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Greetings, gentle readers. You probably won't be hearing much from me this week as I'll be busy. I'll be working with Camp Broadway's summer day camp off and on the next few weeks, and it's fun but pretty intense.
Have I mentioned July is piano month? According to me, that is. I think I forgot to say that. After last month's string of arbitrarily-chosen hits, I am now choosing to spend some time playing stuff that's actually piano-based. I decided that a few days into July, and since then have worked on "Clocks", "Trouble" (also by Coldplay), "Summer, Highland Falls", "Lullabye" (Billy Joel's), "Vienna", "Lullabye" (Ben Folds', with the kick-ass piano solo), and, today, Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer".
Piano-based stuff has its own challenge within my time constraints, because I actually want to figure out exactly what they're playing, as opposed to deciding how best to distill the track into a piano-only groove as I have to do with guitar- or orchestrated/produced music. I have to concede defeat on things like "Summer, Highland Falls" and Ben Folds' piano solo on "Lullabye" - I'm just not going to have the exact notes and the memory all in place in the time I have to work on it in one already-busy day.
Part of the point of my little self-challenge is to move on to a new song every day. Letting go of imperfection is not my strong suit, and that inability to let go of anything and move on was, ironically, making life and music even more imperfect than it might have been otherwise. That said, I've already determined I need a lot of review if I'm actually going to know 365 songs at the end of the year (panic rises in her throat) - so I move on to focus on the next song, I can still go back. Today I actually did my review before learning the new song - I looked at "Against All Odds" again, and I spent a little time on the "Lullabye" solo. I was gratified to discover it sounds much better today than when I was first learning it yesterday. Not all memorized yet, but that's ok.
I better go get the rest of my stuff together for tomorrow. See y'all on the flip side!
Have I mentioned July is piano month? According to me, that is. I think I forgot to say that. After last month's string of arbitrarily-chosen hits, I am now choosing to spend some time playing stuff that's actually piano-based. I decided that a few days into July, and since then have worked on "Clocks", "Trouble" (also by Coldplay), "Summer, Highland Falls", "Lullabye" (Billy Joel's), "Vienna", "Lullabye" (Ben Folds', with the kick-ass piano solo), and, today, Fiona Apple's "Shadowboxer".
Piano-based stuff has its own challenge within my time constraints, because I actually want to figure out exactly what they're playing, as opposed to deciding how best to distill the track into a piano-only groove as I have to do with guitar- or orchestrated/produced music. I have to concede defeat on things like "Summer, Highland Falls" and Ben Folds' piano solo on "Lullabye" - I'm just not going to have the exact notes and the memory all in place in the time I have to work on it in one already-busy day.
Part of the point of my little self-challenge is to move on to a new song every day. Letting go of imperfection is not my strong suit, and that inability to let go of anything and move on was, ironically, making life and music even more imperfect than it might have been otherwise. That said, I've already determined I need a lot of review if I'm actually going to know 365 songs at the end of the year (panic rises in her throat) - so I move on to focus on the next song, I can still go back. Today I actually did my review before learning the new song - I looked at "Against All Odds" again, and I spent a little time on the "Lullabye" solo. I was gratified to discover it sounds much better today than when I was first learning it yesterday. Not all memorized yet, but that's ok.
I better go get the rest of my stuff together for tomorrow. See y'all on the flip side!
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