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...