Category: Music
Yay! I can actually report one finished project.
My other socks took a sideline as I finished the slippers. So I’ll take pics next week.
I feel better about my piano. We have love/hate moments. I do learn a lot with each sit down. I play not practice. I do work on problem areas. I work on my concentration. I see my playing as meditation. Here’s a thought. Check. Don’t dive in. A slight thought given attention can bring about a mistake tornado. Distraction of any kind can throw off the fun.
Take for instance, today I wanted to analyze the few pieces I shared last week. By thinking about key signatures my fingers lost their groove.
I’m much happier about the ukulele now. Being able to sing while playing makes this instrument far more fun than piano or recorders.
Recorders seem to be helping my breath control. Note recognition between the soprano and the alto instruments is getting better. I still have goals of playing duets with myself. I need to learn how to record like that.
That’s about it for now. Time to get to Duo, and the recorders and uke.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “move.” Use it as a verb or a noun; write the first thing that comes to mind. Have fun!
Moving was the title I gave to the memoir I wrote a couple of NaNoWriMos ago. The name started revealing itself to me right away. At first, it was that even though I was in two houses for my first twenty-one years, they kept building schools for our grade level, and we were the newbies to settle each new school. After marriage, my husband’s job moved us around the state.
My story then ran in how my mental attitude moved from one thinking to another. Music played a part in the many mental states I phased through. And since I have been reentering the music world for a while, movement is a prominent word in that realm.
Ah, but yesterday, before I even saw the prompt of the day, I saw the word movement on the top of most of the pieces I worked on.
Each piece was a movement from one symphony or another. As a music major whose professor was the conductor of the college orchestra, I sat in on a lot of concerts. But I couldn’t sit still. My teacher saw that I needed to be a part of the music, so she made sure I had the orchestral score to follow along with. My aim in music in college was voice, not piano. There was too much psychology attached to that big, beautiful machine.
In the next few days, I plan to break it all down. Needless to say, I need to move from the depth of stagefright that even played a part in yesterday’s practices to phone calls or being with more than people I know very, very well.
Now I need to move, to Duo, then uke, then recorder, then bed. Get up and MOVE!
Remember way back when I mentioned I might start a podcast? I can’t remember what I thought I’d call it, but a new title comes to mind as I started day # 3 of piano reawakening. “Warts and All”
We are so used to seeing the end result of endless practice. That makes sitting in front or with your art impossible. “I’ll never be that good. Why try?” So many negative things we tell ourselves, and because of that, we will never know what enjoyment we might bring ourselves or others while waiting for perfection. Follow your passions. God, muses, whatever you may call it, gets the credit for your curiosity drive. Do we dare let our defeatism lead the way? So I’m taking you on the ride. I took piano lessons since I was 5. I rebelled my way out around 16. After marriage at 21, I had to wait a while to get my old piano. My second son was teething when I got my piano back. I was rusty but could still enjoy the below pieces and much more, nearly totally memorized. I would play so hyperfocused that that piano had teething marks as the poor baby begged for my attention. So, I had to keep the practice to light bits.
When we moved to my first desert, Antelope Valley, the house was so small I had to keep the piano in a chicken coop. It was an old upright grand. It looked quite at home there. I would get up and go out in my heavy coat and gloves, scarf, and cap. As I did the scales and warm-ups, layers were released. I was starting to fall in love with my kidnapper. Stockholm Syndrome? There was a lot of angst from the psychological damage that practicing piano imposed on me.
A few decades later, after letting myself enjoy other music, singing, playing the recorder, and playing the ukulele, I felt like I wanted to try to bring it all back. Three days ago, I figured out a time of the day I could schedule my piano time. My first day was a lot of cleaning my baby. We get a lot of dust out here. And the darned mice. Lots of cleaning. But hey, that old piano in the chicken coop was pretty bad, too. And I love this piano. How I got it is another story. So cleaning it was, is now, a work of love. I did start playing that day for a few minutes. It went well. I kept it to 15 minutes. For some reason, yesterday’s practice made me want to cry. Today I decided to start recording myself and sharing the mess and progress with you. You are not required to listen to these as if they were elevator music. It is merely how it is when you try.
Enough of music. I’ll share the uke and recorder progress later.
Passion is imperfect.
“Be your own elevator music.“
My husband and I have been having a lot of discussions about music, practice time and spaces. At the end of our discussion we agreed on the above bit of mutual quote as our different drum we’re beating.
Our discussion from last night and this morning found my piano time. And I had fun. I can’t wait to play again, tomorrow.
So these are the things in the making here. Hope you had a marvelous Monday.
Darswords 
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