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...

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.