "The concise Oxford dictionary of music."

smorzando: gradually dying away
legatissimo: really legato (which I should have figured out, duh!)
rallentando: gradually slow down (hold back, gradually)
senza tempo: without tempo (which I figured out once I could see that the words went together, there was quite a bit of space between them on the page)

My understanding is that with rallentando you slow down but with smorzando you slow down and get softer at the same time. The dictionary has just suggested that rallentando is the same as ritardando (a term I am familiar with) but different from ritenuto which means to immediately hold back. The problem is that rit. can be the abbreviation for ritardando and for ritenuto, so you need to figure out which one the composer is going for! Chopin put poco rit. in one bar but poco rallent. a couple of bars later, so I will assume that the "rit." in this case is for ritenuto.

They say that both music lessons and language lessons are good for the brain and ward off dementia, so I should be in good shape for old age!

When to practice, when to practice...

When I was 15, I didn't worry too much about when to practice. I practiced just enough to avoid a lecture at my lesson and then got on with all my other stuff. I didn't avoid practice because I didn't like to play, I think I avoided it because: (1) I don't like to practice around other people; (2) I don't like to practice scales, arpeggios, broken chords, etc. etc. (so boring!); and (3) I was a teenager... Also, Joan tended to pick some pieces that I didn't like. I was a teenager, wanting to wallow in angst-ridden music or music with FEELING. I didn't want to play happy sonatas! "But you're such a cheerful person" she would say. Sigh.
Now the problem is fitting in practice around a full-time job and other things in a busy life! Now I care if I haven't had a good practice week, not because Peter will lecture me but because I feel I will have wasted his time and mine (yes, I know he is being paid regardless of whether I practice). I started out by getting up early and practicing in the morning. This worked well until Christmas holidays. Then a combination of sleeping in over the holidays and lack of sunlight de-railed the early morning playing. Practicing right after work has its challenges because Brian is still sleeping. Practicing in the evening can be challenging because the day that I skip the morning in order to practice in the evening is the day Brian decides to stay up after work to get things done and then sleep in the evening! Then there is the problem of how long should I practice for? Too short and I can't accomplish anything but too long results in sore hands and mental fatigue. I have settled on an hour, which is sometimes divided up between morning and evening and around other tasks. For example, I may practice one piece while supper is cooking and then next after we're finished eating. I might put on some laundry and then come back to piece number three. I wonder if concert pianists have people making supper for them...

Getting started

I'm a bit leary of blogging because I'm not sure if I will post once the novelty wears off. However, I thought it would be a good means of reflecting on my renewed venture into piano playing and a fun way to share my triumphs and frustrations. I started lessons in September after a 17 year absence and this is what I have played so far (I will not say learned because some of them are at different stages of development) (those of you familiar with libraries will note the cataloguing punctuation of title / author!):

• Linus & Lucy / Vince Guaraldi
• Just one of those things / Cole Porter
• Sonata in C# minor / Beethoven (3rd movement has been temporarily abandoned because it is way too insanely fast)
• Dawn / Dario Marianelli (from Pride & Prejudice soundtrack)
• Theme from Schindler's list / John Williams (acc. for violin; Sally, have you learned the violin part yet?)
• Maple leaf rag ; Pineapple rag; The entertainer / Scott Joplin
• Nocturne in B flat minor (op 9, nr 1); Nocturne in E flat major (op 9, nr 2) / Chopin
• Sonata in C (hob xvi:50) / Haydn
• Song without words (op 30, nr 7) / Mendelsson
• various attempts with a fake book, but need to review my chords!

Helen has just given me some piano acc. for her sax music. I played through Londonderry Air but will have to take a closer look at the Pink Panther due to rhythms and accidentals! John will note that no Mozart is listed yet... but at one lesson Peter commented that I was trying to turn Chopin into Mozart, is that close enough?