Learn to play the piano

My Yamaha came yesterday and Josh & I set it up last night. it is beautiful. now i can actually practice in between lessons and stop driving my teacher, Adam nutty because I suck. I hope that I fall in love with this even more. I love how time seems to just fly by and i get totally absorbed at the keyboard.

I’m still chugging along, 3 lessons in and I realize that this is WORK! lol. I ordered my clavinova/digital piano a few minutes ago. wait until my housemates see that come through the door! i guess I should warn them huh? I’m enjoying the mental agility of learning to read music, its like learning another language…

Had my first lesson w/ Adam yesterday. It was alot of fun. I can see this is going to be alot of work, but I’m excited. I also like having some non-exercise related hobbies.

I am going to look into the practice rooms here at the college to see if there’s a place I can practice until i get a keyboard, and I’m going to go to the local piano place to fart around and figure out what i want and I’m going to do my assignment for next week! SweeT!

Local teacher has indicated he may have space for me. We’re trading e-mail to determine a time. He’s about 1/2 hour from me, but it sounds like it’ll be worth having this guy as a teacher. I love his mom (a colleague) and apparently he’s pretty darn good! He trains in the classical style to give a foundation to play anything, then allows students to select pieces of their liking to learn as well once they have the basics down. Can’t ask for more than that.

I will have to look for a keyboard now…always something! But I’m excited!

through a quirky turn of fate i learned that my colleauge has a son who teaches piano and has a place to teach it! I gave her my info and number and I hope he gives me a shout soon.

i had been trying to find local teachers and its remarkably difficulty to find someone around here. everyone’s for hire for bands and orchestras but not for individual hire.

I am excited but worried I may be overcommiting (sp?) as I’m considering Karate and just signed up for a spinning class that goes through Dec. 18th (only 8 weeks left).

But I need activities to take the place of golf and riding my motorcycle as it gets too cold. But I’ve always wanted to do this and I’m really excited!

I know Mary Had a Little Lamb and Eric gave me an Aria to work on before we left the ship. One night I sat down to practice in the Piano bar and a few people came up and remarked at how impressed they were with how far I’ve come in only 4-5 lessons.

I am hooked and dreaming of an 88 key keyboard when I get home, but where is home? and i already have a ton of traveling to do. So maybe it is all about getting something relatively portable? or just deciding that it is just that important-which i think it is. also as a combat to spending time on the internet and to eating. i am very grateful to God and proud of myself for attempting this goal and following through while on the road. I know it is important to me and am willing and ready to cut out some of the other things i have wasted my thoughts/time/money on to pursue it. Divine.

practiced on my own today for about 20 minutes. mary had a little lamb is coming along well. even played it with my left hand (solo). also practiced some aria thing erik gave me, but it isn’t sounding right to my ears, but i’m getting the key-work down. fun. no pressure. just trying to play 15-20 minutes at a time. i downloaded some lessons though-from online to look over tonite.

i also have to remember how much fun and how accomplished it will feel to play some of my favorites:
maroon 5
out of eden
kiss from a rose (seal)
save the best for last
stevie wonder

Erik is awesome, I had my 3rd lesson yesterday and it is a lot of fun, not easy, but engaging. I am learning the scales/beats and playing some Aria he gave me. I need to practice and I actually WANT to practice. I also had the thought that playing/practicing piano could/should be a substitute for hanging out on the internets!

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1367/music2.html
www.learnpianoonline.com
www.pianoiseasy.com

I have a 5:15 lesson tomorrow with Erik. I need to get him a thank you gift too if we do this a couple of times. I’m also downloading some “lessons” currently on line. I’m going to go slow and steady on all of my goals in progress versus trying to become superwoman overnight.

part of the issue is that i travel so much (boo hoo, poor me!) and i tried taking a couple of lessons a year or so ago, but again with all that i was doing i couldn’t focus.

here on the ship at semester at sea there are so many who can play. one guy, erik silk who is a jr. at uva now, gave me a 1/2 hour lesson last week and i loved it!

we went over the scale(s), octaves, notes and tempo. I need to download some study materials to brush up and practice. it feels nice to be working towards this even in a non-traditional way.

i’d love to play some Out of Eden songs (Gospel), We Got Us (Mint Condition), oh I don’t know…everything!