take piano lessons to improve my playing

And just got the Grade 2 music and a book of what look like very difficult studies (which are supposed to be Grade 2!!).

I saw Lang Lang on TV last night at the Proms, as well as being awesomw himself he introduced a 9 year old who played a duet with him, Marc Yu Hmmmm I feel so inadequate now.

^{Goes to practice some more}

Zonino!!!

Ok it was an adult learners event, I played a very simple piece by Mozart (the second piece he ever wrote, K2, which was when he was 5!!). I stumbled a couple of times, but did keep going, and I got a lot of applause and positive comments, and lots of support.

Moving on the the 3rd piece Mozart ever wrote now, K3, and on my way up to K488 :)

When I first looked at the sheetmusic, it didn`t look too complicated. But wow, it`s complicated. But fun! I just have to learn this slooooowly.

and Teach is talking about the exam in July!!! Eeeekkkk!!!

He says there is no way I won’t be ready and we discussed which exam centre to take it in (one with a nice piano would be good!)

some seriously difficult stuff right now. Basically it`s 2-5-1 progressions in a and b positions, with 9 and 13, if that tells anybody anything. After half an hour of trying to figure it all out at the pinanolesson, my head was spinning. My teacher wrote down exercises for me in all the scales. And then said “OK, go home and learn this, and we`ll meet again in year 2012”. But then he said it`s not actually as difficult as it seems in the beginning, it becomes automatic after a while if I pracice it every day. This is the kind of stuff that isn`t really fun to practice though, so I really need to use some willpower to practice it every day so I get somewhere with it pretty fast. The pianoteacher says that once I know this, it opens up a world of fun opportunities with any song I want to play, which does sound nice! Off to practise now.

and I am now learning a Rag, which I cN do v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y wiTh both hands and a lot of mistakes!! Teach is very supportive!

I`m learning some really cool stuff at them moment. I can`t really explain it in English, but it`s about replacing the first note in a chord with the nineth, and putting the third or seventh at the bottom of the chord. At which point, all the cool tension notes are very easy to add, and it`s easy to move to other chords in fives, which makes it sound really nice. I have to do a lot of thinking all the time to do this, but it`s fun! Plus, I`m understanding more and more of the structure of music while learning this, which is really interesting.
^{I`m sure the explanation above has no meaning at all in English, but either way, it`s fun stuff!;)}

I have been working on the Mozart K1 (they don’t come any earlier than that). I can do the right hand, I can do the left hand, I can even do the left hand while singing the right hand… but I can’t yet do both hands together. However Teach says this is good progress and it sounds nice. For next week I am to practice hands separately some more to get the fingering, the dynamics and the expression embedded and then very slowly start doing hands together.

Mozart already :)...this week K1, next week K467!!

And the pianoteacher said I keep getting better at analyzing chords, yay! Progress! But then he asked me about some scales, and my respons was something in the direction of ehhh, hmm, ehhh, I`m supposed to know that, right? My pianoteacher is brilliant and incredibly inspiring, but not very structured, so he never asks me to practice scales or things like that in any sort of systematic way. So I guess I should try to be a little bit structured on my own and practice that in addition to the fun stuff.

Teach brought 2 books with him. The ABRSM Grade 1 pieces (eeeek!) and Bartok Mikrokosmos book 1 (of 6 in progressing difficulty).

In the Grade 1 book there is Mozart’s K1, Wolfie must have been about 4 when he wrote that, but I somehow fancy playing Mozart. The Bartok has 36 short pieces in and he has asked me to look at nos 10 and 22. We had a go at them both with me playing the left hand and him playing the right hand, and it was good. Sounds like real music instead of silly nursery rhyme stuff that you so often get when you first start,
^{though, if the truth be known, they are probably Hungarian nursery rhymes.}

He then asked me to play a few scales, and asked for two minor scales…I have only been practising the major scales, what is it about music teachers that they can always pick the one thing you haven’t practised.