Before My Mentor Meeting

   Mentor meeting today 7th period! I've kind of been contemplating whether or not I should continue taking piano lessons from Mrs. Miller because to learn fingerings, it can basically be taught in one lesson... but Mrs. Miller's also teaching me about keys and such so... I don't know...
  This is just a little note to myself for things I want to bring up and talk about today with Ms. Lord:

• Future plans... Am I going in the wrong direction? A new direction?
• Do I have to have recitals?
• Am I going at the right pace?
• Should I start learning pieces on my own?
• Should I continue piano lessons with Mrs. Miller?
• Should I tell Mrs. Miller about my blog?

Lesson & A List of Recommended Pieces

FOR:  Friday, February 25th, 2011

   I forgot to practice today, but I did make up for it on Saturday... just saying.

   Something else I forgot was the fact that Mrs. Miller said I could pick out a piece to learn now! Anything, anything at all! Should I try Fantasie Impromptu? I mean just listen to it, it's crazy beautiful... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvm2ZsRv3C8

...but also crazy impossible? I mean some of the really hard pieces that I've already learned how to play (by ear/memorizing fingerings) are Beethoven's Fur Elise, Brahms' Hungarian Dance, and Mozart's Turkish March. But those were by memorization, which is by far, much easier than reading sheet music.

Here's something I found on Google that I thought might be useful in the future...
a list of recommended classical pieces!

  Andd... also I kind of made a list for modern songs even though in one of the other posts, I said I wouldn't make one. I only have one title on my list right now, and that's Owl City's Fireflies. 

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amm7Do0ySkU

   The piano version is really really pretty sounding. If two days, I'll probably just pick something off this list instead of going with the first song I hear on the radio (most likely this song?). 

Day Dreaming && When the Saints Go Marching In

FOR: Monday, February 21st, 2011

   Today was my third lesson!

   For the past week, I've been working on this one repertoire piece called "Day Dreaming" by Dolly E. Kessner. I've been having such trouble with it because it's a very... awkward(?) piece. There are seven beats per measure, unlike your standard/average four beats per measure. And especially since the number of beats are odd instead of even, it is very difficult (or at least for me) to keep up with the rhythm of the piece while exercising all other areas (volume, tempo, notes, etc.) This was one of the major pieces I worked on during my lesson with Mrs. Miller today. Since my metronome doesn't have seven beat per measure, she suggested that if I still had trouble, it's best to put the metronome on one beat per measure and just count. My trouble was that I wanted to make the number of beats even, and I kept leaving an extra rest at the end of each measure. When I finally got the beats right during my lesson today, I got the notes wrong... however, after my lesson, I came home and practiced this piece for half an hour more and now I think I've got it down (:

   One of the other songs I worked on during my lesson today was "When the Saints Go Marching In" [page 61 of the Progressive Class Piano book]. This is a version edited by Elmer Heerema [author of Progressive Class Piano]. When I had first started learning piano, years earlier, I had learned a different version of this song, so I kept getting the notes wrong because my hands remember the piece differently. Mrs. Miller says that this is how one learns to memorize a piece, because you practice it enough that your fingers remember how to move, your muscle remember how to react. And since this was one of my favorite easy songs to play back then, I kept making mistakes in attacking the piece. Of course, with enough time, the piece came out perfect!

   Something interesting I began to look up was the history of this song, "When the Saints Go Marching In". Although this might not be the best source from which to reference, I looked this song up on Google, and found it on Wikipedia. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Saints_Go_Marching_In

   Wikipedia gives a rather good overall background on this song. This was traditionally meant for accompaniment to a funeral march, a "jazz funeral" to be specific. I was looking for an original version of this song, and according to Wikipedia, the original was copyrighted by Oliver Virgil Stamps. I kinda got bored after that and stopped reading the rest...

Youtube Artists

FOR: Friday, February 18th, 2011


   I've been on the hunt for the "perfect" modern song to learn, and so far I still have no luck. There are a lot of "good" pieces, but nothing "perfect" yet. What I do is go on youtube and search "piano cover". Sometimes, if I just type the beginning to something, the top searched/most popular choices will show up in a little auto-fill choice thingy. I don't want to put down anything specific yet because I know that if I do, I'll probably just limit myself to the ones I've recorded down in the end.
   During my research, I found many many inspiring youtube artists. The channel of one of the most amazing artists I've found is here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/zeldaxlove64

  She's so good that I feel intimidated... haha. I mean, it may just be that she has an amazing voice, but her piano is also exceptional in my opinion. 

   Anyways, from my youtube hunt, I honestly think that, since so many songs sound amazing on the piano, I might just go with the first song I hear on the radio one day. Although I still have to get this approved by Mrs. Miller, I'm really excited to start this! 

A Mentor Message

[I've been on vacation so I haven't updated for two weeks, but I have everything down! :)]

FOR: Wednesday, February 16th, 2011


    My first mentor meeting was supposed to be on the 14th of Monday, but I accidentally missed Ms. Lord when I went by. That was a bad start to the week... but fortunately, I was able to reschedule and meet with Ms. Lord today, the Wednesday after.

   In our first mentor meeting, we discussed the plans for future mentor meetings. I didn't really know what the specific jobs of a mentor were, but I found out today that they vary depending on the mentor and student. Here's some notes for future mentor meetings (technically speaking to myself here):

• If your mentor isn't there and the room door is open, he/she will most likely return shortly and/or is nearby. Stay and wait a while, or leave a note on the door and come back in a couple of minutes. 
• The mentor isn't supposed to go after you to make sure you make the meeting. At least that's not what most mentors do. It is your job to reschedule and/or plan accordingly.
• YOU tell your mentor what you want them to do. Do you want them to reflect on your progress? To question you? To listen to you? To be someone that you can ask questions?
• Bring questions for yourself and plan to discuss them with your mentor. 

"So as you read..."

"...try to read ahead - see the entire measure (or phrase) at a glance - not one note at a time."

   Second lesson today! I was a bit unprepared for it because the first part of the day was kind of rough for me as I had two tests in my two most challenging classes (ap physics c and calculus bc). But anyways, I sight-read some of the pieces I had practiced during the past week for Mrs. Miller, and somehow, all of them turned out horrible, or at least it seemed to have from my perspective... I mean maybe I was just nervous, or maybe that's just how it's supposed to turn out, but I was HORRIBLE. It seemed as if I had never played the pieces before and I was struggling so much to get each of the notes right. I had to keep restarting and I forgot the rhythm and when to play piano or when to play forte. It was actually quite embarrassing, I felt like a turtle on its back. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Miller was disappointed, but... I don't know...
   I got a lot of new suggestions/tips though, like if I'm making mistakes, I'm going too fast, or if I'm having trouble with playing with my hands together, try just the left hand part first.
   A key thing I was told was that I speed up WAY TOO MUCH, and that makes it difficult because I'll get the notes wrong just from being hasty.
   Anyways, this time, instead of just half a page of comments for the day that she recorded in my progress book, I got a whole page. That's probably bad... more work this week I guess, but I definitely need it.

Repertoire && Taylor Swift

   I remember when Mrs. Miller first said this word, and I had no idea what it meant. When I looked it up, it said that it means "[a] list of dramas, operas, parts, pieces, etc., which a company, actor, singer or the like, is prepared to perform [or a]ll the works of a particular kind considered collectively".

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_repertoire#ixzz1DuLW5LyU

   I was assigned four repertoire pieces to play. Some of them are actually kind of hard. I spent half an hour just learning the notes and the rhythm to the first one. I guess maybe I need to spend more time on that? Yes, that's good.
   Anyways, my piano practicing hasn't been very well received by my parents. My dad usually enjoys listening to us practice, but he doesn't think I'm playing piano when I practice the repertoire pieces, because I mess up so much that it doesn't sound like anything. Aside from repertoire, I also have several rhythm drills that I have to do. It's like a score of beats that you tap to or something... so at the dinner table, I'll be like, tapping away, and my entire family just looks at me as if I'm from another country. Haha.
_______________________________________________

   I've been sorta looking through current songs for ones I like that I could learn to play, and I realized that I like so many so them that I don't know how I'm going to be able to just choose one. Being indecisive as I am, does that mean a new challenge? I mean, I stumbled onto my little sister's albums of Taylor Swift, and I think most, if not all of them, would work for a piano cover. Plus, they all seem fairly simple to learn as well, so I don't know... they're really easy to get stuck in my head.

An Update On Practicing

   I was really hoping this wouldn't happen as early as it did, but I guess it couldn't be helped. I knew I was going to run into this problem...
   I was REALLY good with practicing on the first two days. Right after I got home from school on the first three days, I practiced for half an hour each time. From the log book Mrs. Miller gave me, I did all the reading sections from pages 15 to 31. But somehow on Thursday, I just decided it was okay to practice at a different time, to practice after dinner or something. Or something... well that something became not practicing at all. Even worse, I didn't practice on Friday either. I guess I didn't realize that the fact I had to work right after school, and didn't plan ahead.
    The good thing is that on Saturday, I "made-up" all my missing practicing by practicing for two hours straight. Only, that's actually bad because I wasn't supposed to do that, I wasn't supposed to cram practicing all into one block of time. It's only the beginning and I've already broken sequence. But what else can I do about it? I mean, at least now I'll be prepared for next week because I'll be bringing my books to school and practicing on the pianos in the practice rooms during 7th in the Performing Arts Center. Hopefully nothing like this happens again...

A Very First Lesson

   Oh heyyy! So, on Monday, February 8th, 2011, I had my very first lesson with Mrs. Miller. I was actually a little nervous because I didn't want to mess anything up. It turned out okay, I got a new assignment notebook where she'll be recording my homework assignments and what I should be practicing. She's told me A LOT about what I need to do to help myself learn how to read sheet music. She gave me lots of tips!

• don't listen to a piece before you look at the sheet music, instead, try to imagine how the piece would sound just by the notes you see on the score
• don't look down at your hands
• know your intervals [third, fourth, fifth] based on the number of keys difference; this is really good for learning how to read sheet music because it helps me picture the key/where it is
• count out-loud to get the right rhythm! [apparently I have a lot of issues with this....]
• remember the volume that the piece should be!
• practice!

   I kind of feel like she assigned me a lot to do, but maybe not? I started practice, and it went okay, but I'm definitely not through it all yet. Maybe like 1/5 of all the pages she assigned. The problem is that I went through the first couple of pages pretty fast too, so I'm probably going to have to practice for an hour or more in the future. 

Two Week Plan

    My plan for the next two weeks is to launch off on learning how to read sheet music, which means I'm basically going to be going through a book [the one I'm using is called Progressive Class Piano, a book specifically directed at older beginners] and practicing the pieces specific to learning how to read music. It's kind of difficult to explain exactly what that means, but I'm basically just playing simple pieces with notes that are easy to recognize and then increasing the difficulty of the notes (?)
    I'm probably going to spend a whole month on just reading sheet music because I definitely need the practice. I guess I didn't mention in my last post that I would be taking lessons with Mary Ann Miller. She also teaches my little sister, so I kinda get to hang around her house a lot. Anyways, my lessons are every Monday at 5:30PM, so that'll be happening every week. In addition, I'll be practice for at least half an hour every single day [this is actually going to be monitored by my mom... boooo haha]. I actually haven't asked my mentor who'll help check up on me yet [YIKES], so I should probably get on that.  So Ms. Lord agreed to be my mentor, and we will be meeting every Monday as well, during 7th period. 

   As for research right now, I'll probably start reading my sources on music therapy. At the same time, I'll be starting to listen to music every night as I fall asleep :D

-last edit 02.13.11

Dear Reader

     It's incredible how music is such a big part of life nowadays. I don't think I've ever gone through a day without turning on the radio or dancing to my iPod. But that's music in the digital sense. There's a lot more to music than just what you find on iTunes.
    One of the first instruments I've ever really been instructed in was piano. I think I was about eight years old at the time, and I memorized the fingerings to Fur Elise from my Casio keyboard. Even though it seemed amazing at the time, it was a terrible way to start off piano. Why? Well, I ended up not being able to fully dedicate myself to learning how to read sheet music. I figured I could always just learn by memorization, so why worry about reading the scores? Haha... sucks for me now that I realize it's so much harder to re-memorize the things from before than to just re-read the music. So anyways, that's pretty much why I decided to dedicate my English project to piano, to learn how to read sheet music.
     I guess it's also more than that, if you want to take into consideration the fact that I'm aiming to learn some specific pieces and that I want to learn more about the correlation between a person's behaviors and their exposure to music.
    Have you ever heard people do a cover of a song where they both play it and sing it? I so want to do that! Well, at least the playing part. So that's why I'm certain that at least one of the pieces I will learn will be some modern song. I'll definitely learn classical pieces too, but I really want to be able to do a cover of a song at some point. And aside from that, I've been noticing how music helps calm me down slash it affects my mood a whole lot, especially when I'm stressed or upset or something. So I'm kinda investigating how music correlates to a person's behaviors and such. I mean I've found some key pieces, like music therapy, so that's definitely something I'll be researching. After a couple of months, I'm kinda hoping to evaluate how my experience with this piano learning affects my personal behavior through my own perspectives.
  I'm really looking forward to the end result because being able to play piano well would not only give me a hobby, it would make my parents happy as well. I think I'm really going to enjoy what I get out of this project, because it's a skill I'll be able to keep forever. Of course there's going to be challenges that I'll need to face. A definite one is overcoming my lack of daily commitment. I've never really been able to follow a routine and do something everyday, so this will be one of my top challenges. I think another challenge is going to be finding the time to do all my practicing and working on piano related material because, like everyone else, it's a fun year AND a busy one too. Good luck me?

-last edit 02.13.11